Monday, April 14, 2008

Ruins

Last night I started another building, but this one is going to be more rubble than actual building...

Sunday, April 13, 2008

The House Gets a 'Roof'

Whats left of the roof (a few burnt rafters) has been added, along with undercoating and smoke damage.

Painting Area

I used to have my painting/modeling area set up on a trestle table in the corner of the lounge, now I've upgraded to a slightly smaller desk. It's as cluttered as ever!

Building Progress

I'm using a few different techniques on this project, but I'm not gonna tell you about them until I've finished it!

Saturday, April 12, 2008

I Should Really Be Painting...

But I can't help myself. Another little building project for my Normandy table using once again, a Kreative Scenery kit.

Lessons From The Front

Stu gave a pretty good overview of last Wednesday's game;

Between my own and Jonathan's legendary poor rolling I thought we were screwed and mid game it looked like a walk over. Then the Tiger finally ranged in as did my lone 88 (after being mortared for most of the game), plus my three IIIj's somehow weathered the storm of fire from six T-34's for several turns and then the Ruski/US tanks started popping! Last two turns I think we knocked out three shermans, a handful of T70's and a handful of T34's. Suddenly it was looking interesting again (my Jerries were looking forward to returning MG fire on those Infantry on the hill, and hammering those bloody mortars in the gully) when we called it a night cause it was past ten! Of course Jonathan's PBI and Marders were dead, but that's ok they'd staunchly drawn fire away from the objectives...his Tiger was just getting warmed up!

But was their anything I could learn from the experience?

Quite a bit actually. First and foremost is a trap I often fall into, especially when I have two platoons deployed so close to each other. I had two full combat platoons dug in on the edge of town, looking out at the objectives, but not anywhere close enough to secure them. One platoon was being harassed by a recon unit, that was puring enough lead on them to sink a battleship, but doing little damage. The other platoon just got forgotten about. What they should have done was rushed the second objective and dug in, whilst the lone Panzer made it's way to the first objective. I only remembered the second platoon when enemy reinforcements deployed mere millimeters from securing the objective and winning the game. They then had to go into a defensive battle whilst out in the open, not very wise and which saw them being cut to shreds.

The second is that I didn't bother to read up on the mission rules, or really think about where the enemy reinforcements were likely to come in. Had I done that I might not have forgotten about the second platoon. I think I need to be a bit more conscientious in my battle preparations and stop letting the game dictate what I do.

Hopefully I'll be able to make it to next weeks game, and think a little more about what I'm doing, rather that reacting to what my enemy is doing!

Monday, April 07, 2008

Dunkirk | Atonement

Shooting the five minute Dunkirk beach scene for Atonement was arguably the toughest portion of shooting for the entire film. The shooting schedule dictated that the scene must be completed in two days. However the location scouts report indicated the lighting quality at the beach was not good enough until the afternoon of the second day.

This forced director Joe Wright to change his shooting strategy into shooting with one camera. The scene was rehearsed on the first day and on the morning of the second day. The scene required five takes and the third take was used in the film.

On shooting, Steadicam operator Peter Robertson shot the scene by riding on a small tracking vehicle, walking off to a bandstand after rounding a boat, moved to a ramp, stepped onto a rickshaw, finally dismounting and moving past the pier into a bar.

For all it's difficulty, does it make it into anyones best War Movie Scenes list? I can't think of any that have the scope of this scene, even Saving Private Ryan's much lauded beach scene had a much narrower scope than this.
 

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