Miniatures: The Birth of Narrative Cinema

by May Renault

In 1902, A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la Lune), came from the mind of Georges Méliès, a French film pioneer who drew his inspiration from the works of renowned authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to create the very first science-fiction movie, over six decades before Star Wars.

Now considered one of the best movies of the 20th century by The Village Voice, A Trip to the Moon follows a group of astronomers who fly to the moon where they discover the Selenites, an underground population of lunar inhabitants. It’s a plot that may seem basic to modern movie watchers, but groundbreaking to an audience who had only gone to the cinema to watch 5-minute-long black and white mute clips of guys in absurd situations, or of a train entering the station. Carefully crafted, the film not only displays a new form of storytelling, but does it with impeccable visuals, crafted carefully to illustrate this magic tale of galaxies and stars, and bring the viewer along for a 40-minute-long space voyage.

The set, all hand crafted, of A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès (1902).

So how exactly did Méliès pull that off, in an era lightyears away from Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) and green screens? The answer: miniatures.

Frowned upon by big studios today because of the time and money it takes to create them, model miniatures are the pinnacle of fictional cinema. During an age when real space exploration was unthinkable, Méliès used miniatures to craft the unimaginable, something outside of reality to take the viewer to an alternate realm, pieced together by creative hands and minds. A mantra that lived on, well after him.

If miniature making was never deemed impossible to achieve early on in film, it is because they are made by nothing but condensed human crafting techniques. Some of these skills have been used for centuries and are present in human societies around the globe. They include welding, carpentry, painting, and machining. Although many model and miniature makers do not come from a film background, their talent and technique are essential to the industry.

Miniatures have usually been used to build imaginary worlds, especially as cinema began creating its legacy. Bigger scale movies like Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang brought the first futuristic dystopia to the silver screen, dealing with an extravagant and excessive upper class that thrives in luxury and technology thanks to the underground exploitation of underpaid workers.

At the time, the most expensive film production of all time, Metropolis accomplished this impressive visual feat of oversized buildings and futuristic designs with an ensemble of miniatures.

Carpenters working on the making of the miniatures of Metropolis’ (1928) futuristic city.

In the 1970s, Hollywood filmmakers took miniature use to the next level, creating outer space odysseys that changed the trajectory of cinema forever, the first being Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968.

To think that Star Wars was created with a minimal use of CGI seems unfathomable. However, everything, from the space shots to the planets to the space vessels, was crafted entirely from scratch by human hands and solid materials.

Once the film industry realized that creating whole universes with practical effects—something that had only been possible with animation—was achievable, the sci-fi and later fantasy genres took a turn. Studios specializing in prop-making and practical set elements became prominent. They started multiplying and were commissioned by some of the biggest filmmakers to create all-time classics. Some notable companies known especially for their miniatures include Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) (1975–present), Wētā Workshop (1983–present) and Vision Crew Unlimited (1994–2002).

This new unit in the industry led to the making of a generation of now-iconic films, including Blade Runner (1982), Alien (1979), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

Miniature for Star Wars (1977) ©Industrial Light and Magic

In 1993, the film industry was shaken again when another revolutionary feature made its debut: Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.

Computers and digital technologies were going through groundbreaking changes, becoming a new normal in people’s daily lives, and making their way into movies. While it was not the founder of this new technique, Jurassic Park became the first film to heavily rely on CGI and be remembered for it, which changed the trajectory of film as well as the art behind miniature making.

The change was, of course, not immediate. For many years, big productions kept using the newly developed CGI in post production, but the filming sets were still full of practical effects. While Jurassic Park was a precursor to VFX as we know them today, some of the dinosaurs on set were handmade animatronics by ILM, the company founded by George Lucas, who handled all the miniature and practical effect work on the Star Wars saga.

Another notable example of this transition is The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003). While they were some of the first movies to use motion capture, the teams of Wētā Workshop put a lot of effort into the details of this fantasy universe. In Lord of the Rings, all of the buildings, towns, and cities are hand-crafted miniatures and “bigatures” (the life-sized version of miniatures), which may be why they visually hold up so well today.

Miniature of Rivendell for The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) ©Wētā Workshop

Over the last two decades, movies have almost entirely turned to CGI use. Miniatures look great but are costly to production studios:, shooting them takes longer and they have to pay the crew for extra hours. This has unfortunately led to the decline of the century-old practice of building miniatures for environmental designs.

But if you keep your eyes open, you’ll notice that some directors, especially on big-budget productions, rely on miniatures for their most central plot devices. Take the cyberpunk city of Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017), for example, or the fortress in Nolan’s Inception (2012), or the ship and tower in Del Toro’s Frankenstein—we can see the art of miniatures live on through our screens and can look forward to more with films like Takashi Yamazaki’s upcoming Godzilla Minus Zero.

Miniatures are an art form as old as cinema itself, and are the reason we get narrative features showcasing worlds on the big screen that make us dream. They shaped what cinema is, taking it to the next level of artistic expression and visual world building. They merge the craftsmanship of many to remind us that filmmaking requires the heart and strength of a village. And above all, they display a material creativity that works like a compass for audiences who are subjected to evermore digitally processed content—a beacon of light so we can remember what started it all.