It’s the grand finale of Wes Anderson’s new masterpiece: Benedict Cumberbatch stands on a six-metre-wide and four-metre-high model of a dam and detonates a hand grenade. The model explodes. Floods of water pour over the screen. Simon Weisse remembers how difficult it was to build this model: “At first we had used a wooden panel as a dam wall, but it was simply washed away by the water. So we had to look for materials that would break particularly well.”
Simon Weisse has built props and models for blockbusters and arthouse productions for almost 40 years, including V for Vendetta, The Hunger Games and the latest Matrix film. Most recently, his work could be seen in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, and the new Wes Anderson film The Phoenician Scheme.
Simon Weisse has been working with Anderson for more than ten years. Since then, every Wes Anderson film has borne the signature of the Berlin miniature maker. Their successful collaboration began with The Grand Budapest Hotel, which was released in 2014.
It’s not about making a model look good. It’s about making it look good through the camera.
But how did an American director like Wes Anderson come to work with a miniature model maker from Berlin? “Anderson asked Studio Babelsberg, where he was filming, if there was anyone else in Germany who did traditional miniature construction for visual effects. And he came across me via Studio Babelsberg,” says Weisse.
Since then, the miniature maker, who originally studied art in Montpellier, has worked on every Wes Anderson production. He built dystopian industrial backdrops for Isle of Dogs, an aeroplane and streets for The French Dispatch, and the meteorite crater, UFO and freight train for Asteroid City. However, his best-known model is probably still the iconic pink Grand Budapest Hotel, which measures more than four by two metres.
Simon Weisse is not allowed to keep the models—after filming is completed, his works all become the property of the production company and are either archived or destroyed. However, the 63-year-old has saved a few little things in his backyard workshop in Neukölln.
For instance, there’s a fruit crate with yellow and black hand grenades from The Phoenician Scheme on the table, alongside a 3D-printed apple-sized dog skeleton for the animated film Isle of Dogs. A series of pastel-coloured facades from The Grand Budapest Hotel hangs on the wall. Otherwise, the 350 square metres of floor space are mostly empty apart from the workbenches, machines and shelves in Simon Weisse’s workshop.
Weisse has just returned from filming in London. He’s not allowed to say what kind of film it is—in the film industry, maintaining the utmost secrecy is the norm. Simon Weisse and his colleagues have been working on the models and props for this megaproject over the course of a year.
What does the work of a miniature builder look like? “The designs for the models usually come from the art department and then we implement them,” explains Simon Weisse. He and his team don’t have much creative freedom when it comes to implementation, but “if we make a suggestion, it’s always welcomed and accepted”.
The scale which miniature builders like Simon Weisse use most frequently is 1:18, the car collector’s standard. That’s why you can buy so much in this size, especially cars of course. Anyone thinking of model train accessories is also wrong: “Railway models are on a scale of 1:87, which is far too small for us,” says Weisse. “The smaller you build, the more difficult it is to work out the details.”
You can also get a lot of parts in 1:35 scale, explains Weisse, as this is the size of military models. But even this scale is nearly too small for Weisse’s work: “Models that are too small don’t work for filming. The cameraman has a problem with the depth of field. Then it’s sharp at the front and blurred at the back.” Simon Weisse builds for the camera. “It’s not about making a model look good. It’s about making it look good through the camera.”
For Anderson’s previous film Asteroid City, however, Simon Weisse had to bring out the big guns because: “Everything’s bigger in America,” he says and laughs. The freight train that rattles through the US desert right at the beginning of the film is built on a scale of 1:8. A model train from the USA served as the body, a kind of small garden train for train enthusiasts that could even be remote-controlled. These dimensions were quite a challenge for Weisse: “The thing was 50 metres long and super heavy because it was made of steel.”
“Hey Simon, can’t you do that?”
