"THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG IN MINIATURE" began as a faint glimmer of an idea five years ago, when I discovered a park of 15mm American Civil War figures at a local hobby shop. I took them home and painted them in a great sloppy haste, and discovered that when I had finished, my ragged rebels looked so real that I thought I saw them stand up and charge. They looked amazing, at least to my eyes.
As every wargamer knows, once you have twenty painted figures, you want a hundred. Once you have a hundred you feel that you really need another hundred... I continued along this megalomaniacal path until I could envision a vast warehouse studio filled with Civil War armies locked in miniature combat. As a filmmaker, I realized there just might be a way to combine these two difficult pursuits into one impossibly challenging project.
Having worked on feature, commercial, industrial and training films and videotapes for eight years, I was at that crucial career point where I simply could not make anothe rfilm on the inner workings of the telephone. Thus, "THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG IN MINIATURE" idea was born.
My wife, Kim DeCoste, has extensive experience in production work as well, so she logically became the Executive Producer. We began with a schedule - somehow we thought we could finish this film within eight months. Within eight months we found that this was not true. No amount of experience on conventional films had prepared us for producing this one. We are very proud that this film is unique - that nothing of the kind has been done before, but this uniqueness was also a handicap. There were no production rules and regulations to follow. We would have to make them up as we went along.
Could a film shot entirely in miniature, in diorama vignettes, really hold an audience for nearly an hour? It is nice when a motion picture has a little motion in it. Since it is technically impossible to animate 12,000 little guys, we would have to invent a way to give a strong feeling of movement; when to use 15mm, 20mm, 25mm and 54mm figures and why; we would have to reinvent the basic use of long shot, mediurn shot and close up for this film. We would have to work around photography problems, (greatly multiplied in cinematography, where pictures move at 24 individual photographs per second), and we would have to hope that all our problems would iron themselves out for the final film. We needed a certain amount of faith in this premise. A director once said that a great film is one with five great scenes and no bad ones. We couldn't slip up for a second - the illusion had to last the entire length of the film.
Why Gettysburg?
I have always found that bettle the most engrossing of all historical or military subjects. The Union Army of the Potomac finallylanding on its feet at the eleventh hour; the pathos of Southern defeat, Little Round Top, The Peach Orchard, Pickett's Charge - what more could a filmmaker ask for?
I enlisted the knowledge and help of the historians at Gettysburg National Military Park - Chief Historian Kathleen Georg Harrison and Bob Prosperi. Now, it would be unfairto these good people not to say that they probably thought I was a little crazy when I outlined my plan for creatingover a hundred accurate Gettysburg sets, but they treated me as family as I began two years of phoning almost every other day with questions like, "How wide was the Emmitsburg Road?", "When do Peach trees beat fruit?", and, of course, the age-old mystery, "Why was Jenny Wade baking bread in the midst of a major conflict?" My historian friends were very good about all this, and put up with these questions and. many thousand more.
I wrote a script. Little did I know that my script would go through 14 revisions before it was serviceable. But I was pleased with the first draft and made a storyboard from the script. A story board is a detailed series of drawings of every shot in a film. For example, from a story board drawing of Lee's Headquarters I note that I will need to make a tent, Lee's ANV HQ flag, a flagpole, horses, horseholders, staff aides, a map, a table, generals and other notables, fences, buildings, a road, trees and ivy - in miniature.
So we took the first step on the road to shooting a film - acquiring props' Since this fillm was nothing but props, that process would take a year. From our storyboard we made up the list of figures, buildings, sets and materials we would need. Dan Beattie of The Standard Bearer, a hobby shop specializing in wargames and miniatures in Charlottesville, Va., became an enthusiastic advisor at this point. Well-versed in the history of the battle, Dan offered invaluable guidance through the jungle of unpainted metal figures.
I personally painted 1,000 figures and found that I could paint no more (at least for a while). Some local art students painted another 1,000, but that, too, was their limit. Then I found out about professional painters Dennis Smail of RSM, Ltd., Terry Sirkof Sharpsburg, and Bill Goranson of Clearwater, Florida. They did an enormous number of figures that always arrived on time, and were beautifully painted.
Looking over the catalogues of manufacturers of American Civil War figures we found we would need about 250 figures that didn't exist anywhere. Dennis Small used his superb skills as a converter and made all the figures in this film that you cannot find elsewhere: soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, the drummer boy of Picket's Charge, a weary Confederate consoling another, soldiers carrying their wounded Am the field Dennis showed great imagination in creating these figures, and gave them a remarkable lifelike look.
