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13 Best Uses of Miniature Effects in Film

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13 Best Uses of Miniature Effects in Film

When Jurassic Park arrived in theaters, it seemed to spark a new age of visual effects for what could be put on the screen. Movies like The Matrix and Avatar followed, along with films in between and after, all of which pushed CGI further along. But, don’t let that make you think the traditional and practical use of miniature effects was left behind to collect dust.

The most important part of visual effects is to make audiences believe what they’re seeing on screen is every bit as real as the actors. By still using small sets today, the desired result can be earned, although not always cheaper. For the following films, not every scaled-down model was the size of a dollhouse. Many were massive, with one reaching a height of 40 feet.

RELATED: Watch ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Turn Atlanta Into New York in Behind-the-Scenes Featurette

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Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

Despite the higher frequency of CGI effects seen in the prequel trilogy, at least compared to the original three, there was a plentiful amount of miniatures on display. A number of complex little sets were built to convey the depth and diversity of the new worlds and cities that made up the galaxy far, far away. In The Phantom Menace, the miniatures popped up in surprising places.

The pod-racing arena was real, with the alien audience members layered into the seating afterward. Various vessels and pods were also built on a smaller scale to appear as authentic as possible. The same thing was done for the city of Naboo, where a walkway was fitted with a blue screen to digitally place the characters during post.

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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Fans of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom will know the moment when it comes. Indy (Harrison Ford) and his friends have to outrun the members of a Thuggee cult. They exit the underground temple the only way they can, through a mine on narrow, crooked tracks, going fast and perilous. The sequence holds up to this day for good reason.

The mine cart chase was a result of using action figure-size models and miniature shot tricks. When filming such a scene, the camera speed needs to be slowed down to match the smaller-scaled props. When it’s put together with the closeup footage of Indie and friends fighting off the cult members, it’s only if you scrutinized everything on the screen that you would maybe see when the models showed up.


Casino Royale

In Daniel Craig’s first outing as the 007 agent, the film had to end on a big note. So after introducing Vesper (Eva Green) and then developing her romance with Bond, the film places her in immediate danger. Bond fights henchmen left and right, all to get to Vesper, who’s trapped in an elevator inside of a palazzo sinking under the water. In this reboot of the long-running franchise, Bond was presented as being more vulnerable. There might be no better way to do so than by making circumstances seem uncertain if Bond will come out successful.

The sinking palazzo in Casino Royale’s finale was done with a model, along with several other buildings. It already looks great through behind-the-scenes footage. When edited together in the film with everything else, it’s even more spectacular that the sinking set isn’t life-size. The old-school effect makes perfect sense for an old icon that hasn’t made any plans to retire.

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True Lies

Jamie Lee Curtis starred as the naive and innocent wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s super spy. The two get caught up in a terrorist plot in Florida where Schwarzenegger rushes to save his captured wife in a limo. The set-piece occurs on the Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys. Prior to that limo rescue, a good chunk of the bridge is blown up to stop the terrorists from reaching land.

The real Seven Mile wasn’t blown up, although watching True Lies, you might certainly believe it was. A model was set up with explosives, along with smaller versions of the vehicles belonging to the villains. But the miniature work didn’t stop there. Two other set pieces came alive, from the jet flying over Florida skyscrapers in the finale and in the wintry escape that opens the film.


Blade Runner & Blade Runner 2049

The cyberpunk future seen in both of these sci-fi movies is not a glamorous depiction of what might come. In dealing with landscapes alone, it’s overpopulated with buildings, many of which appear to be squished together and built on top of others. But a reason it may seem so unpleasant is how authentic it appears. The neo-noir city of Los Angeles was brought to life thanks to models of buildings and flying vehicles.

Both films committed to this visual effect for various moments. During the flight scenes for both the original and 2049, scaled-down vehicles were filmed. The great, big Tyrell pyramid of the original was part of this miniature work. As for the more modern sequel, the LAPD headquarters, much of the city, and even the junkyard, used these kinds of sets despite the advanced CGI that could have been inserted in. A lot of time and attention went into the making of these elements and it certainly added a layer of realism.

