Auto-diving Marines
Posted July 25th 2026
Associated movies
Back in October 2024 I was working on BCM520, a movie concerning a Warthog which was very oddly suspended high off the ground by having its nose seemingly impaled by a tree trunk. This related to the interesting topic you can read about in my article Tree in a Warthog.
The movie included a few clips showing that the two Marines I had with me didn't like the state of the hog at all. I was able to hop into the driving seat (not that I was able to go anywhere) but they wouldn't board. Moreover, when I used a Banshee to make them dive onto the snow underneath it, they then endeavoured to dive clear of it. However, sometimes it took them multiple dives, because they seemingly weren't using much intelligence about it.
That 'auto-diving' as I came to call it (automatic diving; diving without being manually prompted) was already quite amusing, but it gave me an idea. By hemming them in with Ghosts to some degree, maybe I could get them diving for longer, in their bids to escape. And if they were actually fully enclosed, or to put it another way, penned in, perhaps they'd dive indefinitely! To my mind that had some very appealing comedy potential, and would make a rather striking sight. Plus, I suspected that nothing like it had ever been done before.
I made a start by bringing two Ghosts along to block them on one side of the hog (see first pic), and was soon able to get them diving for longer than before. That is to say, they were tending to take longer to escape from proximity to the hog. I recorded footage of that, but realised that the topic really merited a devoted movie. So instead of trying to cover things in BCM520, I put the topic aside for special attention later.
That time finally came in July 2026, and here I point you to my first movie on it, BCM660. After a recap on the oddly suspended hog, it shows some of the aforementioned footage I'd recorded using two Ghosts, but then it continues into new efforts, in which I'd freshly brought along a whole bunch of Ghosts, with the vision of full enclosure in mind. I didn't quite get to that, but showed some other amusing results where, in conjunction with Ghosts, I was doing some blocking with my own body.
The goal of full enclosure was focused on in the sequel BCM661. There I showed a succession of failed attempts, then finally a success in which the Marines were fully enclosed by five Ghosts, and diving together for minute after minute (see second pic). A definite success, on which to end the movie. When it looked like they were stuck in a never ending rut on one side of the hog, I eventually broke it up. But by then they'd been diving together for about nine minutes.
Some further ideas were featured in BCM662, where I used two new ways of initiating auto-diving. In particular, having a full enclosure already in place, and Marines perched on barrier Ghosts (see third pic), made initiation very easy. The Marines merely needed to be shot, to send them into the enclosure. There was no need to fill a gap, something which had often resulted in failure. It makes a nice set-up, as long as you're willing to invest a bit of time fiddling around getting your Marines perched.