Dear Tongal,
I am interested in filming a miniature 3D printed spaceship. Could you provide advice on what techniques to use for filming it and implementing it into an edit? I am interested in a guide for outer space lighting, focal length, frame rates for scale, and blue screen implementation.
- Cadden & Bell, Tongal Community Member
Dear Tongalers,
There are multiple techniques you can use to film and incorporate miniatures into your edits. In fact, I have tested a few of these myself in previous projects where I had to incorporate miniature objects (such as spaceships and model cities) into an edit.
After some trial and error, I've come to favor three techniques for filming miniatures — I hope you find them useful.
Spaceship - Classic Miniature Filming
When filming our model shoots for Alien Alone, we wanted to emulate the classic production style of a model shoot from the era. Which meant we were limiting ourselves to the model, some lights, a backdrop, and nothing else. This stripped down process is relatively simple. Space is dark, so we went with a dark backdrop. A spaceship is large, so we went with a long lens — an 85mm in this case. Lastly, we went with a single bright directional light. We chose this because we wanted to emulate a distant sun, which would be the only source of light in space.
We filmed in both 60fps and 120fps to give the final image some weight. Large objects, even in space, are heavy and move slow. This helps to sell the very small object as a very large, cumbersome ship. For the post-productions process, all we had to do was toss in a simple garbage matte to cut out the background we didn’t need. We then brought the shadows down to pure black and color corrected to match the rest of our film. All of this can be done in your editing software of choice.
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
Use a single bright light source.
The larger the model, the better.
Slower camera movements imply a larger scale.
Use a long lens to give the illusion of distance.
Sci-Fi City - Mixing Miniatures and CG
In the SYFY Tech Noir Logo Ident I worked on, we mixed multiple techniques to achieve the final look. We originally wanted to do an entire cityscape, but obviously that’s a fairly expensive endeavor. So instead, we used one scale model for our primary hero building, and filled in the rest with a CG cityscape.
The building was built by Raptor House Effects, and was designed exactly to fit the shot, with only ¾ of the building actually constructed (the back is just unpainted wood.) Greebles (or nurbles) were added to make the building look much larger than it is. A greeble is a small detail that makes objects visually more complex. The more of these you have, the more broken up and unique the structure will look, which will make the model look larger.
For our model, the greebles were just excess wood and styrene cut to different lengths and glued to the surface. They don’t have to be perfect, as the eye takes in the overall object at once. Back in the day, early model makers would use all the odds and ends from store bought model kits. Today, 3D printing is a great resource if you want more exacting detail. The car model seen above and the little spires are all 3D printed.
An example of greebles
Holes were also drilled throughout the model, and a light was shined from the back to create the look of windows. Unlike the Alone model shots, we filmed on a relatively wide 50mm lens. We then used a separate “Spinner” car model to fly through the shot, which we then matched with an animated car in the edit.
Once we had the footage, we took it into After Effects and keyed out the green. We then created a CG city, matching the perspective of the model shot. We also created a city backplate by using a mix of buildings and custom built animations, and by spending a lot of time tweaking lights. For our modeling software, we used Cinema4d, however there are a ton of options you can use. Blender is a great option if you’re on a budget because it’s free.
Lastly, we went back to After Effects and composited-in some fire effects, motion blur, and fog to finish it all off. Just remember to keep scale into account — fire or fog that can be seen in a shot like this would be moving slower because it is larger.
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
Light for multiple sources (e.g. lights coming off of other buildings and vehicles).
Greebles add complexity which gives the object scale.
Shoot with a wider lens, as if you were shooting a real cityscape.
Use stand-in objects to match movements and scale in the CG environment.
Added effects, like fire and smoke, give you more context and scale.
A Different Option - Photogrammetry
Another option for lighting miniatures is a process known as Photogrammetry. We’re not going to spend a lot of time on this, but it’s worth knowing about. Photogrammetry could be considered the opposite of working with a model and making it appear larger with camera trickery.
With photogrammetry you take hundreds of photos of an object, for instance a building, and you bring those photos into a program like Meshroom, which compiles the photos into a 3D object. The photographed object is completed by adding texture, which gives added realism to your work. We used this process throughout our animated short film Angels II.
We wanted to have our opening shot feel like a real place with a history. To do that we mixed constructed 3D models of storefronts with scanned buildings that had a very lived in feel. One in particular is this mural-covered building where we showcased our “Angels” district sign.
Here is that building in real life — it’s the warehouse of an event production service in Houston TX.
Here you can see the scan, captured by Austin Beaulier.
And here is that scan incorporated into our alleyway.
We used this process throughout the short — some captured by us, some by others. Cars, telephone poles, rocks, and even people were also scanned and augmented to fit the world of our film. Programs you can use for this process vary. Zephyr and Meshroom are two free options, but there is also Reality Capture, which is more advanced and expensive. You can use almost any digital camera, or for more exact models, a 3D scanner like the Artec Leo or the Einscan Pro. The iPhone 12 even comes with a LIDAR scanner built in that can take some pretty useful scans for background elements.
Wrapping Up: Don’t Forget The Basics
Whatever route you go, all you really need to remember is this: at the end of the day you’re still making a film. There’s a reason why the opening of Star Wars feels like a gigantic spaceship; it’s slow moving and imposing.
While this one, from Battle Beyond the Stars — an incredibly cool looking model, made by James Cameron — doesn’t feel quite so real.
Composition, lighting and your own personal style is what is really going to sell these shots. Take your time, storyboard and think about what each shot means. If the ship is alone and isolated, shoot it small, tilted, and in a void. If it’s a frightening giant, let it tower over everything else — it may even extend off screen, while still dominating the frame’s real estate. If it's a menacing villain, consider shooting it obscured in shadow with its running lights looking like the eyes of a monster in the dark.
Just remember, treat these models just like you would any other character and any other scene and you’ll have something amazing to show off.
Sincerely,
Noah Miller
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Note From Tongal: "Filming Miniatures (Dear Tongal)" is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Tongal. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
