Benthic Petroleum
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The seventh Art has always played a big part in my life, since I can remember. Filmmaking is the process in which such Art develops and exists, combines human creativity and technology seamlessly to tell a story.
Almost all the aspects of filmmaking are expression of great artistry and knowledge, Production Design is certainly one of them. It establishes the look of the world in which stories are told, defines the space and everything that inhabits it.
I decided to base part of my Art of building small in re-creating some of the iconic places of
films that are dear to me.
This is not an attempt to just duplicate a film scene/place but to create a unique piece of artwork that can be looked at it as you would do for a painting or sculpture.
In Terminator 2 (1991) the scene after the escape form the Pescadero State Mental Hospital take place at a run-down gas station, where John, Sarah and the Terminator stop for the night and swap vehicle the in morning. This gas station is fairly unique for one specific reason, it is a Benthic Petroleum gas station, logo of this oil company can be easily seen in each gas pump. Benthic Petroleum is the fictional oil company first appeared and central to the storyline in “The Abyss” (1989) James Cameron’s previous film.
In “ The Abyss “ the Benthic Petroleum company owns both the Benthic Explorer vessel and the underwater oilrig Deepcore. I believe this film crossover reference, also called Easter Egg, should be attributed to Terminator 2 production designer Joseph C. Nemec III. To reinforce this theory a similar reference appears in Twister (1996), the same logo — accompanied by the actual words “Benthic Petroleum” — can be seen on the side of a tanker truck in one very brief shot, Joseph C. Nemec III was also the production Designer of this film.
On the left a rare still image of one of the miniature models created for “the Abyss” of the Benthic Explorer. The BP logo is in full display and same logo will appear in multiple scenes during the film. Researching the logo, we can establish that there are three main variations, depending where it is displayed. Further below I recreated each one of them.
Version 1: Logo no triangle background with top half light blue and bottom half darker blue, this logo appears in the Benthic Explorer vessel and in the Gas pump in T2.
Version 2: Logo with triangle background with colours inverted from version 1 and “Benthic Petroleum” name , this logo appears in the Benthic Explorer crews uniform and it is displayed on the TV screen behind news anchor.
Version 3: Same as version 2 but with addition of contour red line, this version is only used for Benthic Explorer crew’s cup.
Concept
Concept of this project was to re-create the gas pumps area of the petrol station with the police car model as seen in the film. With every project I first decide what is the time frame in relation to the film timeline. Artwork can be and exact replica in both time and space of a specific film scene or could be partially or loosely inspired to it. After some research and brainstorming I decided to re-create accurately the space but with slightly different time frame. In T2 the police car passes underneath the petrol station at night and immediately goes inside the garage where it will be left by John, Sarah and the Terminator. In my version, time has passed by, grass has grown and further damages are evident to the overall structure. Several years since that night for sure. In the middle of the station, even if not entirely in a logical series of events, sits the damaged 1983 Ford LTD Crown Victoria police car from the Pescadero Mental Hospital.
Scale
Once the concept was clear, next I needed to define the scale. During my research, I came across a Greenlight Collectibles 1/64 scale model of the police car used in the film. Bought one and consequently, my project had to be of the same scale. Defining the structure in scale is key to avoid issues down the road. I created a 3D model mock-up of the structure and started figuring out how to build individual elements and put them together.
Finished Artwork
Apart from the police car , everything has been built from scratch using a multitude of materials and techniques like plasticard, plywood, plaster and static grass. 1/64 is a fairly small scale and in my opinion not the one that I would usually adopt. To achieve a good level of realism and detail, larger scale is definitely more suitable. Nevertheless, I believe that I managed to achieve a very good result and I pretty satisfied with it.
This artwork has been finalised by framing the base with solid chestnut wood. Further below a studio photo gallery of the finished Artwork. Some of the photos wants to duplicate the blueish dark tone of the film scene in T2. Here on the left by clicking on the image you will be re-directed to a short video made to promote this project on my YouTube channel.