How do they make Starships look bigger?

[miker]

a book about ILM gets published every ten years (well, so far anyway, next one should be about 2006)

can't remember the title but they explain how they do ALL the major sfx for films/ads they worked on in the correspoding period.

the first one includes a formula for calculating scale vs film speed vs shutter speed etc to make things look big (like the opening STar Destroyer in Star Wars)

just can't remember the full title ... maybe i'll get round to digging it out of the attic ...

[davidsanction]

The book is called "Industrial Light and Magic". It's available from amazon, price ranges from ?50 to ?80 for the new version (which has stuff mainly about CGI effects).

[StudentBoardMember]

In Star Trek they expect you to believe the collective ego of the entire cast fits inside the ship, if that's not illusion of scale I don't know what is.

Sorry about poor joke answers, it's a hard habit to break. Am genuinely interested though as I assume the same applies to buildings.

[Lita]

Any good books on effects about Miniatures,model building ? I am having trouble find them.

[mattias]

the number one thing is depth of field. if you shoot something supposed to be far away, everything should be in focus. you'll need plenty of plenty of lights to get a good depth of field shooting a model, since you either have to be up close or use a telephoto lens. a lot of model shoots are done at 6 fps or so for this reason, which brings us yo the next problem:

the camera has to be completly steady, especially if shooting at 6 fps, since you almost never notice camera shake in background objects. ideally, get enough light to be able to stop down to 16 or so while shooting at a very high frame rate, like 72 fps.

so that's basically it. it all has a lot more to do with how you light and shoot it than how you build it. there are several space movies that used coke bottles and toasters for spaceships with great success... :-)

/matt

[miker]

I still haven't spotted the sneaker or the chewing gum in the Jedi space battle.


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Rhythm, Revelation, Resolution.

[Spoon boy]

Generally speaking studio minatures
tend to be farily large, because
its hard cramming enough detail
in to something the size of an airfix kit.

To give you an idea, the Discovery from
2001 was over 50ft in Length, with the
speherical habitat at the front coming
in at 1 meter in diameter.
The whole thing was built around a box steel
frame which was attached to pylons at it's
base. It was filmed using a special rig that
slowly moved the camera along a worm gear so
as to keep the camera movement smooth- a
pre cursor to modern motion control, as
pionered in Star Wars.

Stuff you should know...

1: This shit requires a high degree of skill.

2: It's VERY time consuming.

3: It's logisticaly complex.

4: It can be expensive if your not savy in
the nature of blagging.

5: You haven't got the capital to rent or
buy a Motion Control rig. Seriously.

6: You need a lot of space to build and
shoot minitures.

7: Tools, lots of Tools!

8: Flying models on wires is cheap and
cheerful, but requires a lot of trial
and error to perfect(and a lot of space)

9: Any good with welding, electronics and
RTV/Fireglass casting? Thought not...

10: Using the "widget" technique(a la
StarWars) was cheap for Fox studios,
but I doubt you've got the cash for the
150 Panzer Tank model kits that were
glued to the underside of the Nostromo
in "Alien"

11: Use CGI, if you haven't got any cash.
In recent years, Films with a budget
use minatures, and the cheapo's use CG.

12: errr, do the 2 year model making and FX
course at Hertfordshire Uni.

13: If all else fails, cut out the Space
bits.

14:Or you could go to this link...
http://www.starshipmodeler.com






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