A good diorama pulls an emotion from the viewer.

That is how Bruce MacRae thinks about the art form. Not just as a modeler, not just as a painter, and not just as a craftsman with a resume that includes Titanic, Air Force One, The Hunt for Red October, The Fifth Element, and about 65 feature films. For Bruce, the heart of a diorama is the story it tells.

“The question is, what emotion do you want to pull?” he said. “I prefer ones that are funny. If I can make somebody laugh, that’s wonderful. Or at least make them thoughtful, make them feel something. Too many dioramas don’t really evoke any emotion except, ‘Wow, what a great job you did.’”

That storytelling instinct is what makes his work so memorable. With Reunion, Bruce knew the old man would have his hand on the tank, with the ghosts of his crew around him, their hands on his back, unseen by him. Then came the smaller discoveries.

What should the man’s other hand be doing? Maybe a cane. Then maybe a leash. A leash means a dog. And if there is a dog, maybe the dog can see the ghosts.

“We all know dogs can see those things, right?” Bruce said.

Then one ghost could be smiling and waving at the dog, while the dog wags his tail, head tilted, probably thinking, “Do you have a treat?”

On the other side of the tank, Bruce realized the composition felt empty. His wife suggested moving the small monument and adding pigeons, because he had always wanted to paint pigeons. That led to one more story: his old cat, Mr. Balin (from the Hobbit, of course), placed at the back of the tank, eyeing the pigeons hungrily.

“So now there’s this little story on the other side of the tank that doesn’t take away from the theme, but complements the other side of the model,” Bruce said. “I like putting little things into a diorama that you don’t notice the first time. Then when you come back, you go, ‘Oh, I didn’t notice the cat.’”

He calls them Easter eggs.

That is the difference, in Bruce’s mind, between a scene and a true diorama. A tank sitting on dirt may be beautifully built, but that is not enough for him. The work needs a human story. Maybe two soldiers talking. Maybe a man looking down at the hole in his shoe. Maybe someone stepping in dog poop.

“Something human that we can all appreciate,” he said. “I think that’s where I’ve been successful.”

Bruce’s sense of storytelling was sharpened by decades in the film industry, though he is quick to point out that movie model making is not the same as competition modeling. Film models often only need to look good on camera. The back side may never be finished. A model may fly past the camera at night in the rain, and the audience will never see the microscopic details.

“You have to know when to stop,” he said.

In film, time is money and Bruce has seen modelers struggle with that, especially when a movie model is built for one purpose: to be destroyed.

“I’ve definitely seen the lower lip tremble,” he said, remembering modelers watching their work get blown up. “But that’s what it was made for. It will live forever on the big screen. You can watch it and say, ‘I did that.’”

Bruce built his first model kit at six and discovered IPMS in 1968, where he asked endless questions. He loved the idea of competing and by 1970 he was winning. In 1978, he brought a scratch-built Imperial Stormtrooper figure to a model show where a man admired it, and then said they were recruiting people for Star Trek.

“I got hired, and that opened the door,” Bruce said. “Once Star Wars happened and became such a huge success, the industry suddenly said, ‘We need to make sci-fi films, and we need model makers.’ The door flew open for me, and I had a 30-year career doing just that.”

The industry gave him a broad set of skills: detailing, painting, mold making, casting, color mixing, and more. On Titanic, he ran the miniature painting department. He learned to mix automotive lacquers by the gallon and to see color with a level of precision most of us can barely imagine.

His credits are extraordinary. Bruce has three pieces in the Smithsonian as well as work connected to the space shuttle, a launch pad model, and an inflatable space station model from Bigelow Aerospace. At the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, he worked on a 12-foot-square moon diorama that contains five hidden R2-D2s.

“I don’t know if anyone’s ever found them,” he said. Bruce loves his Easter eggs.

The inspiration for Reunion came from a real moment Bruce witnessed in Normandy in 1994, during the 50th anniversary of the invasion. He and his wife, Marsden, traveled there and at the cemetery above Omaha Beach, Bruce saw a veteran standing in front of one cross, talking to it. When the veteran finally walked away after about 20 minutes, Bruce went to see whose grave it was.

The cross read, “Known unto God.”

“It was an unknown soldier,” Bruce said, “and he was talking to a friend he had obviously lost.” That moment stayed with him for years and eventually, it inspired Reunion.

The biggest challenge was making the ghosts work. If they failed, the whole piece failed. At first, he tried three full tanker figures standing behind the old man, but a friend said they looked like statues. From that feedback, Bruce knew they had to float.

Then came the question of color. Bruce painted test figures in different ghostly palettes: white and gray, teal and gray, and blue and white. He sent photos to about 15 friends. The votes came back almost evenly split, which told him that whatever he chose, someone would like it, so after much deliberation and discussion he chose the blue and white.

Then he needed the figures to float in a way that felt otherworldly. He remembered the wavy, floating tendrils in Poltergeist, then experimented with different materials. The winner was sheet lead, leftover from Crimson Tide, where they had used it to make submarine skins. Bruce hammered it thin, tore it, shaped it, wrapped it, and created the tattered floating forms.

The result is haunting and tender and satisfies he goal of evoking deep emotions. 

At a recent show, someone told Bruce they hoped they could someday reach his level. Bruce asked how old they were and when they said they were 30 Bruce said, “Add 40 more years of experience, and you could be there."

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was my career.”

To see more of Bruce's incredible work, check out his Facebook Page: Bruce MacRae's Magnificently Marvelous Manly Miniatures.