Practical effects

Wait—the podracing arena from THE PHANTOM MENACE was a miniature? Filled with thousands of Q-tips, and characters like Prince Xizor and Chewbacca?

As regular readers will know (from my previous miniatures post here, as well as other behind-the-scenes film posts which can be found here, here (about Return of the Jedi), here, here and here), I am fascinated by movie miniatures and how they can trick the viewer into completely believing the world the film-maker presents to them. When I wrote my first miniatures post, I didn't want to talk about the ILM work on "Star Wars" as it's been so well documented in the past (though I couldn't…

godzilla

Rob Bottin

More miniatures were created for any one of the Star Wars prequels than the entire original trilogy combined. LEts look at Star Wars Prequels Miniatures.

In The Thing and the other The Thing, we see it in a variety of shapes and sizes, but do we have any idea of its natural or original form? Maybe it doesn't have one, maybe its form is based on wha...

Filming the plane crash scene.

I seriously had no idea how many practical effects and miniature models were used in the development of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. A lot of people have made complaints over the years that there were not enough practical effects used in the making of the film, when in reality there were a ton

Interesting moments from movie sets that only insiders typically get to see.