Some of the biggest set pieces in film and TV are actually the smallest. Sometimes big scenes are too complicated or expensive to film with huge, life-size sets so production teams create detailed miniatures of locations and settings, and then use camera techniques to trick the audience into thinking they’re seeing the real thing.
This model represents that approach and references schlocky 1950s sci-fi films, like It Came From Outer Space (1953) and The War of the Worlds (1953), which often used miniatures for their out-of-this-world plots. Miniatures have since been used in blockbusters like Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979) and Batman (1989). Often, they’re created just to be destroyed – like the White House in Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996).
Curator Notes
Very early on in the development of this exhibition, we knew we wanted to make a detailed miniature, like would be used in filming, but allow people to pop their heads in it. Rather than try to recreate an existing location or film scene, we worked with Spindly Figures and Benchmark Models to come up with something original. Spindly Figures have a background in film and animation, and they pitched us a UFO crash in the desert, and even wrote a script that we could work towards.
There’s a lot of tiny details in the model, but even then that’s only half the work for a miniature. For the model to really seem real on camera, there’s a lot technical planning to be done about lighting, lens choice, and use of smoke or haze. As complicated as it may seem, it often still works out much cheaper than building something at scale.
Many films might nowadays use digital VFX, because it can be cheaper still than using miniatures, but the handcrafted magic of a real miniature is irreplaceable.
– Jim Fishwick
Script written by Anthony Lucas to help inspire the model
EXT. MOJAVE DESERT - DAY
At a lonely FARMHOUSE amidst a rocky landscape...
A damaged FLYING SAUCER has CRASHED, crumpling the Farmhouse’s fragile wooden structure like matchsticks. The water tank lists to one side... telegraph poles overturned... DEBRIS far and wide.
A BLACKENED GOUGE in the desert makes a furrow to where the Saucer has slid to an untimely stop. The ground is still HOT.
EXT. REAR VIEW OF SAUCER -- MOJAVE DESERT - DAY
From the rearside view of the crashed saucer a HATCHWAY is open, a green light emanates inside. SOMETHING has disembarked... footprints left in desert lead to the Farmhouse.
INT. WRECKED FARMHOUSE - DAY
In the darkened interior we GLIMPSE a shape moving between smashed timbers and blackened framework walls... a SHAPE that is all wrong - ALIEN - three bent backwards legs, a swollen head and gangling arms that hang like some dead vine.
The Alien is gone in an instant hiding behind the ruin of what was once a living room. As we wait for another sighting... We hear an unearthly CHIRRUP.
And it won’t stop.
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Collection
Not in ACMI's collection
On display until
16 February 2031
ACMI: Gallery 1
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
P182843
Curatorial section
The Story of the Moving Image → Moving Worlds → MW-02. Set Design → MW-02-C05
Measurements
50 x 2275 x 1250mm
Object Types
3D Object
Exhibition Prop