The actual construction of the miniatures is an important part of his work, says Weisse. “But we then spend almost as much time on the paint and patina, because that’s what really brings the models to life.” In The Phoenician Scheme, however, Simon Weisse hardly made any miniatures, instead mainly focusing on props.
Because he and his team are now so familiar with Anderson’s style, their props are also more to Anderson’s taste than those of other prop makers. For example, the order to build the hand grenades came spontaneously: “They had something made by a prop maker in New York, but Wes didn’t like it. And then at the last minute he asked: Hey Simon, can’t you do that?”
And because Wes Anderson liked Simon Weisse’s 3D-printed hand grenades so much, he had to produce 100 of them very quickly. The black and yellow striped hand grenades are a kind of running gag in The Phoenician Scheme and appear in almost every scene. Just like the cigar that lead actor Benicio del Toro smokes non-stop as heavyweight entrepreneur Zsa Zsa Korda. “It’s made of plastic,” says Simon Weisse. “They didn’t have to burn a real cigar all the time.”
Weisse works closely with Wes Anderson. However, the director is rarely present on set when the miniatures are being filmed. And what is it like working with the cult director? “Wes Anderson has very precise ideas compared to other directors. He is not difficult, but demanding.”
Weisse doesn’t usually see Anderson’s requests for changes as criticism, but as a suggestion: “Wes always says: Oh, you did a wonderful job, BUT…” You can tell that he really appreciates the work of people like Simon Weisse, the cameramen and the costume designers.
Wes Anderson, like so many directors today, is a fan of analogue. Just like Luca Guadagnino or Christopher Nolan, he still shoots on film. Back in the late 80s, when Simon Weisse started building miniatures and props, this art seemed to be dying out. Having slipped into the film industry by chance—his father was a still photographer and worked for Rainer Werner Fassbinder—Weisse ended up in the special effects department, which at the time still housed the miniature construction department, via the props department.
“I built all sorts of things there, ships or walls that exploded,” says Weisse. The first film he built miniatures for was Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in 1988. Simon Weisse slipped more and more into his miniature niche through trial and error and learning by doing.
As with so many film professions, there is no training for his job. Sometimes young people from film school come to him, says Weisse, but he often has to explain to them that his work is completely analogue and hands-on. “They’ve only learnt theory and think they can do it all on the computer. But you really have to get dirty here.” The team of around 15 freelancers that Weisse gathers in his workshop for specific projects includes many trained carpenters, joiners and metalworkers.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
In Germany, Simon Weisse and his team, which for several years included his daughter Lucy Weisse, are some of the few remaining miniature builders. There aren’t many in Europe or around the world who have also mastered this craft.
Before Simon Weisse first worked with Wes Anderson on The Grand Budapest Hotel, he was worried about the future: “I was involved in one of the last important films where spaceships were built as miniatures, Event Horizon in 1997. After that, miniature construction went downhill.” Computer technology and animation have been booming since the 1990s, and today films without CGI are the exception.
At the turn of the millennium, Weisse shifted his focus towards prop making. He only returned to his miniature building beginnings when he was commissioned by Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel. “That made us famous. I mean, people know this hotel even though they haven’t seen the movie. Working with Wes Anderson has already brought a lot,” says Weisse. The Grand Budapest Hotel is also his favourite model.
Fears about the future are long gone for the 63-year-old. He is in such high demand that one project follows the next. Simon Weisse doesn’t have time to think about retirement; the next project is due in two months’ time. Until then, the miniature builder from Berlin can recover from the strenuous construction and filming work of recent years—and watch his work in the movies, perhaps.
Simon Weisse has worked on these movie sets, among others:
Queer by Luca Guadagnino
Asteroid City by Wes Anderson
The Matrix Resurrections by Lana Wachowski
The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 by Francis Lawrence
Isle of Dogs by Wes Anderson
Bridge of Spies by Steven Spielberg
The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson
Cloud Atlas by Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
V for Vendetta by James McTeigue
The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter by George T. Miller
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Terry Gilliam
This article has been translated from German.
