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I saw a post a few weeks ago with questions about the size of the interior of the Bronson Cave location of the Batcave and thought these photos would be interesting. These are from a short film I shot there in 2001. This first shows me backing my replica into the cave for a shot. It's already pretty well dusted from driving around on the location for other shots so there was a lot of clean-up for every take.



Although the lighting isn't too good, you can see there is actually a fair amount of room on either side of the car as it sits just inside the cave - at least enough room to encourage a little speed for a decent exit.



Here's a frame grab from the film. The crew said I had air under the front tires but I'm not sure. I do know it took a little bit of thinking along the lines of "if I built it once I can always fix it again" before I really put any speed into the exit - which we needed to make the shoot worthwhile. We got it after the third take.



Bronson Cave actually has three openings - the one in the front that is used for the Batcave connects in a "Y" to two openings on the back side of the hill. This was shot from one of those "rear" exits while the crew was locking down our camera mount using lots of foam padding and nylon straps.



Once you're on the location and see that "Hollywood" sign, it's hard not to take a few shots like this, even if you're not wearing the right tights...

Sorry if these are reposts, but trying to get them up at a better size now that I have the hang of posting pics (I think).

I have to say that "we" finished the car in Spring of 2001 after about 6 months of work, off and on. I don't know how many hours we actually logged but wish in retrospect I would have kept track out of curiosity. I had a lot of help over the years. The only other constant pair of hands on it were those of my project manager, Steve. I handled the art direction and chased details (and signed more checks than I care to count) and he made sure the car worked and was done right and kept me motivated when it seemed we'd never get it done. These shots are from the first time I really shot the finished car in 2001:







No chain cutter on this one. I've seen the production stills of the real car with the blade in place but since it never made it in the show, I skipped it. At this point, anything I could skip and still maintain accuracy was a big plus.

I cut a groove at the bottom of the turn indicator lights so I could mount my plastic lens flush with the car from behind, and avoid any visible mounting hardware.



For the tail lights, I did the same thing, mounting the lens material from the inside to keep it as clean as possible.



I got one of the first set of Radir Wheels back then but only tri-ribbed were available, so they had to go back to the factory to have the outer ribs ground off. The company rep said at the time they didn't have workable tooling for single-ribbed yet...

The bats on the wheels are mounted with a pivot and tension spring so they can be leveled when the car is parked.



The windshields that came with the Butts kit were about an inch and a half too short when I compared them to photos from the series. I had the right footprint on the dash and rear deck so Steve traveled back down to the Butt's ranch and Bob allowed him to trace templates off the original Futura center frame to get the right height. Then we built our own bucks to pull new windshields.

Gene Winfield did all the original work of getting the body onto the frame of a '71 Lincoln Towncar and cutting doors, hood, and trunk lid. He also started the window frames, forming a steel channel with double compund curves by hand! He only went as far as the footprint since the new windshield bucks were still in progress.

I have to say, Mr. Barris told me later that the ONLY reason he let my guys get such detailed measurements, tracings, and texture imprints was because Gene Winfield was a good friend of his. It was blind luck that led me to Gene Winfield starting this job - his shop was close to mine!

As such, I better mention now that as much as I would like to "spread the wealth", I promised not to pass along any of the reference we collected. This is one of the reasons I've stayed off the board for so long - I can't make the same resources available to others that were available to me - with regrets...



We built working dash doors out of brass and copied the mounting system and chromed it all, then machined replica handles out of aluminum and black nylon.

We also machined and cast our own compass parts to the right dimensions and added the graphics. It does work, but there is so much metal in the dash that I never get a true North reading.

We also built the Detect-A-Scope from scratch, tearing it apart and starting over when I found new photos that gave me a better view of proportions I missed the first time around.



The door sills and threshold plates were again matched to templates of the orignal. We also made a tracing paper rubbing of the foot plate and had a metal stamping company match the texture. The sills were machined out of steel and chromed and we tracked down latch mechanisms from an old '49 Ford, again to match every detail.

The seat backs were sculpted and laid-up in fiberglass, then copper plated and chromed. We sculpted forms for the seats to match shots of the Futura and had an upholstry company build to match and finish in leather.

I also copied the punch-through hole where the center canopy used to pivot on the Futura. Give me a break on the gold vs. silver handle on the console. It's going to be changed...



We got some great pics of the Futura dash from Ford Archives and machined the steering wheel hub from a steel tube. The rim was machined from stainless steel and even the center plastic "cap" was machined from a block of Plexiglass to match the contours and ridges in the photos. The speedometer and odometer are non-functioning.

The steering wheel rim was turned in plaster then cast in epoxy and the arms and turn signal switches were sculpted and cast in epoxy as well. We even duplicated the crutch tip caps on the cut-off ends of the steering wheel and included them in the mold to make a one-piece casting with a steel armature inside for strength.

The turn signals function from these switches.



When we installed the Bat Turn Lever, we built in a ratchet so it produces it's own sound effect - a pretty close match.



With tail lights lit:




I chose to put the Remote Bat Computer in front of the passenger side and added some toggle switches for fun where I thought I could get away with them. The gauge on the left is the Atomic Batteries level. When the ignition is turned on, the needle moves to "Power". On the far right (out of frame here), a matching gauge for Turbines has a needle that jumps to "Speed" (Robin seemed to be looking in this direction as he read off the levels).

The Bat-A-Graphs are from Adam West, Burt Ward, and of course George Barris. Burt Ward signed in ball point pen but I've since been able to get him to sign a new plaque with a marker that reads better - just haven't switched it out yet (you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him use a Sharpie).



Here's a shot of the Detect-A-Scope in action. I divided the screen into individual pie-shaped slices, each with it's own light and "arrow" graphis for back-lighting. When it's turned on, I can adjust the speed to make it dance around at random as it does in some episodes when it's signal is blocked. The camera happened to catch multiple exposures making it appear as three arrows...



Another dash detail:



All for now...