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Inception

In Inception, a team of thieves enters the mind of a man to slip into his subconscious. For the incredible moments of the dream worlds that break the laws of physics, CGI was generously used to great effect. But not everything relied on CGI to be achieved. Towards the end, a final push to secure the heist job involves the main characters entering a fortified hospital on top of a snowy mountain. The hospital and the surrounding landscape are destroyed by explosives, the blast helping to wake up the characters from the deep sleep.

Real sets were used throughout the movie, from the rotating hallway and a real exterior for the hospital was built. But there was an additional element. Along with the life-size set for the hospital, there was also a scaled-down one with a special purpose. Real explosions collapsed the hospital, standing 40 feet tall, along with a mountain in the meticulously made model.


V for Vendetta

V, the anarchist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, goes to great pains when planning to uproot the regime that has taken over the UK in this dystopian future. He gives up his life for the cause and his body is placed in a train car that is sent off to be his final message. Being completely rigged with explosives, the train is detonated while going through Parliament and Big Ben.

Of course, the real landmark was not destroyed for the sake of art. Instead, the series of explosions tear through a much smaller version of the clocktower. The Big Ben model reached 30 feet and the model of the Old Bailey, seen much earlier in the film, reached up to 20 feet. Debris and other effects were added in later but the explosions were very real.

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

When watching the first film in the series for the first time, the school for witchcraft and wizardry can give a sense of awe. Many thanks should go to the crew that carefully brought it to life. Even though Hogwarts was a model, it was still a great, intricate piece of craftsmanship. There were bulking towers, walkways, and added land around the castle, including the rickety, covered bridge many beloved characters have used.

For The Sorcerer’s Stone, seven months of prep work had to be done, with forty people making sure Hogwarts looked good and ready for the camera. Due to narrative requirements, twenty model makers frequently went back over the years, retouching the iconic castle. With each new film, they added in updates. Very tall and very wide, it’s every bit as breathtaking as Hogwarts should be.

The Dark Knight

Heath Ledger‘s performance as the Joker stole the whole show in this Batman sequel, so much so the late actor earned a posthumous Academy Award. The diabolical clown prince of crime made life for Batman hell. But it might have all been worth it due to the number of exciting action scenes that were featured. Like Inception, director Christopher Nolan relied less on CGI to put them on the big screen.

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Scaled-down miniatures were used for the tunnel car chase. It was seen when Batman’s tumbler sped ahead, slamming into a henchman’s garbage truck, before turning around to catch up to the Joker. While watching The Dark Knight, you might not even be able to tell at first glance real vehicles were not used for the crash. That’s the beauty of miniature work, it hides in plain sight.

Independence Day

When the aliens in this invasion movie attack, they do so by obliterating landmarks, from the White House to the Empire State Building. From those blasts, intense infernos consume cities and surrounding areas. All those destroyed landmarks were thanks to elaborate recreations, definitely being much fancier than any average dollhouse.

The visual effects were so beloved in Independence Day, it earned Oscar gold for VFX artists Volker Engel, Douglas Smith, Clay Pinney, and Joe Viskocil at the Academy Awards. On talking about the work, Engel discussed with The Hollywood Reporter the high level of detail that went into making the White House model.

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“Our pyrotechnician, the late Joe Viskocil, and our miniature supervisor Mike Joyce did a fantastic job in preparing a 15-feet wide and 5-feet high miniature of the building—basically a plaster shell attached to a metal body, with individual floors and a lot of furniture and other details on the inside.”

The Impossible

Based on a true story, a family has to struggle through dire situations after a tsunami wave causes immense devastation. While watching the wave impact their hotel, it appears as terrifying as the real event could be. That would be due to an actual mock tsunami being unleashed inside a tank unit, where there was also a smaller model of the hotel the family is staying at.

When the day arrived for it to be filmed, only a camera remained behind to capture the water rushing by, obliterating the hotel. It protected the crew from being swept in by the very real and dangerous current. Several other instances of the wave’s path of destruction seen in the film were thanks to the water tank.


