Miniatures forum?
 

By watching alot of the behind the scenes material from lord of the rings and king kong I got really interested in Alex Funke and his miniature unit and would like to know more about shooting miniatures or even building them for that matter.

So does anyone know of any forums dedicated to the art of shooting miniatures or any good sites rich with information on the subject.

Thanks in advance!

//Nick

If you build it, they will come.

I'd totally be into that. I am fond of the old school in camera way

Me too. Last year at NAB I picked up a flyer for some anteater-looking lens attachment that helped provide clear images of the smallest areas on a miniature set. As I recall, some of the guys with me laughed (I think it was called “The Probe” :) but I thought it was a cool idea. Unfortunately, the info didn’t make it home with me.

I gave up on the idea anyway, because as far as building a set goes, I could glue my fingers together, but that’s about it. Shooting miniatures still sounds like fun, though.

Come to think of it (long story alert!) the first moving pictures I ever shot had to do with this very thing back in the 70’s when I was in 8th grade art. My teacher said she might not have to fail me if I could produce a movie, so I put a little model space rocket on a string and shot to that David Bowie song, “Ground Control to Major Tom.” Even burned up the rocket right there in the art room for the ending. Ah, the old days…

At any rate, if a site/forum pops up, I’d sure be interested.

I love this idea as well, i've been thinking about using minatures for a project in the works.

Like you Nick i've spent hours watching Alex Funke's team and what they do is just amazing, The model of minas tirith was huge and so detailed.

The only problem i can see with a new minature forum is that since it is such a specialist area there won't be that many people here at dvinfo with that kind of expertise which means you may find a lot of people interested and very few who can answer their questions.

I think the basics of shooting minatures is hyper detailing and running the camera very fast like 60 or 100fps or whatever (a motion control system would be good but who has one of those lying around) . Unfortunately my HD100 won't do those speeds :(
Andy.

Well we could certainly do it here at DV Info Net, no problem. The way the policy works is, we won't start an empty forum. There would have to be a handful of existing threads with a number or replies each (typically six or seven threads and 80 to 100 replies). Once those have been established and are shown to be active, then we can fire up a dedicated forum and move them into it. I think the best place to foster new threads on this subject is our Techniques for Ind. Production, so the deal I'm making with you is, you prove the concept by generating the discussions, and I'll honor the traffic with a dedicated forum. How does that sound?

Well that sounds great. I'm thinking of making a blog-ish kind of thread out of my current project. The main purpose besides making the model itself, is to overcome all the problems with shooting a miniature with a Digital camera (Canon XL 2) Hopefully the result will be somewhat interesting and maybe my thread will inspire others to discuss the subject, probably not enough to create a new forum but I'm thrilled even 4 people responded to this thread =)

There is something cool about a NON CGI forum; in-camera effects always ring true

Tarantino filmed his DEATH PROOF sequence sans CGI

Perhaps a few junkies showing some some examples will make Chris give us a forum ?

Hi

i came across this thread while doing a search on google. I'm interested in this stuff but i don't where to start. its good to see other people interested in the same stuff.

Anesthan

I've been interested in stop-motion/miniature filming since i was a kid. I've done a lot of experimenting and actually I'm getting ready to do a real short film in stop-motion this year. So, thought I'd stop by and give my thoughts on this thread.


forums: well, i don't know if there is enough interest in this to generate a new forum (see Chris' post about basically 500-700 posts before he'll create one, unless i read it wrong). however, there are most likely other web forums specifically for miniatures/stop motion. it is a HUGE and complex art in itself and could definitely use it's own board.

where to start: the best place to start is to set up a camera, get a model (Lego bricks work well, also matchbox/hotwheels cars) and figure out how the art works - and if your video camera will work for stop-motion/miniature filming or if you need to go with a still camera. also, do a search on amazon to find books on the subject. I have a few myself, some of them are great - depending on what your level and taste is. a really good idea for building miniature sets (if you want them to look realistic) is to do a search on model-building books for model train hobbyists. those are the types of books i like to use and they always have some great tips and tricks for doing things.

I think you're right

I think we should all try something .... I don't know what, but something

(Wheels turning)

Let me see what I can put together

Geez, I'll say you read it wrong...

I don't see how you're getting 500 - 700 posts out of "80 to 100." It's right there in black and white, I said "80 to 100." Just the other day we started ColorSpace with 112 posts. I said I would honor the discussions with a dedicated forum and I mean it. Where is the problem.

Chris.

I don't have a problem. When I read it I thought it meant 80-100 reply's per post (I was confused).

Hi

Has anyone started building any miniatures yet.

I just got a video camera recently and in the process of looking for some books on building some props.

Anesthan

J. Hudson has seen these, but in this folder are some examples of some small attempts at miniature photography I've done.

http://www.david-jimerson.com/Examples.zip

The WWII short was comprised entirely of stills.

I love the WW2 Mustang clips; really fun.

Well, John, we gotta figure out something to do with the Corsair.

Sorry to include some math.

To figure out the overcrank speed, you take the square root of the factor of your scale and multiply that number by your nomral frame rate.

I've started on a miniature but since I'm currently involved in a project that forces me to travel to different locations every week I've only had one or two weekends to work on it =) Hopefully I'll be able to get enough done next weekend so I could take some WIP pictures for you. Just dropping a line to let you know I didn't just made this thread and forgot about it hehe.

Cheers

//Nick.

Here's one I did yesterday to demonstrate matching light direction in a model-building forum:

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/7200/image0iq6.png

All compositing work done in Vegas.

This looks pretty sweet, do you have any movies to go along with it?

Thanks. Nothing of that specific shot (was just a static shot), but there are some quick examples I posted in a link above.

Books?
 

Does anyone know of any books specifically geared towards building miniature movie sets - or even more precisely for stop-motion animation sets?

Thanks.

Lisa, you should dig up older (say pre-mid 90's) "Cinefex" magazines.
You can find many of these older issues on Ebay.
Also, a British Magazine called SciFi and Fantasy Modeller which has been currently resurrected as:

www.scififantasymodeller.co.uk

And various other special effects hardcover books. Your best overall bet is the Cinefex magazines, however, as they provide incredibly detailed insight into the entire special/miniaure FX production.
I worked professionally in this capacity for several years and found this magazine incredibly useful.
Then... CGI came along and I moved on to drawing for a living.
Times change.

Little Room Sets
 

7 years ago a major UK house builder asked us if we could come up with a cheaper/faster way of creating CGI type showhome walk through graphics, that would be displayed on intellitouch computer screens in sales offices. These were to aid the sales of apartments being sold off plan.

We purchased a load of minuture dolls house furniture with lots of fantastic little props, created modular wall sections out of artboard, designed and printed out wall paper from photoshop. Wall pictures were created from our photographic library and chosen to fit the room decor.
We took photographs from the relevant kitchen manufacturers book, scaled and printed out in photoshop and glued to balsawood framework, we also treated tiled flooring in the same manner.

Lighting was shot through the balswood windows and doorways (curtains, bedding and so on where done by a stylist) while further lighting effects were added in photoshop - by being able to move the walls, we shot multiple angles on a digital stills camera and created a slide animation - we used a number of gentle softner filters to create a certain feel, that also helped to take away that miniture look.

Result: While CGI walkthroughs (not very realistic in those days and very very expensive) were stopped because they were having a negitive reaction with the public - the dolls house set ups had them convinced they were looking at the real thing (they just thought they were looking at a video of a similar completed development), and at a fraction of the cost since we could reuse most of the componant parts for new developments as they came on line. We did this for a few years before CGI came of age and took the work back from us....fun while it lasted.

Stu
www.studioscotland.co.uk