johnpipe
New Member
Hi, I'm a retired electrical engineer, and took up woodworking as a hobby. In 2008, I acquired the DVD for an old favorite film from my childhood, The Pride And The Passion, with Cary Grant, Sophia Loren, and Frank Sinatra (plus hundreds of Spanish extras) dragging a giant prop cannon across Spain. I happened to check some comments on IMDB at the time, and got inspired to try building a model.
It took 3 years to reach it's completed form, and I had to evolve the theme somewhat (to the period after story's end, when the gun was delivered to the British) to make use of available animals and figures I could re-build and adapt. As there are no plans available, quite a few hours were spent studying the film, slow-motion, single-frame, and all on a television set, as I did not have a DVD capable computer then. Lots of sketching, and interesting to discover details of film-making and editing in the era before Computer Assisted Cinematography and CAD.
I felt it would be apropos to share this a little pro-actively (I do have an old web-page that documents some of the build history at Cannon Passion ) :
Here's a view from aft:
And the drivers, representing the Royal Artillery Drivers Corps of the Napoleonic era of the film:
I also tried my hand at wagon-building, in which a tricked-out canon-ball wagon of the film became what said wagon would have likely looked like if it were the genuine article:
These beginnings led to a series of models, that were largely based on or inspired by motion-picture props or sets, and offshoots of those models as well. A move from a house to an apartment in senior housing guaranteed that much of my woodcraft would focus on the model arena from now on.
Hope you like it,
Regards, John
It took 3 years to reach it's completed form, and I had to evolve the theme somewhat (to the period after story's end, when the gun was delivered to the British) to make use of available animals and figures I could re-build and adapt. As there are no plans available, quite a few hours were spent studying the film, slow-motion, single-frame, and all on a television set, as I did not have a DVD capable computer then. Lots of sketching, and interesting to discover details of film-making and editing in the era before Computer Assisted Cinematography and CAD.
I felt it would be apropos to share this a little pro-actively (I do have an old web-page that documents some of the build history at Cannon Passion ) :
Here's a view from aft:
And the drivers, representing the Royal Artillery Drivers Corps of the Napoleonic era of the film:
I also tried my hand at wagon-building, in which a tricked-out canon-ball wagon of the film became what said wagon would have likely looked like if it were the genuine article:
These beginnings led to a series of models, that were largely based on or inspired by motion-picture props or sets, and offshoots of those models as well. A move from a house to an apartment in senior housing guaranteed that much of my woodcraft would focus on the model arena from now on.
Hope you like it,
Regards, John
Learned quite a lot from your buildup article. Someday I hope to get my hands on a real lathe machine and build myself one of these things.
