Foreground Miniature Cafe

Chianalea, Scilla-Calabria
via Italia on IG

This is a good tip if you ever find yourself in this situation. I don't know how often it would come up, though.

How to solve a Rubik's cube in four steps (repeated). Is that really all there is to it?

Traditional African dance looks a bit like shuffle dancing.

Kind of amusing-- two women making fun of YouTube Finance/Wealth Gurus.

Will you feed my monkey?

Workers on the Chrysler Building, 1929.

Old time special effects.

Another cool practical in-camera special effect. This kind of special effect, the foreground miniature, is my favorite. I think this reveal in The Shadow is done with a foreground miniature. Or maybe it's just a miniature on a table with forced perspective. I don't know. Looks pretty good, though, even though you can tell it's fake.

Camelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail was just a ten foot tall model placed on a hill (down the page a bit), and made to look like it was very far away. Now that I know the trick I can see the fakery, but before I knew the trick, it looked genuine enough to me.

I think most "Castle Draculas" are faked this way.

This guy made a short video about decent special effects he did on a zero budget. At 5:20, he dresses his one-bedroom apartment to look like the interior of a space ship, including a never-ending hallway made with two sliding-door mirrors taken down from his closet. At 6:52, he uses a foreground miniature to fake a UFO.

I think many people are in this boat: When I can tell CGI is fake, which is almost always, I don't like it, and it takes me out of the movie. When I can tell a more traditional or practical special effect is fake, I often like it anyway, if it's still a pretty good try. I admire the craft and trickery of it, and it doesn't really take me out of the movie, except just to think "That was a cool shot" for a second.

I wish I had one-tenth of this guy's charisma and confidence.

So cute! Sound on.

Is this real, or am I being punked like Lamont again?

Am I being punked?

posted by Ace at 07:50 PM

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