Model Maker Explains How Miniatures are Used in the Movies
Many believed advances in CGI would doom miniature models in the movie business, but directors like Wes Anderson and Christoper Nolan have revived the art.
Many believed advances in CGI would doom miniature models in the movie business, but directors like Wes Anderson and Christoper Nolan have revived the art.
In September 2010, visual artist and filmmaker Rä di Martino set out on a quest to photograph and document old abandoned film sets in the North African deserts. The project had started when she discovered that it was common practice to abandon these sets without tearing them down, leaving them fully intact and crumbling over time, like archeological ruins.
Martino spent that month traveling around Chott el Djerid in Tunisia, finding and photographing three Star Wars sets in all for her photo series No More Stars and Every World's a Stage.
Seattle-based photographer Bill Finger creates and photographs amazingly realistic small scale dioramas showing various imaginary locations. The things contained in each miniature model are 1/6th to 1/12th the size of their real world counterparts. Finger builds each of the dioramas while looking through his camera's viewfinder, which ensures that everything he constructs conforms nicely to the perspective limits of his lens.