Bucks New University Faculty of Design, Media & Management Module: VM603

 Course: Spatial Design  Dissertation Title: What is the continuing importance of miniatures and physical effects in set design and why?  Name: Robert Streader  VMC Dissertation Tutor: Helena Chance  Month and year of submission: January 2014  Word Count: 6,885

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Contents

Introduction Chapter One Miniatures and Cinema Chapter Two Craftsmanship and Design Chapter Three Physical Models in the Digital World Conclusion

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Introduction

The subject I will cover for this dissertation is the use of miniature effects and physical sets in the film and television industry. In the past models played an integral part in creating special effects. Films such as Metropolis, Blade Runner, Event Horizon and many more gained a great deal of praise for their use of models. Since the early 1990s the use digital effects has diminished to a degree the importance of miniature effects to film production. However, but even with the advent of computer generated effects miniature remains an important part to many film productions. Digital effects also don’t have the same value placed on them as model ones have. Noah Antwiler a critic who used to work for the website That Guy with the Glasses made a great point about computer and physical effects during his review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He slated the film’s use of computer effects saying:

It looks like every time they’re not in a wide shot it just looks like they’re either in front of a matt painting or a green screen or in some kind of studio the movie just feels claustrophobic everything looks as if there's no depth to it1… and I know movie magic but they really are in front of a matt painting or they really are in front of a green screen most of m the time. But there's no illusion to it. It looks fake all the time. Part of what made the Indiana Jones movies so great in the beginning was the use of practical effects, they didn't rely on digital technology they didn't rely too much on green screen it felt like they were there because they were there.2

As I have had an interest in film for many years and wish to find a career with miniature effects after university I feel this would be an interesting and relevant topic for me to research. To that end I will study the advantages and disadvantages posed by miniatures to a film production. How the use of computer effects in movies has affected their use in film and for what reasons? Why a production team may choose one over the other? How and why digital effects diminished the use of physical effects? How do digital effects compare to physical effects? How people react to either and what the future, if any do models have with film special effects? Chapter one covers the use of models in film and analyses what difficulties a production team will face if they use models. Chapter Two covers the ideas of craftsmanship and design, how models are used outside of film, how this may affect people’s view of them and why the real is valued over the digital. Finally for chapter three I will look at how digital effects have changed films in both a positive and negative way and what status miniatures have in the age of computer effects.

1 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - A Rant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQW5rWMGqbg (05/11/2013)

2 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - A Rant part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OipUKkawkx4 (05/11/2013)

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Chapter One Miniatures and Cinema

In this chapter I will look at how miniatures have been used in films what advantages and disadvantages using these effects and physical sets have. Since the earliest days of the cinema, miniatures have been an important part of special effects. Paul Franklin who was the special effects supervisor for Christopher Nolan's Batman films summed up what is best about miniatures in this quote:

"The great thing about miniatures is they give you this chaotic reality that digital hasn’t quite gotten to yet. Using CG versions of complicated action like falling buildings, explosions or certain lighting effects are all predetermined by the nature of the software and the ideas that went into it. In the effects world, there’s still a lot of useful randomness in real-world physics."3

For me this is the most important factor for the continued use of miniatures. As they are real world objects their behaviour is that of real objects and thus more believable on film. An example of this is the model of the fictional royal navy ship Interceptor, used in the 2004 movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. While the production team had a full size replica ship for the same use, the script called for the ship to be shown in storm conditions and being blown up. As sending the real ship into a storm would have been both impractical and unsafe for the cast and crew4 and blowing it up simply wasn’t an option as it was on loan from the Grays Harbour Historical Seaport Authority5 and it would have to be returned in one piece. First of all the crew built a water tank to act as a ‘sea’ for the ship. For the Storm sequence the tank was rigged with wave machines, fans and raised water tanks designed to form giant waves to hit the ship for dramatic effect. Combined these elements recreate the conditions of a storm. With this method the crew were able to control the actions of the water and movements of the ship with a high degree of realism so they could get the best results, which would be used in the final cut of the movie.

One of the great classic films known for its special effects is the 1927 German science fiction film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang. The film is set in a giant dystopian city in which the working classes are ruthlessly exploited by the city’s ruling capitalist elite. The architecture of the city used by the film reflects this, with the grandiose bourgeoisie city on the surface the machines which run the city below it and under that the slums which the workers and their families inhabit. It took 310 days and hundreds of technicians to make Lang’s vision a reality. To this end massive sets and models were constructed for the production, The images of the urban canyon set used in the establishing shots are show in Figs 1 and 2 should give you an idea of what scale the sets took. In order to place people into the model city the production team used an ingenious technique later known as the Schufftan process. This process used mirrors set at an angle to a model while an actor would be positioned behind the mirror. The silvering on the back of the mirror

3 http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/miniatures-digital-world/44211 (24/10/2013) 4 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl bonus features DVD, An epic at sea, 5 http://pirates.wikia.com/wiki/Lady_Washington (5/1/2014)

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Fig 1: Model set for the film Metropolis under construction.

