In the process of trying to work out how to do the miniature effects for a music video we will shoot next year, I went back to my field notes on how we made the tower for Amenra’s Salve Mater music video. I wanted to look back on how I approached that process, what worked, and what didn’t.
For every project we tackle, we make a notion-page with different sub-pages covering every aspect of the film, as a way to keep track of everyone’s process, input and notes.
📷 Miro Quinet
I didn’t invent anything new here, but I wanted to share my process and contribute a little bit to the pool of information that allowed me to tackle this process in such a short timescale, and also reflect on what I could have done better and would probably do differently next time.
Early previsualisation
It’s a fairly simple practical effect (and we used it more briefly than we maybe should’ve) but still a large chunk of planning, thinking, building and painting was required to get it ready for the screen.
I will share some of our creative thought processes, as well as the practical building methods, materials, machine settings, and so on. This post is mostly about the making of the miniature itself (and visual considerations such as perspective and scale), the shooting process is included briefly but I might expand on this in a later post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDcKPlRHKQo
Productionally, this project was a typical music video situation. Big idea, little time and equal budget. Our idea was to make a high-concept video that lent some ideas and imagery from early 20th century stage design as well as 19th century fantasy and re-imagined medieval folklore and themes.
Early on we decided we weren’t going to shoot on any physical locations, but rather we’d lean into a full studio shoot (LITES in Vilvoorde). With our contrasty black-and-white visual look we thought we’d get away with a theatre-esque creative direction which allowed us to leave a lot of space between the gaps.
Walls could be broken-up panels, costumes could thread the line between believable and made-up and we decided a miniature could be interesting to include as well. Everything had to be physical and textured in nature.
The video takes place inside a tower, which our characters gradually scale. It’s mostly unclear where they are and what they exactly do, what was more important was to try and convey a sense of atmosphere and theme. Practically there were ideas of staircases, doors, walls and the tower to be made as miniatures.
3D printed staircase
Miniature wall sections