Making a model town

[Egon Spengler]

I was wondering if anyone here has built a model town, complete with a lake, trees, etc. I'm talking about something that can be filmed from above and look realistic.

I'm interested in hearing ideas on building a town model practically from scratch or using existing model buildings to work with/ mod.

I have a fantastic idea I'm throwing around in my head and any general advice on this sort of thing would be wonderful.

Thanks.

 

[knightdriver2001]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DarkLordVader @ May 12 2006, 11:39 PM) [snapback]1243387[/snapback]</div>

I was wondering if anyone here has built a model town, complete with a lake, trees, etc. I'm talking about something that can be filmed from above and look realistic.

I'm interested in hearing ideas on building a town model practically from scratch or using existing model buildings to work with/ mod.

I have a fantastic idea I'm throwing around in my head and any general advice on this sort of thing would be wonderful.

Thanks.
[/b]

Funny,

Thats what i do for a living. I am the product designer for a model railroad comapny and my job is
building scaled wooden structure kits. All wood, laser cut. I have been doing them in the following scales:
1:166 - 1:87 - 1:64 - 1:48 I can do them in other sizes depending on what one is looking for as well.

You can see them here on our companies site:

http://www.branchline-trains.com/laserart/intro.htm

Curious as to what idea's you had in mind? Whatcha working on?

 

[Rhett J Martin]

I built one once, and then I said this guys name three times and ended up in the model.
His comments about the model once I got out of it were less than clean.
After that, he tried killing the family living in my house, including the really hot goth chick . . . .









Sorry, couldn't help it . . . . .

 

[clancampbell]

Were you forced to sing about tallying banannas?

 

[Darth Domain]

[
Thats what i do for a living. I am the product designer for a model railroad comapny and my job is
building scaled wooden structure kits. All wood, laser cut. I have been doing them in the following scales:
1:166 - 1:87 - 1:64 - 1:48 I can do them in other sizes depending on what one is looking for as well.

You can see them here on our companies site:

http://www.branchline-trains.com/laserart/intro.htm

Curious as to what idea's you had in mind? Whatcha working on?
[/quote]
I just checked yout site, although i am not a model enthusiast, those strutures looked convincing, nice work.

 

[cobywan]

We have a couple of RR guys at work that do very convincing work. The structure models that one guys does comes in a kit that looks like a miniatue lumber yard. Really neat stuff.

 

[CaptCBoard]

DLV-

What you build will depend on what you want to see in the shot or shots. If this is like the view from a chopper, you can probably get away with using N-scale buildings. There are tons of them available both built and in kit-form. The same thing goes for HO-scale, but the price goes up. You can also use different scales for different shots-- one model does not have to be built to handle all the shots. If you need to use a wide shot of the whole area to establish where you are, do something in a small scale. Then make other models for closer shots. They don't need to be as large because you are looking at a smaller section of the overall model in the wide shot, so you can use larger buildings, better detailing.

Finally, here's a trick I've used many times when I was supervising FX models: Build the model in sections and mount them vertically when you are ready to film. This way you don't need to hang anything over the model, the camera and lights can just stand on the floor. This also works for shooting the model outdoors, but you have to watch out for wind.

If you want advice specific to what you have planned, email me. There are a LOT of other tricks to get this kind of shot and most of them involve cutting costs.

Scott
AtomicCity@gmail.com

 

[Egon Spengler]

<div class='quotetop'>(CaptCBoard @ May 14 2006, 04:14 AM) [snapback]1243975[/snapback]</div>

DLV-

What you build will depend on what you want to see in the shot or shots. If this is like the view from a chopper, you can probably get away with using N-scale buildings. There are tons of them available both built and in kit-form. The same thing goes for HO-scale, but the price goes up. You can also use different scales for different shots-- one model does not have to be built to handle all the shots. If you need to use a wide shot of the whole area to establish where you are, do something in a small scale. Then make other models for closer shots. They don't need to be as large because you are looking at a smaller section of the overall model in the wide shot, so you can use larger buildings, better detailing.

Finally, here's a trick I've used many times when I was supervising FX models: Build the model in sections and mount them vertically when you are ready to film. This way you don't need to hang anything over the model, the camera and lights can just stand on the floor. This also works for shooting the model outdoors, but you have to watch out for wind.

If you want advice specific to what you have planned, email me. There are a LOT of other tricks to get this kind of shot and most of them involve cutting costs.

Scott
AtomicCity@gmail.com
[/b]

Wow. Great advice. I love the idea of mounting the model vertically I'll post more but theres a lot going on here at home so it'll have to wait until later.