Fig 2: Production team moving each vehicle for the film Metropolis.

6 would be scraped off in the appropriate places so the actor could be seen by the camera.6 The image shown in Fig 3 may give you a better idea of how the effect is achieved. With this method the actor appeared to be within the model when filmed.

Fig 3 How the Schufftan process is created.

Even if a film doesn’t use miniatures in the final production, they can still play a role in creating a film. For example during the filming of a model of the German excavation site was built on the studio floor, complete with scaled down vehicles and soldiers.7 The film’s director, Steven Spielberg then used this model to plan out where to place the camera for a particular take, what angles he wanted, the movements of the actors and how it would be lit. Models are also used by CGI artist for reference, as a three dimensional object makes it easier for the designers and animators to work out how things such as shadows and light should fall across the object. CGI artists will also use quickly constructed models to help them work out how an object moves or behaves in the real world. Then they’ll take this information and work it into their digital effects so they are more realistic in the final cut.8 Of course, miniatures also present a number of problems to a production team. The most problematic thing is the time and money which is needed to create them, often models and sets which are seen in only a few shots which are usually only a few seconds long, take weeks or months to construct, by a team of craftsmen. While a production

6 The Schüfftan process: From Metropolis to The Lord of The Rings, and the triumphs of Roberto Rossellini’s History Films http://brooklynvisualeffects.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/the-schufftan-process-from-metropolis-to-the-lord-of-the-rings-and- the-triumphs-of-roberto-rossellinis-history-films/ (15/09/2013) 7 Jake Hamilton Special effects in film and television -page 31 8 Miniatures In a Digital World http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/miniatures-digital-world/44211 (24/10/2013)

7 can find ways to keep materials costs down, the cost of labour is inescapable. Returning to Metropolis as an example, the film ended up costing 5 million Reichsmarks (Around 200 million in today’s money) making it one of the most expensive films of the time and very nearly bankrupted Universum Film9 Physical effects also take a great deal of time The 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts is a good example of this. At the end of film the protagonist Jason and some of his crew are attacked by skeleton warriors. This scene only lasts about three minutes in the film but it took the production team headed by Ray Harryhausen four and a half mouths to create using stop-motion animation. The film Metropolis also used stop- motion for the opening scene in the city’s “Canyon” each of the cars, airplanes, trains and elevators had to be moved individually after each frame was taken (This is shown in fig 2) after each exposure. Cinematographer Gunther Rittau talked about the making of Metropolis in the following quote, which shows how laborious creating this film effect was:

Whether shooting model constructions or building models; whether lighting a scene or setting adjustments for equipment, the utmost precision was necessary. To illustrate the difficultly involved in making such shots: it took nearly 8 days to make 40 meters of film capturing model-generated scenery, since every frame had to be shot individually, and 40 meters of film contain approximately 2,100 frames. In the actual film, this amounts to 10 seconds of footage10

This gives us an impression of how much work had to go into even a small section of the movie.

Pyrotechnics can also be a problem when used with miniatures. If something goes wrong during filming such as explosive charges failing or being set off before the cameras are ready, it could mean that part or the whole model will have to be rebuilt which will take time and money the production team often simply doesn’t have. An example of this was brought up by Stephen La Riviere in his book Film in Supermarionation a history of the future during the filming of an oil rig being destroyed for the Thunderbirds episode Atlantic Inferno. During filming one of the cameras malfunctioned and the director called cut. The technician in charge of the pyrotechnics misheard this as his cue and the model was blown up without one of the cameras rolling.11 Pyrotechnics can also be very dangerous to the cast and crew, if safety precautions aren’t taken. A number of examples happened during the filming of Sergio Leone’s 1966 The Good the Bad and the Ugly. Actor Clint Eastwood was almost killed by a lump of rock which was thrown by an explosion when a bridge was destroyed during the film’s climactic battle.12 Along with this actor Eli Wallach came within a few inches of being killed by a metal footplate for a scene when he was crouched by a railway line as a train passes.

