visiting the Museum of the Moving Image was a fascinating experience. getting to see special effects work, set design, costumes and more up close was pretty unforgettable. the Giant-Zoetrope-Thing was impressive, and seeing the progression of the television set over time was cool too. one part of the tour that really stuck out to me, though, was seeing how set designers often make to-scale 3D models of sets.
i’ve always figured that a lot of thought goes into set design, determining what will allow for certain lighting and camera placement, or where actors will enter and exit. any real space (i.e. not a set in a studio with three walls and no ceiling) provides challenges of its own, of course. how will you fit lights and camera and sound equipment in a small, enclosed space, for instance? what camera angles will even be physically possible to achieve based on the shape of the room? will the shape and material of the walls reflect too much light?
but it didn’t occur to me just how common it is to build set models. it certainly makes sense, and allows everyone involved in production—the director, the writers, the actors, the light and sound and camera operators—to make decisions ahead of time, to understand if and how the space will work to make the vision a reality. it takes a lot of time and work to make these models, but they can very well save time and work in the long run by allowing everyone to see potential problems before they arise on the real set. these days, we have sophisticated 3D modeling computer programs and 3D printers that can replace or supplement the task of building set models by hand. a computer render of a set can make any potential complications more immediately apparent, and is easier to adjust than a physical model.
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