I began drawing upscale blueprints of the historical buildings I of Gettysburg -Bryan's Farm, the Trostle Farm, the Cemetery Gate house, to name a few. Kathleen Harrison found a rarely-seen Brad photo of the complete McPherson Farm just after the battle. From 1 1863 photos of the numerous structures on the battlefield, we began to piece together what we needed. I found Mike Holder, a gifted modeler, willing to make these buildings down to the individual windows. My father, Jim Leighton, started work on the difficult Cemetery Gate house. After 60 hours of painstaking work he came up with a miniature masterpiece.
Then came the film tests. We started out with video. This was completely unsatisfactory. In all forms of photography, including film, depth of field is the distance through which objects will appear sharp in front of and behind the point at which the camera is focused. Depth of field is complicated by exposure (f-stop setting) and the focal length of the lens and is no easy matter with the simplest of subjects. In video, I found that in close-up, if I focused on the eyes of a figure the nost would be out of focus. In long battlefield shots where the miniature scale might be over a mile of terrain, either the foreground or the background was out of focus. In along shot this is not acceptable. I knew that depth of field with film equipment would be better, but hot a lot. Things weren't looking too good. I had to somehow pump in more light to make our f-stop, higher, thereby increasing the depth of field to an acceptable margin. But there would be no margin for focus error.
I found a dungeon-like warehouse basement for rent with ample room to build three or more sets at a time. We rented lighting equipment. The first set I built was McPherson's Ridge and that took four weeks. We had enough electrical circuits to raise the lighting to 14,000 watts of light. If you take a look at the bulb in your reading lamp you will see that it takes about 75 watts to run it. That gives you an idea of how much light was needed. We used what was called a "fast film" - one that is more sensitive to Iight and when our tests came back, we still had depth of field problems. We now had to find a way of building the sets in perspective so that everything would be in focus in the longshots, and we did. You will see in any film that in closeups the background is out of focus. This is pleasing to look at and we employed this trick with miniatures. The quality of video tends to rapidly deteriorate with every generation beyond the original. In the end you have a kind of video pea soup, even with state of the art video equipment, afte you edit video many generations. Colors evaporate, reds bleed, whites explode, and certain shades of green become a strange neon color when the original medium is videotape (sorry, video buffs). But with film, the colors are magnificent, very much like a painting and nex tgenerations hold up very well indeed. To top it all off, when you shoot the original on film and then transfer to video for final editing and "release prints" you maintain all the quality of film and none of the faults of video. At last, a simple solution to a major problem.
When I built the first set - McPherson's Ridge - I went through every type of modeler's material in the hobby, then I discovered SCULPTAMOLD! Now the company that invented this stuff should win an award for technological advancement because Sculptamold can do anything. You can make hills with it and valleys and creeks and rivers and railroad cuts - anything. You can shape it, mush it, sand it, cut it, chisel it, make it as smooth as a baby's fanny or as rough as the terrain of Little Round Top. I didn't need to make a base shell beneath it - just added water and poured it on. And when it was done, clean up was easy.
Everything was a process of elimination - trying one material, then another, and cleaning 6p the area when an experiment didn't work. For ponds and water, the best material is polyester resin; mix the resin with a catalyst (too much and the whole thing will buckle up and ruin everything underneath and around it) and leave for a day because of the fumes - I needed a day off anyway. When dry the resin had a rich, deep water appearance that cannot be beat.
Pickett's Charge on Cemetery Ridge
Let me step you through the building of the set for Pickett's Charge on Cemetery Ridge. We obtained large copies of the maps made by Major General G. 1. Warren shortly after the war. These are 225 square feet of maps of the Gettysburg area; twenty-five 3' by 3' panels. These maps were accurate down to the many varieties of fences and stone walls that clotted the landscape, and were the major source for topographical information. Imprinted on the maps here and there were notes that read: "This fence was not here during time of battle." This, along with errors in the maps we were aware of, made us confident that we were as close to 1863 Gettysburg as we could get. Cemetery Gatehouse - General Meade arrives before dawn.
We started with a table, 18'X7' sketching on the boards the approximate terrain features and hills, noting where the trees and buildings would go and think ahead about troop placement. Here I made extensive use of Kathleen Harrison's Nothing But Glory. Pickett's Division at Gettysburg. This book is superb reading, combining eyewitness accounts and reports with extensive knowledge of every terrain feature of the field.