One of the major problems which I covered in my essay Why do Film and Television continue to use miniatures? and was also pointed out Bernard Wilkie in his book Special

9 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (2/11/2013) 10 The Making of Metropolis: Special Effects http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2010/05/the-making-of-metropolis-special- effects-by-gunthe-rittau/ (15/09/2013) 11 Stephen La Riviere Film in Supermarionation a history of the future Page 139 12 IMDB The Good the Bad and the Ugly Trivia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060196/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (16/11/2013)

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Effects in Television is the difficulties of water. As both of us noted, water is at best problematic as it does not physically scale down with the models being filmed against it and as a result it will appear very viscous when compared to the model and the smaller the model the more this becomes apparent on film.13 In order to counter this steps have to be taken to maintain a sense of realism. As I wrote about earlier with the Interceptor model, Miniature ships have to be fitted with some form of rig which a puppeteer would operate so the ship behaves more naturally than it would be if it was simply left to bob in the water. While this also gives the production team almost total control over how the model moves during a take, however, as with equipment of this nature this can be a rather tricky bit of kit to operate.

Sometimes the production team gets round these problems by not using water at all. Especially if the is set underwater. Examples of Films which did this are 1990 thriller The Hunt for Red October and Jame’s Cameron’s 1989 The Abyss. In both the production teams used models of the sea bed and a submarine then with a combination of smoke machines and lighting they gave the models appearance of being underwater.14 Of couse the team have to be careful when do this, too much smoke and the model will be obscured from view, too little smoke and the effect becomes unrealistic.

Another means of making something appeer underwater is to place a water tank in front of the camera and have the models on the other side of the tank, by doing this the model appears to be underwater when filmed. This technique was used for Gerry Anderson’s Stingray and many of his other supermarionations. I myself have used this effect when building models. During Art foundation I recreated locations from the video game seires Bioshock. The setting of the first and second game was in an underwater city called Rapture. In order to create the effect that the model was under the ocean I built a small tank out of acrylic plastic which I then filled with water mixed with green food colouring to make the model apper as if it was deep underwater. The effect of this can be seen in fig 4.

Film miniatures also require large amounts of studio space to be set up and filmed around. The model of the urban canyon (Seen in Figs 1 and 2) from the opening scenes of Metropolis which was 6 meters deep. The radio controlled model Mustangs and Zeros fighter aircraft used in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun have wingspans of 12 feet while the Boeing B- 29 Superfortress model has a wingspan of 18 feet.15 But neither of these examples come close to the vast model city built for the 1930 science fiction musical film Just Imagine, which was reportedly 85 meters long and 25 meters wide.16 Aside from being an example of Marxist dialectics, using this much studio space understandably can cost a production team a significant amount of its budget. This is made worse by the fact that film sets have to be built months before filming starts. Computer created designs on the other hand only takes up space on a hard drive, along with needed for the computers and processors.

13 Bernard Wikie Special Effects in Television (Page 183) 14 Special effects in film and television page (page 53) 15 Empire of the Sun Trivia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092965/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (15/1/2014) 16 Dietrich Neumann Film architecture: set designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner, p. 112

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Fig 4: Model of the Underwater city of Rapture created for Art Foundation.

Chapter Two Craftsmanship and Design

The subject of this chapter is the ideas of craftsmanship and design, how models are used outside of the film industry, how this use affects people’s opinion about physical models and why digital effects are devalued when they are compared to models. While using miniatures has it problems, the argument can be made that the weaknesses of using models also can become a great strength when the idea of craftsmanship plays into someone’s view of a . People often have an easier time understanding the process that goes into the building of a model because they may have built them as children and even if they didn’t they can still understand the making process, while computer design remains much harder for most people to relate too. The time it takes for a model to be created means that people have much more appreciation for the final product. Another problem is that computer generated effects have become so heavily used in the last 10, 20 years that film audiences have become used to them. Douglas Walker of the film and video game review website That Guy with the Glasses talked about how he thought Computer effects had been overused by the film industry and used the film Mission Impossible as an example:

The film industry really exploited the use of CGI, some uses of it were creative and inventive, but mostly it was just used as a dodge. A way to save money on much bigger effects… Even if a lot of people couldn't explain why, we could tell when something was computer and when something was really there. We still saw the

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movies but everywhere we turned it was always CG and it was it always for explosions, always for things flying by, always for action, we got tired of it real fast.17

From my research I found this is a very common opinion among film reviewers. Many dislike how digital effects have become so overexploited that they no longer find them impressive, but rather an attempt to distract them from an often weak plot. While some movies have used wholly digital sets for stylistic reasons (which I shall come back to later) many have argued that film has become so saturated with effects it has been said that film makers have tried to use digital effects in place of story. Mike Stoklasa of the film review website red letter media talked about this in his review of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and compared it’s use of special effects to how effects were used in the film : “Orson (Wells) used special effects to extensively tell a story and Lucas used a story to extensively tell special effects”. A similar view was also put forward by Andrew Darley in the book Visual Digital Culture who also said that digital effects have become so over used in modern films that the narrative of the film has become a less importance than the spectacle shown on screen.18