Thanks.

 

[Egon Spengler]

I'd like to make a model town for filming.

I'd like to make a large version that can be taken apart and mounted at different angles for different shots of locations in the town as well. I plan on using the model town for photos and video.

I was wondering, what's the best way to begin building this town? How do I figure out the scale?

Say it was being based off a 'SIMS' town. What would I use to figure out the scale to use? How much detail will I need for it to look good? I guess a hell of a lot on not much, depending on how close I want to film the town huh?

It might be easier if I picked a model train town building scale perhaps and went with that? The problem with that is that the buildings will never look dead on accurate to what I want to create. I'm probably going to have to scratch build the buildings. I suppose I can get kits and cut and modify them to get things to be a bit more accurate. Hm

Any help, advice or thoughts on this randomness would be nice

Thanks.

 

[knightdriver2001]

Depending on what scale your seeking, I work as a designer for a model railroad
company the specializes in laser cut wooden structure kits.

You can see some of them here.

http://www.branchline-trains.com/laserart/intro.htm

We have done these in three or 4 scales so far.

1:48 - O scale

1:87 - HO scale

1:160 - N scale

Maybe I can give you some pointers or help if needed, just let me know.

 

[Don Jarr]

Hi m8

I have made a few custom buildings in my time, and found the larger the scale the better they look when filmed. I had to make a few space aged buildings for a short film a guy was making, and used star wars figures for a scale base. HO scale which is the most common railway size, looks great on big layouts you see at these train shows, but for close up filming they lack the ability to add very fine detail.

As for construction, depending on how many you want to do, and how much time you are prepared to put into it, to how good they will look. The last house model I made was for a present, and it was a copy of the house the girl lived in prior to moving overseas. I built it as per you would a proper house, using those little clay bricks and added proper floor joists and beams, as you would when building a house. I even put proper slates on the roof which took ages to cut up.

So your best bet is sit down and draw a town plan, then decide what sort of buildings you want in it, and how big they should be. Also is this to be current building designs, old fashion or in the future. Old fashion looks the best as the buildings have far more character. Current are ok, but future are the easiest, as they havenÂ’t been built yet, so you are not constrained by anything.

As for working out scale, for instance a 4” high star wars figure of Han Solo would be six foot in real life, so working to scale a foot would be .66 inches.

Don

 

[CaptCBoard]

For realism, the best rule to go by for scale is "the bigger the better". I've built tons of buildings for movies, everything from 1:4 scale (one-quarter actual size) to 1:12 scale to all the model railroad scales. You have to several criteria to figure out what you need.

First, are you shooting day or night. If it is night only, you have to go large to achieve depth-of-field. The advantage of shooting at night is you don't need as much detail. From a distance, cardboard boxes with nicely crafted windows will work very well and you only need to detail the buildings in the foreground. With a day shoot, everything needs to have nice detail, but the farther away from camera, texture and color is all you're going to see.

Second, are you trying to achieve realism. If you don't mind the models looking like models, you can get away with less detail and can go as small as you feel comfortable with. If you are trying for realism, you need to pay attention to the details. You also need to pay attention to where you put the camera. The lower the better, or in the case of 1:12 scale or larger, a scale eye-level needs to be used.

Your best scales to use are 1:24, 1:18 and 1:12. This is because cars are easily available, though in the case of 1:12 the real advantage is all the doll-house stuff that is available. As an example, here is a shot of some work I did at 1:24 scale:

Its a poor photo and cropped. This was a 'late-night' shot and the diner was not lit, but it had a full interior.

Hope this helps. Contact me by email (not PM) if you have any other questions.

Scott
CaptCBoard@AOL.com

 

[Ramiel]

I always loved this kind of works
I hope you luck DarkLordVader (BTW this "set" will be used for a Silent Hill fan-film...? You know, your avatar and previous posts... ), and also a big "thank you" to CaptCBoard for the info

 

[Howard]

Scott.

:eek

That's the 'Hold your Fire' set?...
You built that?

Howard.

 

[CaptCBoard]

Indeed.

Scott

 

[Walter]

I am looking at building a 1:48 city street facade and have a few Q's:

1. Does anyone have a source for city building blueprints? I would like to use existing blueprints as a base and then modify them to fit my 'vision.'

2. Is there a really good source for lighting? I am looking to add a lot of lamp posts and window illumination, so lighting sources and suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bryan

changed to 1:48... just noticed I put the wrong scale down.