MikeKardec
One Too Many
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I believe Lothar Buchheim, the author of the original "Das Boot" book was the model for the red haired kid in the film. Buchheim was a war correspondent and later (amongst writing a bunch of other books) compiled a great number of photos from the submarine service into large coffee table books. Between the novel, the photos and the two Kreigsmarine consultants they hired they had a lot of historical firepower on that film.
It was partly funded by German TV and thus probably had a good deal of public funding. They seem to have taken their time getting the script right and unlike your typical US production were fairly confident that they were going to get the go ahead ... so the sort of "last minute" attitude you see in American movies, where consultants are not hired until shooting starts (and thus can help in only limited amounts), did not harm them. Oddly it was the BBC that finally aired the "long" TV version.
The sets, which I got a tour of as a young film maker some 30 years ago, were remarkable. They were built slowly and carefully and pretty much by one man, a Herr Northoff and his assistant. Strangely, they are not credited (unless my memory has utterly failed me) but given the slow preparation for production they may have been on to other films by the time shooting started. I went to lunch with them and heard many stories about how the set had been mounted on gimbals which could simulate the motions of the sub in the water.
Unlike most Hollywood sets which look good but are usually made of flimsy materials, the Das Boot 'Boot' was made of steel, just like the originals. It came apart into sections which could be mounted on the gimbal by means of a crane. Wild walls (which could be unbolted in order to move cameras in and such) were built in but were never used. After several better known directors threw up their hands over having to shoot five hours of screen time inside a 15' wide tube (wild walls or not) Peterson got the job and embraced the claustrophobia problem.
He bolted the walls shut, shot on 16mm, mostly hand held using primitive gyro mounts (at one time in production the pitching of the gimbal mounted set and the erratic forces of the gyros seems to have harmed nearly every camera operator available to them). They lit the sets with the natural light from the fixtures in the sub and little more than two multi strand fiber optic sources, cutting edge technology at the time, winding the optical fiber through the ceiling plumbing to highlight only what was needed most. DB was the most extensive and most expensive film made in West German history.
The exterior of the sub built for Das Boot was also used as the sub in Raiders of the Lost Ark ... in fact, if that possibly faulty memory is correct, Das Boot built it but Raiders shot on it first.
I also got a chance to see the original, much more sequential (maybe for German TV?), unreleased cut. An amazing film and seeing the sets and meeting some of the people was a very inspiring experience for a young man still recovering from film school
It was partly funded by German TV and thus probably had a good deal of public funding. They seem to have taken their time getting the script right and unlike your typical US production were fairly confident that they were going to get the go ahead ... so the sort of "last minute" attitude you see in American movies, where consultants are not hired until shooting starts (and thus can help in only limited amounts), did not harm them. Oddly it was the BBC that finally aired the "long" TV version.
The sets, which I got a tour of as a young film maker some 30 years ago, were remarkable. They were built slowly and carefully and pretty much by one man, a Herr Northoff and his assistant. Strangely, they are not credited (unless my memory has utterly failed me) but given the slow preparation for production they may have been on to other films by the time shooting started. I went to lunch with them and heard many stories about how the set had been mounted on gimbals which could simulate the motions of the sub in the water.
Unlike most Hollywood sets which look good but are usually made of flimsy materials, the Das Boot 'Boot' was made of steel, just like the originals. It came apart into sections which could be mounted on the gimbal by means of a crane. Wild walls (which could be unbolted in order to move cameras in and such) were built in but were never used. After several better known directors threw up their hands over having to shoot five hours of screen time inside a 15' wide tube (wild walls or not) Peterson got the job and embraced the claustrophobia problem.
He bolted the walls shut, shot on 16mm, mostly hand held using primitive gyro mounts (at one time in production the pitching of the gimbal mounted set and the erratic forces of the gyros seems to have harmed nearly every camera operator available to them). They lit the sets with the natural light from the fixtures in the sub and little more than two multi strand fiber optic sources, cutting edge technology at the time, winding the optical fiber through the ceiling plumbing to highlight only what was needed most. DB was the most extensive and most expensive film made in West German history.
The exterior of the sub built for Das Boot was also used as the sub in Raiders of the Lost Ark ... in fact, if that possibly faulty memory is correct, Das Boot built it but Raiders shot on it first.
I also got a chance to see the original, much more sequential (maybe for German TV?), unreleased cut. An amazing film and seeing the sets and meeting some of the people was a very inspiring experience for a young man still recovering from film school