This is not to say that physical effects can’t take precedence over the plot. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is often praised for its special effect while at the same time criticised for having a weak plot. Indeed many reviews of the film when it was released were very critical of it. Critic Mordaunt Hall said the film was a "technical marvel with feet of clay"19 and H.G Wells called it "quite the silliest film."20 It was only many years later that the film obtained the reputation it has as one of the greats of the silent film era. Critic Roger Ebert said in his review of the film:

Metropolis does what many great films do, creating a time, place and characters so striking that they become part of our arsenal of images for imagining the world. The ideas of “Metropolis” have been so often absorbed into popular culture that its horrific future city is almost a given… Lang filmed for nearly a year, driven by obsession, often cruel to his colleagues, a perfectionist madman, and the result is one of those seminal films without which the others cannot be fully appreciated.21

Personally I would say that even if people agree with the argument that Metropolis’s story is rather simplistic they still can see that artist and craftsmen spent a great deal of time and effort creating the world in which it is set. With digital effects people only see a lot of bright colours which they know were created on a computer by a person sitting at a desk, which means very little to them when they are let down by a weak story.

17Nostalgia Critic's Disneycember - Toy Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B27f1xT3K8 (4/11/2013) 18 Andrew Darley, Visual Digital Culture Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media (Page 106) 19 Metropolis a technical marvel with feet of clay http://prettycleverfilms.com/news-other-views/metroplis-a-technical- marvel-with-feet-of-clay/#.UnuH1uLtNEM (2/10/2013) 20 H.G. Wells on Metropolis http://erkelzaar.tsudao.com/reviews/H.G.Wells_on_Metropolis%201927.htm (4/11/2013) 21 Roger Ebert Metropolis Movie Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-metropolis-1927 (4/11/2013)

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I would like to take a moment to make the point that computer generated effects require a great deal of time on the part of their designers to be created. In the making of section of the Pixar Shorts DVD. it shows that some of the animators ended up sleeping under their desks22 because it took so much time for the computers to render the lighting and shadows so the finished film achieved the mist on scene they wanted. It was especially hard for Pixar in its early days because computer technology was only just about up to the task of creating still images let alone moving images.23 Something I’ve noted while writing this dissertation is that people relate to miniatures in film easily because model making has a strong cultural connection to the populous. This is down to things such as the model kits created by companies such as Airfix and Revell. Many people spent a good part their childhood (and for some their adulthood) putting together models of Second World War aircraft and vehicles and creating their own worlds with them.

Many artists have used models to create installation pieces. Peter Feigenbaum an installation artist and musician based in Brooklyn creates hyper realistic models. an example given in the book Otherworldly, Optical Delusions and Small Realities is his model Trainset Ghetto which recreates New York City during the 1970s when the city was suffering badly from urban decay. His cityscapes are composed of derelict tenement buildings with boarded up windows rusting overhead railways bridges and abandoned burned-out cars littering the streets. While his models aren’t of real places they are clearly supposed to be New York. Feigenbaum said of his installation:

Trainset Ghetto’ is voyeurism more than it is hobbyism. It is the physical by product of teenage suburban daydreams and attempts to live vicariously through an alien post- urban 1980s landscape that was in no way part of my quotidian existence.24

Other artists such as Liliana Porter create much more surreal model environments works such as her 2008 piece To See White or Untitled with Glass Ship. Porter said the following about her work:

In the last years parallel to photography and video, I have been making works on canvas, prints, drawing, collages and small installations. Many of these pieces depict a cast of characters including inanimate objects, toys, and figurines that I find in flea markets, antique stores, and other places. The Objects have a double existence. They can be merely insubstantial ornaments, but they can also have a gaze that is animated by the viewer who is inclined to endow things with an interiority and identity. These ”theatrical vignettes” are constructed as visual comments that speak of the human

22 Pixar Short Films Collection, Pixar a Short History 23 Pixar Short Films Collection, Pixar a Short History 24 David Rever Mc Fadden Otherworldly, Optical Delusions and Small Realities (Page 93)

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condition. I am interested in the simultaneity of humour and distress, banality and meaning, or its possibility.25

I also have found during my research that models are also widely used in museums to show historical events. At the Royal Green Jackets museum in Winchester in which one room was mostly taken up by a model depicting the Battle of Waterloo (a photograph of the model is shown in Fig 4). This vast model shows varies stages of the battle. From the fighting which took place at the Hougoumont farm house (which became a key strategic objective during the day’s fighting) to the rolling fields and country roads both sides fought bitterly over. The story of the battle is told by sections of the model being lit up and the actions of what happened at that location at different points of the battle is told through narration. Narration gives the viewer information about the lead up to the battle, the preparations both sides made, the battle itself and its aftermath. The model also makes use of music (opening with the French national anthem) and sound effects to add atmosphere to the room.