Wizard of Oz

Before Dorothy gets transported to the technicolor world of Oz, a tornado swirls around the empty and deserted landscape of her Kansas home. With the film made all the way back in 1939, just how could a tornado be created as a visual effect? Several years earlier in 1930, real footage was taken of one but without relying on grainy archival footage, somehow the weather phenomenon needed to be filmed.

This was the tornado that helped fans realize their future dreams of being meteorologists. The end result was thanks to a long piece of muslin cloth, the material allowing itself to be easily shaped, mimicking the flexibility of a true twister. It was filmed on a sound stage and later projected in the background when the actors were onscreen, being one of the costliest scenes of the entire movie.

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Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

In Revenge of the Sith, the battle of Utapau is where Obi-Wan and General Grievous fight to the death, and the sinkhole location was a real element while filming, in the form of a scaled-down set. If paused, viewers could see all the intricate layers to the rocky city of Utapau. Even more awesome was the volcanic wasteland of Mustafar.

For the film’s climactic duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan that takes place on the hellish planet, a miniature of it was built on a tilted wooden set. There was a reason for the angle. Fake lava glowed along crevices, thanks to lights underneath the sets, and slime was needed to be poured down the streams. The tilt helped with the movement.


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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

Hitting the three-quarter-century mark usually means a retirement home, a nursing facility, or if you’re lucky to be blessed with relatively good health and savings to match, living in a gated community in Arizona or Florida.

For Sylvester Stallone, however, it means something else entirely: starring in the first superhero-centered film of his decades-long career in the much-delayed Samaritan. Unfortunately for Stallone and the audience on the other side of the screen, the derivative, turgid, forgettable results won’t get mentioned in a career retrospective, let alone among the ever-expanding list of must-see entries in a genre already well past its peak.

For Stallone, however, it’s better late than never when it involves the superhero genre. Maybe in getting a taste of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) with his walk-on role in the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel several years ago, Stallone thought anything Marvel can do, I can do even better (or just as good in the nebulous definition of the word).

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The property Stallone and his team found for him, Samaritan, a little-known graphic novel released by a small, almost negligible, publisher, certainly takes advantage of Stallone’s brute-force physicality and his often underrated talent for near-monosyllabic brooding (e.g., the Rambo series), but too often gives him to little do or say as the lone super-powered survivor, the so-called “Samaritan” of the title, of a lifelong rivalry with his brother, “Nemesis.” Two brothers entered a fire-ravaged building and while both were presumed dead, one brother did survive (Stallone’s Joe Smith, a garbageman by day, an appliance repairman by night).

In the Granite City of screenwriter Bragi F. Schut (Escape Room, Season of the Witch), the United States, and presumably the rest of the world, teeters on economic and political collapse, with a recession spiraling into a depression, steady gigs difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, and the city’s neighborhoods rocked by crime and violence. No one’s safe, not even 13-year-old Sam (Javon Walker), Joe’s neighbor.

When he’s not dodging bullies connected to a gang, he’s falling under the undue influence of Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), a low-rent gang leader with an outsized ego and the conviction that he and only he can take on Nemesis’s mantle and along with that mantle, a hammer “forged in hate,” to orchestrate a Bane-like plan to plunge the city into chaos and become a wealthy power-broker in the process.

Schut’s woefully underwritten script takes a clumsy, haphazard approach to world-building, relying on a two-minute animated sequence to open Samaritan while a naive, worshipful Sam narrates Samaritan and Nemesis’s supposedly tragic, Cain and Abel-inspired backstory. Schut and director Julius Avery (Overlord) clumsily attempt to contrast Sam’s childish belief in messiah-like, superheroic saviors stepping in to save humanity from itself and its own worst excesses, but following that path leads to authoritarianism and fascism (ideas better, more thoroughly explored in Watchmen and The Boys).

While Sam continues to think otherwise, Stallone’s superhero, 25 years past his last, fatal encounter with his presumably deceased brother, obviously believes superheroes are the problem and not the solution (a somewhat reasonable position), but as Samaritan tracks Joe and Sam’s friendship, Sam giving Joe the son he never had, Joe giving Sam the father he lost to street violence well before the film’s opening scene, it gets closer and closer to embracing, if not outright endorsing Sam’s power fantasies, right through a literally and figuratively explosive ending. Might, as always, wins regardless of how righteous or justified the underlying action.

