Practical effects

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…

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

godzilla

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.

How your movie magic is made.

While working on a feature film called The Grind, filmmaker Vashi Nedomansky had to come up with a way to shoot a flashback scene, complete with Humvee,

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

This is the alien from the thing (1982 version) interesting fact: it can take anyones dna and transform into them, making it really hard to tell who is human and who isnt!

While I am not a fan of the Star Wars prequels, there was some darn fine miniature work done on the three films. A thread over at the Jedi Council Forums, while old, has many behind-the-scenes photos that I have not seen before, so I decided to toss it up here. Give it a look - there are also many shots of the sets as well. The photos in the middle below are of the crowd that watches the pod race on Tattooine. The seated figures are made from colored Q-Tip cotton swabs that would move when…