The size of the model gives the viewer an idea of the scale on which the battle was fought as there is nowhere on the model where troops aren’t caught up fighting or making their way to the fighting. Along with this the museum also used a number of smaller dioramas showing other historical actions the Green Jackets regiment had taken part in. From the building of the British Empire to its actions during the Second World War. The Photograph Fig 5 shows one of these models. This example is of the final days of the Battle of France. While it is far smaller than the Waterloo layout it is just as effective in depicting the events of those desperate days in June 1940. The model shows German infantry and light tanks over running a barricade composed of abandoned and wrecked British military lorries. Aside from two bodies lying at the edge of the model no allied troops are visible, but we are given the impression that they are present as the German troops are taking cover as if under fire and some appear to have been wounded or killed. The point is without anything being said the viewer is being given information about what the situation was like, what effect the tactics of Blitzkrieg had on the allied forces and what last ditch measures were taken to try and delay the German advance.

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich used a number of models some of which are shown in Fig 6 to depict the designs of historical naval vessels. Many of the models were designed to open, so that a person could see the layout of the hull and decks so people get a better idea of how sailing ships were built. One opinion as to why museums use models and dioramas was given in Chris Burden and Frances Morris’s book When Robots Rule: The Two Minute Airplane Factory

Small boys happily enact hideously inhumane acts of warfare and mass annihilation on the living room carpet using tiny hyper-real models of soldiers and military hardware. Museums devoted to military and naval history display similar scenarios, devised by the curators, of historical battle scenes and front lines liberally scattered

25 David Rever Mc Fadden Otherworldly, Optical Delusions and Small Realities (Page 201)

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with cotton wool explosions and matchbox vehicles, encased within glass-topped cabinets. All these players use scale models because it is almost always easier to contemplate reality (or imagined reality) through surrogates rather than through words or statistics26

26 Chris Burden Frances Morris When Robots Rule: The Two Minute Airplane factory (page 22)

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Fig: 5 Model of the Battle of Waterloo at the Royal Green Jackets museum.

Fig 6: Model of the Battle of France, also at the Royal Green Jackets museum.

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Fig 7 Models of warships at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

The model village of Bekonscot in Beaconsfield has been a popular tourist since it was opened to the public in 1929. I personally have found it to be a fascinating place since I was young and visited the village over the summer as part of my research for this dissertation. (See fig 8) The village or rather villages that make up the Bekonscot site are designed after rural England with quiet villages and market towns. Around these a model railway snakes its way through the landscape.27 The railway is one of the most intriguing parts of the village for many people most likely because it is a working piece which links the whole side together while most of village is composed of static figurers and vehicles. One reason I believe people enjoy Bekonscot is due to a form of nostalgia to quote the New media Culture lab lecture “In order to effect a magical return to an imagined past”. Bekonscot fits this statement very well. It is very much an idealise view of early 20th century England which for most people simply didn’t exist. In the book Otherworldly, Optical Delusions and Small Realities Poet and writer Susan Stewart is quoted as saying on the subject of models and nostalgia: “The miniature is linked to nostalgic version of childhood and history, present a diminutive and thereby manipulatable version of experience, a version which is domesticated and protected from contamination” For me this statement sums up why people find something like Bekonscot so appealing. It is an idealised view of our heritage safe from the harsh reality of history and the world.

27 Tim Dunn Bekonscot Historic Model Village and Railway (page 9)

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Even my first VMC essay had a model as its main subject, in this case a recreation of the unrealised Monument to the Third International better known as Tatlin's Tower (A Photograph of which is shown in Fig 9) which was designed in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution to be the headquarters of the Communist International. While the tower was never built due to a lack of both materials, funds and questions as to if technology of the time was up to building something so dynamic in its structure, it has remained an icon of Soviet constructivism due to the radical nature of its design and form. The model was placed in the court yard of the Royal Academy of Art as part of the 2011 Exhibition Building the Revolution Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935, in order to promote the exhibition and to give people an impression, of what sort art and designs were being shown. It also helped to give an idea of how big the tower would have been if it had been build through scale figurers placed at the base of the model. Even when drastically scaled down the structure towered over the visitors.

Fig 8: Model village of Bekonscot in Beaconsfield.

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Fig 9: Model of Tatlin’s Tower for the 2011 Building the Revolution Exhibition.

Chapter Three Physical Models in the Digital World.

This chapter will focus on the rise of digital effects in the last two decades, how it has affected the film industry, how it has affected the use of miniatures in movies and how the two have been used in tandem. Since the late 1980s Computer Generated Imagery better known as CGI have come to over shadow miniatures as the stable means of creating special effects in films. While digital effects had been used in a limited way as early as 197328 Films such as Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Jurassic Park and ’s 1991 Terminator 2: Judgment Day were the first films to truly show what digital effects could achieve.