It’s what superhero audiences want, apparently, and what Samaritan uncritically delivers via a woefully under-rendered finale involving not just unconvincing CGI fire effects, but a videogame cut-scene quality Stallone in a late-film flashback sequence that’s meant to be subversively revelatory, but will instead lead to unintentional laughter for anyone who’s managed to sit the entirety of Samaritan’s one-hour and 40-minute running time.

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Samaritan is now streaming worldwide on Prime Video.

Samaritan

Cast
  • Sylvester Stallone
  • Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton
  • Pilou Asbæk

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Matt Shakman Is In Talks To Direct ‘Fantastic Four’

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According to a new report, Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct the upcoming MCU project, Fantastic Four. Marvel Studios has been very hush-hush regarding Fantastic Four to the point where no official announcements have been made other than the film’s release date. No casting news or literally anything other than rumors has been released regarding the project. We know that Fantastic Four is slated for release on November 8th, 2024, and will be a part of Marvel’s Phase 6. There are also rumors that the cast of the new Fantastic Four will be announced at the D23 Expo on September 9th.

Fantastic Four is still over two years from release, and we assume we will hear more news about the project in the coming months. However, the idea of the Fantastic Four has already been introduced into the MCU. John Krasinski played Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The cameo was a huge deal for fans who have been waiting a long time for the Fantastic Four to enter the MCU. When Disney acquired Twenty Century Fox in 2019 we assumed that the Fox Marvel characters would eventually make their way into the MCU. It’s been 3 years and we already have had an X-Men and Fantastic Four cameo – even if they were from another universe.

Deadline is reporting that Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct Fantastic Four. Shakman served as the director for Wandavision and has had an extensive career. He directed two episodes of Game of Thrones and an episode of The Boys, and he had a long stint on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There is nothing official yet, but Deadline’s sources say that Shakman is currently in talks for the job and things are headed in the right direction.

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To be honest, I was a bit more excited when Jon Watts was set to direct. I’m sure Shakman is a good director, but Watts proved he could handle a tentpole superhero film with Spider-Man: Homecoming. Wandavision was good, but Watts’ style would have been perfect for Fantastic Four. The film is probably one of the most anticipated films in Marvel’s upcoming slate films and they need to find the best person they can to direct. Is that Matt Shakman? It could be, but whoever takes the job must realize that Marvel has a lot riding on this movie. The other Fantastic Four films were awful and fans deserve better. Hopefully, Marvel knocks it out of the park as they usually do. You can see for yourself when Fantastic Four hits theaters on November 8th, 2024.

Film Synopsis: One of Marvel’s most iconic families makes it to the big screen: the Fantastic Four.

Source: Deadline

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Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase Star in ‘Zombie Town’ Mystery Teen Romancer (Exclusive)

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Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase have entered Zombie Town, a mystery teen romancer based on author R.L. Stine’s book of the same name.

The indie, now shooting in Ontario, also stars Henry Czerny and co-teen leads Marlon Kazadi and Madi Monroe. The ensemble cast includes Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch of the Canadian comedy show Kids in the Hall.

Canadian animator Peter Lepeniotis will direct Zombie Town. Stine’s kid’s book sees a quiet town upended when 12-year-old Mike and his friend, Karen, see a horror movie called Zombie Town and unexpectedly see the title characters leap off the screen and chase them through the theater.

Zombie Town will premiere in U.S. theaters before streaming on Hulu and then ABC Australia in 2023.

“We are delighted to bring the pages of R.L. Stine’s Zombie Town to the screen and equally thrilled to be working with such an exceptional cast and crew on this production. A three-time Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award winner with book sales of over $500 million, R.L. Stine has a phenomenal track record of crafting stories that engage and entertain audiences,” John Gillespie, Trimuse Entertainment founder and executive producer, said in a statement.

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Executive producers are Trimuse Entertainment, Toonz Media Group, Lookout Entertainment, Viva Pictures and Sons of Anarchy actor Kim Coates.  

Paco Alvarez and Mark Holdom of Trimuse negotiated the deal to acquire the rights to Stine’s Zombie Town book.

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