At this point, with the table mapped out, we began what we came to know as a "Sculptamold Party" This might take half a day - mixing two gallon buckets of Sculptamold and gleefully pouring it onto the table. At first this can be accomplished with great abandon. Mix it up and slop it out. Then, as the Sculptamold begins to thicken and harden, care must be taken to detail or smooth the mixture to the desired features. Extra Sculptamold is applied to the surface for the curves of the hills, Some areas are scruffed up for rough' terrain. Roads are built up; many roadbeds were slightly sunken and all this and more can be accomplished with the mixture.
It is then left to dry overnight. The next morning itwill be firm, but still moist. This was the time to set up the camera at various angles and see if any changes were needed. What might appear right to your eye can appear wrong to the camera's eye. A hill will seem too large or too small; the perspective might be off, a matter of judgment -a judgment developed by trial and error.
Price the basic terrain layout was acceptable from all camera angles, it was time for the base coat of brown earth color. This is a basic latex house paint mixed half and half with water. Even though the base was still slightly wet, I painted over it liberally with the paint and let it dry.
Next came the ground foam and this is fun. It's very much like detailed figure painting except with Woodland Scenics material. The technique is to use all shades of brown and green in the same way you would when painting a figure-with highlights and shading you can add richness and depth. First, a basic earth layer is applied. This material should be very fine. Add a darker soil of earth color for the shaded of deeper areas on the board. Then add highlights with a light brown and/or yellow color. Already your set looks great. the rest is just icing.
At this time, a fine green, (in various shades) is added to the bottom brown layer. Caution is important here because in some are is you will want the green to take over, in others you will want to earth to show through; in still others you will want the rich brown tones to dominate. Van Gogh would have loved doing this. The main idea is to get a richness of texture. Now I added either (or both) medium green and dark green coarse turf. This adds texture and three-dimensionality to the set, representing low, scruffy bushes and overgrown grasses.
It is best not to mix in too many shades of this coarse material, as an unattractive speckled look occurs when you go overboard with this technique. I spent a lot of time observing fields from a distance to see how nature prefers to mix colors.
Once the basic terrain colors and textures are finished, it's time for fences and trees. I bought about three hundred miniature trees from an architectural modeling company. These trees were made from natural material such as yarrow. They were finished With Woodland Scenics materials (coarse turf) and had the dense, bright look of summer trees. I added trunks to them with a hardening water putty material. I then scored the putty after it dried to resemble bark and painted the entire trunk with shades of brown and gray. These were the basic trees used for sets with 20mm figures. For 15mm figures I bought plastic Aquarium plants from a pet store. These plants had the basic shape of trees - trunks, branches, even leaves. These were splay painted a dark green and then dipped into a fine foam material mixture. A light green foam was added sparingly for highlights of sunlight. Countless hundreds of these were used and can be seen to their best effect in the Wheatfield sequence in the film. These trees were used for the denser forests in the distance. For the 25mm sets I generally used store-, bought model railroad trees and made some alterations and did some extra painting.
Ah, the peach trees, you ask - well, there were over four hundred of them. Records tel I us that the trees in the orchard on the south side of the Wheatfield Road were mature peach trees. Much larger than this orchard (which still stands) was the orchard on the north side of the road, behind the Wentz Farm - young trees, much smaller than the others. After much searching, and a few homemade attempts, I found a company that makes armatures of every tree type for architectural models. These armatures come to you in a flat, octopus form. They are made of a light metal and are then bent to the shape of the tree, painted, with foam added as a last step. One word about glue here: white glues tend to dry an unwanted mily white color. It's best to use an acrylic matte medium. This is available in any artists' supply shop, and can be diluted with water. A tree armature can be dipped into this mixture, then dipped in the green foam matt-dal. When the matte medium dries, it will not leave any telltale signs. White glues are more appropriate for gluing the trees to the set.
I purchased many hundred feet of miniature fences, both 15mm and 20mm from Stone Mountain Miniatures. These fences were painted with a dark brown base color. A lighter, almost tan-yellow shade of brown was added then a final spray wash of diluted black to bring out the grain and texture of wood.
Then came the all-important and legendary stone wall of Cemetery Ridge. This legendary wall is made of KITTY LITTER! Any kind will do you just have to painstakingly remove the blue and green *pieces and keep the gray. A black spray wash will shade the pieces nicely.-Then you build a stone wall, just like the farmers did, one piece at a time. Yes, this takes a lot of time. After the first layer goes down, a drop of super glue is added to that first layer, and the second laye ris built from there. About six layers will do it. This will take all day, so be patient and find a good radio station.