While Computer effects in most films are used to add objects to an existing studio set or location. Some films have used fully or almost fully computer generated environments for stylistic reasons. This technique is known as digital backlot and has been used in films such as Sin City, 300 and The Spirit, but for me the best example is the 2004 adventure science fiction film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow which used actors against green screen backgrounds which the world would be superimposed on in post production. Although a few physical objects and bits of set namely doors, desk and guns) were used so the actors had a point of reference during a take. Still only one scene used a fully physical set which was the

28 IMDB Westworld Trivia: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070909/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (11/10/2013)

18 office of the journalist Polly Perkins. (Fig 10 shows how most sets were created) A reason for this choice was because director Kerry Conran wanted to create the look and feel of a comic book more specific the comics of the 1930s and 1940s which he and his brother had read during their childhood and was the main inspiration for the film’s story and style. An immediate advantage this method of production has is the time it saves. With physical sets and locations it can take over a year to film all the scenes needed, (not counting the time needed to build sets and book locations). While with blue screen, it only took 29 days for all the filming to be completed. This saved the production a great deal of money and it frees up the actors so they can work on other projects. The film’s compositing supervisor, Stephen Laws talked about Sky Captain’s methods of production in the following quote about the film’s use of computer effects “Yes, Adobe software is cost-effective. But more important, After Effects and Photoshop are artistic tools- they enabled us to experiment with virtually no limits to achieve the film's unique, stylized look.”29 The late film critic Roger Ebert said in his review of the film:

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is even more fun than it sounds like. In its heedless energy and joy, it reminded me of how I felt the first time I saw "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It's like a film that escaped from the imagination directly onto the screen, without having to pass through reality along the way.30

Fig 10: The cockpit ‘set’ from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

29 No locations, no sets http://www.adobe.com/motion/skycaptain.html (11/10/2013)

30 Roger Ebert Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sky-captain-and-the-world-of- tomorrow-2004 (16/10/2013)

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I am also personally a fan of Sky Captain. Having enjoyed it since I first saw it in cinema for its imaginative visuals, classic story and colourful characters, which in my view succeeds in immersing the viewer in a world of fantasy and adventure; something which is often lost on film makers of yesterday and today. Despite the impressive images and worlds, which the digital effects industry had created, CGI is often devalued when compared to its physical counterparts. One of the reasons I believe that many don’t value digital effects the same way they would value physical ones is due to the phenomenon known as the uncanny valley. The Uncanny Valley refers to the way people react to the sight of something that is almost but not quite human. . If something is designed to look like a person, but doesn’t quite move or sound right, a person will have a more negative reaction to it than something which is less human looking (The Chart for the Valley is shown in fig 11). This subject was referred in the lecture Real VS. Virtual in the following quote “The familiar suddenly becoming uncomfortably strange or the strange suddenly uncomfortably familiar.” In my opinion the reason why CGI effects have this problem while physical ones do not, is because a model is a real object and the person viewing knows that it is the real thing even if the effect is done poorly or is very obvious. CGI isn’t afforded this luxury as the effect has been created on a computer and so the person knows it isn’t real and more often than not will not place the same value on it as they would on a physical effect. Due to their digital origins another issue with CGI effects is that they often look very clean and refined. While this wasn’t a problem for a film like Terminator 2: Judgment Day because the villainous T-1000 robot was composed of liquid metal, so people knew it should appear clean and crisp, when it changed its’ form.31 But with films such as Star Wars Episode Two Attack of the Clones this doesn’t hold. Here the environments and vehicles simply feel too refined, polished and sterile (See Fig 13). This becomes especially prominent if you contrast this with the design of the original Star Wars (shown in Fig 12) films, where the sets and models looked as if that they had been used for many years before the events being shown on screen. With space ships coated in grease, grim and battle scars. Also while miniatures may move differently from the full size object they are mimicking. Digital effects aren’t real at all and thus the animator has to spend a great deal of time trying to get their creations to behave in a naturalistic and or believable way. This is also a problem when it comes to how lighting and shadows fall and changes when cast on an object. As I mentioned before Countless hours have to be spent on rendering a digital models lighting, while with physical models these things are not a serious problem. Digital effects also mean that much of the time the actors have little or nothing to act against when a scene uses these effects as they are added to the film during post production. An example of this is the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. In the film cartoon characters exist alongside people in the real world. While the film did not use Computers to achieve its effects they have similar problems to those found with digital effects As the cartoon characters were added in during post production, the actors had to act against nothing much of the time. It has even been said that actor Bob Hoskins suffered from hallucinations after the film was produced.32 To help the actors during scenes when they had to interact with

31 Andrew Darley, Visual Digital Culture Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres (Page 110) 32 IMDB Who Framed Roger Rabbit Trivia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (11/10/2013)

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Fig 11: Chart of the Uncanny Valley.

