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How and why Wes Anderson still uses miniatures in his movies

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Miniatures used to be the standard in movies. Back in the days before CGI, they were pretty much the only way to create a lot of things. If you need an alien spaceship in your movie, building one to full scale was impractical, and actually making it fly was impossible. So, miniatures were used with some clever filming techniques in order to make them look real. To make them look full size.

Once CGI came along, a lot of things were just much easier to do on the computer. Some filmmakers, though, didn’t believe they looked real – not that miniatures were always believable. Wes Anderson is one such filmmaker. In this video, Vox had a chat with miniature and prop maker Simon Weisse to find out why and how they’re still used in movies today – particularly Wes Anderson movies.

10 tips for filming miniatures to make them look larger than life to the camera

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Miniatures have been a part of filmmaking pretty much since filmmaking began. They’re typically used when building a full-sized set or prop would be impractical or just flat out impossible. Sometimes they’re used to create forced perspective shots to make a miniature look like it’s part of the real world or to be able to blow something up that they couldn’t blow up in real life or to create something that could just never really exist in the real world.

Whatever your reasons for using them, they’re a lot of fun and can be very effective when done right. But how do you do them right? Well, you can start by watching this video from Steve Ramsden where he goes over his top 10 filmmaking tips for filming miniatures to make them look (and act) like they’re a part of the full-sized real world.

Strange Thing in the Forest – a story told with miniatures and practical effects

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Felix Hernandez (previously) is a photographer who turns his vivid imagination into fantastic images. He brings miniatures and practical effects together, sometimes adds a dash of digital manipulation, and turns imaginary worlds into real photos. Strange Thing in the Forest is his latest creation, and Felix once again tells a story through his stunning miniature photos.

This photographer took on a CoD-inspired miniatures scene and absolutely nailed it

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Anybody who’s followed the work of Felix Hernandez at Dreamphography knows that he loves photographing miniatures. In fact, it’s the vast majority of what he shoots and we’ve covered a whole bunch of it in the past. This time, he’s tackled a subject that’s near and dear to many a gamer’s hearts. Call of Duty.

As usual, he’s taken it to the absolute extreme in each aspect of model making, photography and his special kind of post-work magic. The images were shot using a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and a Canon EOS 1DX Mark III. although he hasn’t said much else about this project’s creation. The behind the scenes photos, though, show the pretty insane attention to detail Felix has for his work.

This photographer builds highly realistic miniatures for stunning movie-inspired portraits

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It’s not rare that photographers are inspired by other types of art: it can be cinematography, music, painting – you name it. Photographer Nicholas Busch finds his inspiration in movies, and he brings together realistic miniatures, portrait photography, and compositing.

Nicholas builds hyper-realistic dioramas from scratch to create scenes from The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Lord of the Rings and other movies. He then combines them with portraits, and with the help of Photoshop, he creates photos just like scenes we’ve seen on the big screen.

I build miniatures and shoot them with real Milky Way to create realistic scenes

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Breaking the rules and thinking outside the box is something a photographer should always consider.

You start your journey with photography capturing everything you see interesting, jumping from one genre to the other until you find your favorite style.

I was passionate about Astronomy since I was a child, and Astrophotography was for me a perfect match, it combined my love for astronomy, my love for nature and landscapes with adventures, travel and camping. This beautiful recipe is just perfect for me.

I make miniatures out of cardboard and create stories around them

I’m a creative minded person and feel very frustrated when the creativity strikes and I have nothing to photograph. This was the main reason I started making these cardboard models.

I thought of all the everyday home items that could be used for creating figures. I found the boxes we used when we moved into our home are still in our garage. They had also “nice” package symbols on them which gave me a couple of ideas of the story that could be created around them and also ended up using them concretely on two of my pictures.

How to shoot a drink commercial like Wes Anderson

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Continuing our obsession with all things Wes Anderson, we had to share this video from Scott from Tin House Studio. Of course, this is just a pastiche on the director’s signature style, but it’s a beautiful look, and even better, it only requires two lights to shoot!

Alongside the two lights, the entire set-up only uses two pieces of pastel-coloured card, two coloured boards and a martini glass (naturally). There is nothing ‘accidentally Wes Anderson‘ about this shot.

Photographer creates miniature desert scene from scratch. Yes, even the elephants!

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Even though AI can let you create virtually any scene you can imagine – it can’t replace building and photographing it yourself. I’m sure that the feeling of child’s play and creativity is still best expressed through actual photography, and for now, no one can convince me otherwise. Marcin Dobrzyniecki is the perfect example. This talented artist creates miniature scenes from scratch and photographs them, so it’s hard to tell whether they’re dioramas or life-sized objects.

His recent photo of elephants in the desert particularly drew my attention and led me to discover his work. He kindly shared some photos with us and revealed how he made the final image.

This is how classic movies pulled off epic special effects

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Vintage special effects are among my favorite things to watch. I enjoy not only seeing them in movies but also breaking them down and learning how they were pulled off. In their latest video, folks at Film Riot break down the special effects from nine iconic movies, from 1901 The Man with the Rubber Head to 1993 The Fugitive.

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