We all know that Adam Savage is probably the coolest and smartest fellow alive, right? Not only is he one of the hosts of the hugely popular and informational MythBusters program over there on the Discovery Channel, he’s a massive fan of movies. Like any good geek, when he loves something, he likes to express that love.
You may remember some years back that Adam made (for fun and just-becausery mind you) an exact replica of Deckard’s gun from Blade Runner, as well as any number of other movie props. He puts these things up on the truly awesome website Tested so you can see exactly how these things are done, as they happen.
His latest build plays into his love and obsession with Stanley Kubrick (to which I can completely relate) and one particular Kubrick film he didn’t want to…OVERLOOK…ha ha ha. I’m speaking, of course, about the maestro’s 1980 horror classic The Shining. As you can hear in the video below, Adam became obsessed with the terrifying and seemingly unsolvable maze in the film after visiting the awesome Kubrick exhibit that was at LACMA in 2012-2013. Savage has since traveled around and discovered that the scale model they had was not even close to correct. That’s all Adam needed to begin to figure out exactly what Jack Torrance was looking at.
Just like the one in the film, Adam built his maze at O Scale, which means 1/48th-1/50th size, and from there it was simply a matter of getting all of the various twists and turns correct.
That attention to detail is worthy of the notorious perfectionist Kubrick himself. For an even more in-depth look at what he did, see the follow-up video below, and enjoy the gallery. (A full gallery is available on the Tested site.)
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IMAGES: Tested.com
Sorry, but I have to say this..and I know it’s not nerdiest.com’s problem but…ahem…BRING MYTHBUSTERS BACK TO NETFLIX!!! …that is all.
Nice job on the maze Adam.
When I was a kid my parents took me to see this guy who had built an entire Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in his garage on a table. Every figure was hand carved from the elephants to the ringmaster to the clowns and the crowds, all about 1:100 scale so the elephants were about 3″ tall, and it was all motorized and moved and lit up and had sound effects. About ten feet long, the entire circus. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I can appreciate Adam Savage’s dedication; such a thing can be considered a work of art. But, let it not be forgotten that in the novel, the maze plays hardly any role at all compared with the topiary animals, and that Jack eventually dies in the basement when the boiler explodes and destroys the hotel for good. I would assume Kubrick would have wanted it that way, but the owners of the real hotel were probably a little reluctant to see their business destroyed for a horror film. Shame, because the end of the movie just plain sucks. Scatman Cruthers was not supposed to die. That was BS.
i remember i saw a model of the enterprise-d and thought i love the show (NOT A TREKKIE) and said to myself im going to build that. so after purchase i looked and referenced photos and saw some of the hull plates were higher than some so long story short. i had drilled the windows and raised the hull plates with tape. then had an financial crash, after that i lost my enthusiasm. the point im trying to make is make your models as fast as you can before reality comes and steps on your sand castle