Fig 12: A technician on the set for the opening battle of Star Wars Episode Five .

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Fig 13: Digitally created Image from the end of Star Wars Episode Two Attack of the Clones.

cartoon counter parts the production team used physical props on wires to give the actors a point of reference during takes as to where they should be looking.33 Many films in the last 20 years have used a combination of models and computers for their effects. While the use of mixed effects is nothing new, for the 1941 film Citizen Kane the production team used miniature lorries and diggers and a to create the establishing shot of Charles Foster Kane’s imposing private estate of Xanadu.34 However, in the last few years this effects has really come into its own. In modern films CGI has replaced the matt element, but the process remains more or less the same in that it is used to extend and to add objects to an existing set or location. In Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and his 2005 remake of King Kong the production team made great use of both models and digital effects to create the look and feel of the films meaning they could mix fantasy and realism to the point that it was very difficult to tell the difference between physical and digital effects at some points. One great advantage of the mixed effect is the ease in which actors can be added into a model environment much easier that they could with something like the Schufftan process, meaning the models can be used much more extensively and can make use of more dynamic camera angles and movements than what could have been used in the past.

33 IMDB Who Framed Roger Rabbit Trivia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv 34 Mark Cotta Vaz Craig Barron The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting (Page 16)

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I found another good example of mixed effects from the 2011 film Hugo. For a dream sequence a train is sent crashing through the concourse of the Gare Montparnasse railway station and out onto the street outside. Fig 15 shows the shot during production, where a model of the train is sent through one of the station’s windows and Fig 16 shows the finished shot used in the movie, where digital effects have been used to add in the background and the rest of the station building around the model set. The advancements in computer technology has also an example of this was shown in the post production diaries of Peter Jackson’s King Kong the production team responsible for creating the films Miniatures used a machine called an automatic routing table as known as a shopbot. By using this device the team could create sections of models very accurately and quickly35. Computer technology has proven itself a great help to those who work with models, I myself have used computer programs to draw up plans and designs for projects. In doing so they are much more accurate than if I was do them by hand and also should a mistake be made I can also easily redraw a section rather than have to rub out an area or even start over again and it doesn’t end here. Designs drawn digitally can also be cut out with a computer controlled laser cutter, meaning you can make multiple copies of something with relative ease.

35 King Kong post production diaries ,Filming The Miniatures

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Fig 14: Production photograph from the film Hugo.

Fig 15: The finished image used in the film Hugo.

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Conclusion

The conclusion I draw from my research and analysis is that firstly the advantages and disadvantages of using models stem from each other. While they are time consuming, expensive and labour intensive to create this also becomes an important strength when they are analysed and enjoyed by film critics and audiences. Because this shows that great effort and skill has been taken, in order to make them a reality, so they are appreciated by audiences and critics. For example, Roger Ebert appraisal for Metropolis’s use of model effects saying “Metropolis does what many great films do, creating a time, place and characters so striking that they become part of our arsenal of images for imagining”36 Also physical effects can take on the status of museum objects. Places such as the London Film Museum Harry Potter Studios and Universal Studios allow people to go and see props, sets and miniatures that have been used in film. Returning my first quote from Noah Antwiler “it felt like they were there because they were there.”37 The same can’t be said when it comes to digital effects due to their digital nature they always be within the 2d world of the screen. While GCI has created very dynamic animations and stunning environments, such as those used in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow it also because of this dynamism that they have become overexploited by the film industry and they don’t enthral audiences or critics in the same way as they did when first used. Going back to what Douglas Walker said on computer effects “some uses of it were creative and inventive, but mostly it was just used as a dodge. A way to save money on much bigger effects”38

So to answer my question ‘What is the continuing importance of miniatures and physical effects in set design and why’. While my research has led me to believe that computer technology has come to be a central component of special effects and will remain so, miniatures still have an important role to play in the film industry and that ultimately the future of special effects lays in a combination of physical effects, miniature effects and computer generated imagery. By using the best elements from both fields’ films not only can make the most of what both physical and digital effects have to offer but also the problems which both mediums have can be countered by each other. The final point I wish to make, however, is that, regardless of whether film special effects are created with models, computers or a combination of the two. The important thing is that they are used to as part of the story telling process and not the other way round.

