adam savage at prop store one of my favorite places in the world brandon ellinger how are
you sir hey i'm good thanks for coming in dude um you have this amazing auction coming up and
it's got pieces from all over film history it just blew my mind the confluence of amazing objects but
this is one that i actually have met before about 15 years ago in another archive this is a fifth
element uh maquette is that right yeah i think so it's a it's a study model when the consignor
first showed us pictures of this we wondered if it was a true filming model but i think it's more of
a concept model which you could probably say more about the role of concept models in model making
overall right well this is the thing is so i've seen pictures of them working with the mondo shown
ship onset and the the shooting model was probably just about double this size and yeah i think this
was the maquette to get the director to buy off on the form factor because there's so many like
plastic drinking straws where the paint is peeling off these little x's are probably
from some packaging you can see what is like exposed plumbing hardware i mean there's really
quick and dirty an economy to this even here this giant big old glob of hot glue sticking out there
i feel like i see some zip ties that are used as detailing this is this is you know it's funny
i might even know one of the model makers that worked on this my friend martin has worked uh with
bassan and the juno brothers over the years okay uh and this is the work of a master model maker
working under a very tight time constraint right so there's a lot of crunchiness but
man the full gesture of the ship is all apparent a lot of creative energy in it right you're kind of
liking it to a very loose fast design sketch where it gets the idea out well and you've i mean you've
seen some of the drawings of the storyboards the ship is is barely distinguishable in the
storyboards it's just like this this strange shape moving across our field of view so you can imagine
bassand telling the model makers like i want lots of surface detail i wanted to feel like an
organ i mean there's just so much uh clear design charge in this construction and what do you make
of these pipes design feature or no i think they're just for holding it up yeah i think
that makes complete sense you've got marbles these specular marbles in most of these things
i think they were all meant to be engines uh and it's yeah how do you hold something like this up
yeah probably just like that i've got a christmas tree light over here yeah one christmas tree
light oh man i mean i see pieces of just like hardware store stuff kids toys chopped up uh
little model parts i mean in a way you could look at this and take away oh it's kind of a crappy
model but it's only crappy crappy i'm going to put that in quotes when you look really close up
and you can see how the transitions have been done with care but that's not the point of this model
the point of this model is what is the gesture of the whole thing proof of concept right and get
the director's buy-in this is the kind of thing i love about uh high-pressure model making is like
where are your priorities this model maker's priorities were clearly on the overall gesture
not on any of the individual details and so like as you're looking at b-roll as joey gets
super close-ups yeah you can see just how crunchy it is but what you can get out of it and in
its current life it's actually compared to the real filming miniature it's probably much more
displayable because you could find a place to put it whereas the big one would be huge you'd need a
corner of a room absolutely ah one of the things i like is how variegated the paint job is i mean
we've got this clear like uh rusted copper verite finish here some other textures underneath gold
specks in here and then this is mostly silver i find myself wondering if it wasn't painted
almost in a patchwork so that bassant could kind of choose his favorite finish that's interesting
yeah get multiple finishes onto one piece and um you guys have a piece like that in your collection
uh one of the watchmen costumes where it's like multiple textures on the same costume piece yeah
pick your favorite exactly uh this paint job of the verdigris the the green rusty copper
one of my all-time favorite textures to replicate in paint there's just a way in which that like
light phthalo green as it's like it does it it's super evocative and is it a certain process
that you go through to get that color to come out or yeah it's so there's like a mix of a
couple of darks and a couple of lights and then you kind of just got to follow how
copper actually rusts so you look at lots of things like close-ups of the statue of liberty
that's interesting try and get it close and i guess you have to nail the exact right shade of
green in order for it to read properly right it's funny it's there's a lot of room to move okay yeah
so you could get the shade wrong as long as it's relationship to its neighbor shades that's right
it's it's not a single like i've actually scabbed a very degree finish when i didn't have the right
colors okay uh but your eye kind of told the story yeah plus you can end up with much yellower rust
sometimes and that also sometimes helps the green look greener yeah well it's the uh it's the things
you think about as a model maker that bring it to life for the viewers whether they realize
it or not exactly like here little these are uh nuts stamped metal uh hex nuts right here that
these are going into with the mcdonald's lunch straws repurposed right into them yeah exactly and
you get to see exactly the paint job these are who knows what kind of kids toys those are
i mean famously the nacelles of the y-wing fighter were legs egg containers right yeah yeah it's
gorgeous it's good because for replica guys it gives you a place to start with on your scale
exactly you got to find that found part right away to scale it up
it is so lovely to see this piece again as i said i met this exact maquette about 15 years ago or so
and i recognized it right away i cannot believe that you guys have this in the auction it is such
an iconic piece and a lot of great design in the fifth element overall people i think still look
at it as a heavy design film especially for that period totally an absolute masterpiece
brandon thank you so much for letting me see this up close definitely glad
glad you recognized it oh thank you guys i'll see you next time