Monday 1 December 2008

Forced Perspective Models

The scale that it is decided to build a model miniature at is often determined largely to practicality and the amount of space available when it comes to film it. Normally it is better to build miniatures as large as is possible. Sometimes however rather than constructing a single building a job may require a whole or partial model of a cityscape. This is where forced perspective models can be used, the benefit of which saves time and money in construction costs. Film makers will decide on the layout of the shot they want to film and the models that will be nearest the camera are built at a bigger scale than those that are further away. As the scale gradually decreases it is important that the detail on those models does as well. Matthew Gratzner (Partner in one of Hollywoods top model making companies Hunter Graztner Industries) comments...

'Nothing makes a model look less convincing then too much detail on distant objects.'
Below a shot of a forced perspective model from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.


2 comments:

McTodd said...

Just a quick note to say that your link to Oliver Zeller's article (Realizing Epic Film Environments: Miniatures) is dead. It can now be found here:

http://artect.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/filmminiatures_artect.pdf

Fabworks said...

Thanks for sharing.
Miniature Scale Models