36 Roger Ebert Metropolis Movie Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-metropolis-1927 (4/11/2013) 37 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - A Rant part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OipUKkawkx4 (05/11/2013) 38 Nostalgia Critic's Disneycember - Toy Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B27f1xT3K8 (4/11/2013)

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List of Sources

Bibliography Andrew Darley, Visual Digital Culture Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres, Published 2000 by Routledge

Neumann, Dietrich Film architecture: set designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner published 1996 by Prestel

Jake Hamilton Special effects in film and television published 1998 by Dorling Kingersley

Stephen La Riviere Film in Supermarionation a history of the future published 2009 by Hermes Press

Bernard Wikie Special Effects in Television Third Edition published 2005 by Focal Press

Dietrich Neumann Film architecture: set designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner published 1999 by Prestel

Tim Dunn Bekonscot Historic Model Village and Railway published 2009 by Jarrold publishing

David Rever Mc Fadden Otherworldly, Optical Delusions and Small Realities published 2010 by the Museum of Arts and Design

Chris Burden Frances Morris When Robots Rule: The Two Minute Airplane factory published 1999 by Tate Gallery Publishing Ltd

Mark Cotta Vaz Craig Barron The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting published 2004 by Chronicle Books

Webgraphy

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - A Rant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQW5rWMGqbg (05/11/2013)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - A Rant part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OipUKkawkx4 (05/11/2013)

Nostalgia Critic's Disneycember - Toy Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- B27f1xT3K8 (4/11/2013)

Metropolis a technical marvel with feet of clay http://prettycleverfilms.com/news-other- views/metroplis-a-technical-marvel-with-feet-of-clay/#.UnuH1uLtNEM (2/10/2013)

H.G. Wells on Metropolis http://erkelzaar.tsudao.com/reviews/H.G.Wells_on_Metropolis%201927.htm (4/11/2013)

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Miniatures In a Digital World http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/miniatures- digital-world/44211 (24/10/2013)

IMDB Who Framed Roger Rabbit Trivia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (13/10/2013)

IMDB Westworld Triva http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070909/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (11/10/2013)

No locations, no sets http://www.adobe.com/motion/skycaptain.html (11/10/2013)

Roger Ebert Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sky-captain-and-the-world-of-tomorrow-2004 (16/10/2013)

IMDB The Good the Bad and the Ugly Trivia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060196/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (16/10/2013)

The Schüfftan process: From Metropolis to The Lord of The Rings, and the triumphs of Roberto Rossellini’s History Films http://brooklynvisualeffects.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/the-schufftan-process-from- metropolis-to-the-lord-of-the-rings-and-the-triumphs-of-roberto-rossellinis-history-films/ (15/09/2013)

Nostalgia Critic's Disneycember - Toy Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- B27f1xT3K8 (4/11/2013)

IMDB Metropolis Trivia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (2/11/2013)

Empire of the Sun Trivia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092965/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv (15/01/2014)

Roger Ebert Metropolis Movie Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie- metropolis-1927 (4/11/2013) http://pirates.wikia.com/wiki/Lady_Washington (5/1/2014)

DVDs

Pixar Short Films Collection, Pixar a Short History

King Kong post production diaries ,Filming The Miniatures

Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones

Star Wars Episode V Empire Strikes Back

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl Bonus Features DVD, An epic at sea, visual effects

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Site Visits

Royal Green Jackets Museum Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Road, Winchester

Bekonscot model village & railway Warwich Road Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire HP9 2PL

National Maritime Museum Romney Rd, London SE10 9NF

New Romney Station Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway Romney Sands, Lydd, Kent TN28 8

List of sources for images

Cover Image: The Art & Effects of http://www.capedwonder.com/derek- meddings-book/ (17/01/2014) Fig 1: Photograph from Dietrich Neumann Film architecture: set designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner published 1999 by Prestel (page 2) Fig 2 : http://dip9.aaschool.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/07_metropolis_miniatures.jpg 14/09/2013 Fig 3: Fig 4: Personal Photograph of the model of the Underwater city of Rapture created for art foundation. Fig 5: Personal photograph taken at the Royal Green Jacket museum Fig 6: Personal photograph taken at the Royal Green Jacket museum Fig 7: Personal photograph taken at the National Maritime Museum Fig 8: Personal Photograph Model village of Bekonscot Fig 9: Personal Photograph of Tatlin’s Tower model for the 2011 Building the Revolution Exhibition Fig 10: http://www.adobe.com/motion/images/skycaptain/main.jpg (12/10/2013) Fig 11: http://www.davidherrold.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/uncanny- valley.jpg 15/09/2013 Fig 12: http://www.davidherrold.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/uncanny- valley.jpg 15/09/2013 Fig 13: http://www.dailycal.org/2011/11/20/special-effects-master-phil-tippett-comments-on- commercial-film-industry/ 20/10/2013 Fig 14: http://www.parismatch.com/Culture/Cinema/James-Bond-Les-archives-de-007- 448769#448781 15/09/2013 Fig 15: http://www.emilykwongdesign.com/project/hugo/ 4/10/2013 Fig 16: http://www.emilykwongdesign.com/project/hugo/ 4/10/2013

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