History Main / MiniatureEffects

[[folder: Films -- Live-Action]]

[[folder: Live-Action TV ]]

[[folder: Theme Parks ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* Spoofed in ''WesternAnimation/TheLegoMovie''. President Business's black 2x2-brick-shaped (but made of thousands of bricks) ship detatches from the top of his tower - we see it in long shot as a single 2x2 brick floating off a stack of 2x2 bricks accompanied by a child making a buzzing sound. This is {{Foreshadowing}} for the [[WelcomeToTheRealWorld big twist coming up]] to [[DeusExMachina save them]].

* ''Series/Thunderbirds'' both plays this straight and inverts it, with moving machinery being smaller than the chosen scale used by the puppets, but anything requiring a closeup shot, such as controls being manipulated, are done with live actors.

* Most {{Kaiju}} films, even the infamous American-made ''Film/{{Godzilla1998}}'', which combined a CGI 'Zilla with miniature buildings and vehicles. ''Film/PacificRim'' mostly uses CGI, but an enormous and intricately detailed miniature office building set was used for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHTDlC_tetQ this scene]].

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[[quoteright:350:[[Film/{{Alien}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/be3cf07eca73ce86e3530ef70652b6d3.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail It's only a model. (Shhh!)]]]]

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* ''Film/{{Lifeforce}}'': A miniature of London was destroyed during the movie's climax. Some sources says the miniatures belonged to a closed amusement park called Tucktonia, others says the visual effect crew placed their on miniatures into the model village's streets.

* ''Film/BladeRunner'' and [[Film/BladeRunner2049 its sequel]] both used miniatures extensively for their iconic depictions of the near-future Los Angeles cityscape, as well as the [[FlyingCars spinners]] and advertising blimps - and like several others above, its "miniatures" are massive - the Tyrell building is [[http://i.imgur.com/I1Otf5z.jpg is big enough for a person to fit inside]], and the LA cityscape model in the sequel fills up an entire room. The original used them out of necessity, but after 30 years of advancement in CGI, the sequel used them primarily to maintain consistency with the first film's aesthetic.

** Whenever the TARDIS flies through space in classic ''Doctor Who'', it's a miniature. Special, ahem, [[IncrediblyLamePun props]] go to the Dalek Emperor in ''The Evil of the Daleks'' and "The Parting of the Ways" and to the Time Lord space-station in ''The Trial of a Time Lord''.

Miniature Effects are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin - film effects achieved by the use of miniatures. They are technically a blend of {{InCamera|Effects}} and PracticalEffects, but a lot of time they're given their own listing in the credits since they often require specialists and staff focusing on just building the miniatures. It's not just a case of making smaller size objects (although that can be quite hard depending on how much the camera is going to have to focus on them). Smaller sized objects will have different textures, they take [[SquareCubeLaw stress and strain differently]], the camera perspective and focusing works differently, objects don't fall at the proper rate, fluids and explosions behave differently and the material the large scale object may be made out of may not be suitable for the small scale so a suitable visual approximation must be found.

Miniature Effects are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin - film effects achieved by the use of miniatures. They are technically a blend of InCamera and PracticalEffects, but a lot of time they're given their own listing in the credits since they often require specialists and staff focusing on just building the miniatures. It's not just a case of making smaller size objects (although that can be quite hard depending on how much the camera is going to have to focus on them). Smaller sized objects will have different textures, they take [[SquareCubeLaw stress and strain differently]], the camera perspective and focusing works differently, objects don't fall at the proper rate, fluids and explosions behave differently and the material the large scale object may be made out of may not be suitable for the small scale so a suitable visual approximation must be found.

* ''Film/BladeRunner'' and [[Film/BladeRunner2049 its sequel]] both used miniatures extensively for their iconic depictions of the near-future Los Angeles cityscape, as well as the [[FlyingCars spinners]] and advertising blimps - and like several others above, its "miniatures" are massive - the Tyrell building is [[http://i.imgur.com/I1Otf5z.jpg is big enough for a person to fit inside]], and the LA cityscape model in the sequel fills up an entire room. The original used them out of necessity, but after 30 years of advancement in CGI, the sequel used them primarily [[DoingItForTheArt because they could.]]
* The eponymous ship in ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' is mostly CG effects (there's no way in hell you could buy enough insurance for the [[DrivingIntoATruck "barn swallow"]] scene), but a large miniature set was used for the scene where it crash-lands on Mr. Universe's moon. There are some practical reasons, like the ability to use real sparks, but mostly it was [[DoingItForTheArt because they just liked miniatures]].

A SubTrope of OnlyAModel. If they're unmodified toys and/or box stock model kits, that's OffTheShelfFX.

[[folder: Film ]]

* A goodly number of aircraft and sets in ''Film/TheBattleOfBritain'' were models. Many of the air-combat scenes involve clever merging of actual aircraft footage, studio mock-ups and model filming--which included a lot of exploding model aircraft sent to fiery destruction.

* ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' films made much use of miniature for the cities and towers. However, when you're dealing with a 1/100 scale model of a tower that's supposed to be ''3,000 feet tall'', you still end up with a 30-foot structure - hence the crew's nickname for the models, "bigatures."

* The spaceships in ''Franchise/StarWars'' were models, as a joke the crew would sneak things in. During the final battle in the ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' a tennis shoe was in the dogfight and a potato made do as an asteroid in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack''.