Is there a particular quality that comes from filming a real-life model?
Oh, absolutely there is! When you shoot a miniature you’re going to get something that you don’t get digitally, and if it’s a high-speed miniature…because we do a lot of action models as well; in The Dark Knight, we did that sequence where the Tumbler crashes and with the garbage truck. That was all an in-camera shot with 1:3 scale models; but you just get a certain randomness that just happens with gravity and inertia, that really you don’t get with digital work. You can program it in and work up particle systems [laughs] and figure out certain code to make something look random, but things that happen accidentally in life just make it look real. And there’s certain textures and certain paint-schemes. Things we do as miniatures just look that much more believable. But I have to say that it really becomes just the right tool for the right job. There are things you can’t do with miniatures, and that’s where the computer can come in, and we try to mix all the techniques so that you nev
