Parnassus - Miniatures Unit, including sets that were cut from the cinema release!

I have finally got around to sitting down and uploading photographs of some of the fantastic miniature sets that were produced at Mattes and Miniatures back in 2008. There was quite a big team of us working for Leigh Took, (model supervisor) and Dave Warren, (art director) on miniature scaled sets for the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. I think the rest of the names are as follows:

ModelMakers: Myself, Gary Losh, Wesley Hardland, Christopher Michael Walker, Neil Damann, Bob Ballan, James Ballan, Simon Ford, Gary Morton, Fiona Barty, Joe White, Alex Walklate, Thomas Power, Samantha Cole, Katherine Pearl, Amanda Ward, Holly, Rebecca Timons, Steve Scott, Andy Rolfe, Jason Chalmers, Peter Seymour-Howell, Melanie Thorpe, Sarah Clamp.

The biggest part of the project i worked on, with Gary Losh was the sculpting, molding and casting of the elephant carvings that were to form the foundations of the monastery set. Below you can see a beautiful drawing provided by Dave Warren of the concept of the set.

Here are some photographs of the model that was produced by myself and the others at Mattes and Miniatures:

The photograph above is courtesy of Chris Walker. This is pretty much what you see in the film, and then a close-up pan upwards of the whole set. It was great to see it get such a good shot, so much work went into the whole set and it looked outstanding.

If you want to see a more detailed write up of the whole process of making all the models then check out Chris' blog on the link above, he has some great photos on there too. Unfortunately due to the untimely demise of my hardrive i lost most of my photographs, but i've tried to show as much as i can here.
Above is the upper half of the set photographed during the shoot. The main structure is a combination of MDF and poly/styrofoam, and was mostly build by Neil Damann, with the help of many of the crew, including Chris, Alex, James and Jo (i can't possibly remember every detail that everyone did individually and i'm really sorry if i make any mistakes, just correct me!) . The huge Buddha style statue (which i think was actually a Parnassus Monk) was sculpted by Wesley, and the stylised lotus flower on his lap by myself. So much work went into the whole thing and everyone worked really well alongside each other to bring the whole piece together. It's really hard to see just how much detail there is, all the tiny doors and windows and even intricate brickwork and complex scaffolding. The photo below might give you an idea of this...

And here are our lovely elephants and a few shots of the clay sculpt and the messy process of a silicone jacket and fibreglass mold...


Here is the 'Warfare' which unfortunately got cut from the cinema release of the film. I only played a small part in the construction of this set, mainly my job was to sculpt, mold and cast the two fists that hold the flags framing the entrance to the scene. Chris and James did a lot of work on the fine detailing of this set, including a tank which actually drove around the roads that wound around and through the set. The head sculpts of the soldiers carved from the rock face where sculpted by Wesley.

Another model i worked on was the 'Piano Cave', which again was sadly cut from the finished film. But here i can show you a few images of some of the work that was done by the crew at Mattes and Miniatures. It was quite hard to get a shot of the whole cave, but you can see some of the work i did on the set. I sculpted a turtle to begin with, then molded and cast four out in fast cast onto which the elephant i sculpted stood. The turtles were sculpted in plasteline, and the elephant in clay. These made up part of the ornate columns which repeated twice down each side of the cave, supporting its roof.

Well that's about as far as my pictures go sadly. There was so much more made at Mattes and Miniatures across the 3 month build, including Babushka's Cottage, Mr. Nicks Bar, Giant Parnassus head wearing a policeman's hat, Graveyard, some surreal desert ruins and many many GIANT mountain ranges, and many many many many more trees!

The job was soooo much fun and i'd happily do it all over again....so Terry Gilliam, make another film please!!!