It is more Iikely that the very famous "Clump of Trees" upon which the Confederate attack was guided was not really much of clump at all in summer of 1863. Some historians feel that the real "Clump" might well have been Zieglar's Grove, behind Bryan's Farm, many yards to the north. They argue that the currently recognized clump of trees couldn't have been much more than ten feet high! That changes things, doesn't it? Nonetheless, we put in a modest clump of trees by the "Angle" of the stone wall.
Next I put in Bryan's Farm, modelled by Mike Holder a small house and barn Then the small orchard next to the farm, and Zieglar's Grove. Various rocks were added where map and terrain study indicated. The landscaping was now mostly complete.
Troop Placement
Now comes the truly most agonizing process of all - troop placement. There are just not many good military maps when you want to be precise about troop placement. Anyone who has been to Gettysburg or studied the Union regimental markers knows that of these markers very few can be exactly correct On a map, an extra Vs of an inch of troops can mean several hundred men that might or might not have been there. When you're counting out exact numbers of troops on a 1:1 basis this is discouraging and futile. So, again, we study many different versions of troop placement and trust our visual judgment. The first position of the embattled Union lines at the Angle are established; the 71 st and 69th Pennsylvania, Cushing and Cowan's battery, as well as the New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut regiments and Arnold's battery along the wall by Bryan's Farm. The 72nd Pa., 42nd NY, and 19th Mass. wait in the wings. This takes some time and consideration. Some are set out at regimental strengths, some are not (for visual reasons). Chances are all of these figures will be moved many times on any given set, so a plan is necessary - detailed maps are drawn to show (as historically as possible) who went where during the fray. Next: Armistead's, Kemper's, Garnett's and Pettigrews immortal Confederate troops.
And here is material for a good debate: although we generally think of "150 brave Confederates" smashing through the lines at the Angle, and the fight lasting only a few minutes, it is more interesting to realize that many more Confederates, perhaps as many as 800, actually made it to the wall and hung on for at least twenty minutes before Armistead carried the fateful 150 into the Union lines. The Union lines were bending back and away towards the small clump of trees before the Confederates arrived and it is questionable whether or not poor Cushing ever made it to the stone wall with his gun. Accounts vary -- some state that Cushing was killed as he gave the order to move the gun, not giving him much leeway to have the gun moved and fire it himself. Right or wrong, these are among the many hundreds of details that must be researched, debated and decided upon in any one scene before a definite visual representation can be made. I have learned one thing about historical fact - it is frequently all debatable.
I am saddened to tell you that as each set was built and shot on film, according to the story board, we had to remove figures, trees and buildings, and scrape the entire set into plastic bags and out the door. I will admit that I never got used to this. It pained me to see even the most troublesome, irritating sets reduced to rubble.
But back to the final moment of Pickett's miniature Charge, For perspective's sake, the foreground was 20mm figures -r- all of Pickett's men and the Union soldiers around the Angle were 20mm. In the background, Pettigrew's men and all the Federals around Bryan's Farm were 15mm. I could take long shots of the charge from one end of the table, then go in for close-ups and medium shots from any vantage point around the table and the perspective point of view still held.
Next, many thousand figures would be moved three times for different stages of the fight during shooting, I then set up small tables for close-ups and medium shots of individual figures.
The process of lighting these sets, large and small, was very time consuming, often taking a full day, but sometimes only a few hours. Large 2,000 watt lights would have to be moved with each new camera angle. The general rules of lighting technique also apply to miniatures, but frequently special effects lights were needed to give the right "look" we were after in each shot.
ThI is will give you a basic idea of the modelling techniques used in this film. There are countless more details in the way we went about "making it all look real". We combined some standard diorama techniques with some standard filmmaking ideas and improvised techniques as we went along.
Over ninety individual sets were mad for the film, and each time this process was followed. We wanted the film to be a complex series of hundreds of individual dioramas with narration. An average film of approximately fifty minutes will contain 150 different shots. "Gettysburg in Miniature" has 608. The action is fast-paced, yet any shot can be freezeframed and enjoyed for the detail of miniature work. I wanted any single freeze-frame to look like a lush, color painting of the era.
Through the long hours of production work and many frustrating problems, I had confidence that there was an audience for this film - and the reviews of "The Battle of Gettysburg in Miniature" gave me the greatest thrill of all.
The reception of our film and the interest in how it was accomplished has been very gratifying. On to Waterloo!
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