I have recently been obsessed with miniature models in Hollywood movies, mostly watching behind the scene footage from the piercefilm production youtube channel.
The behind-the-scenes footage surprised me because I did not understand how many miniatures Hollywood used. In my mind, those miniatures were real places, full-scale, and awe-inspiring. The visual effect magic worked on me, and I believed. I remember looking around Los Angeles the first time I visited the city, wondering, “Where are all those movie locations?”
I have since realized that while those locations exist in the minds and hearts of audiences worldwide, they are not physical locations.
But after watching hours of miniature special effects footage, a switch flipped in my mind. Suddenly, I could see things I looked at in real life as miniatures. Cars could fit in my hand, houses were cardboard cutouts, and trees were twigs. I imagined behind-the-scenes teams of model builders constructing the world around me. It was a strange experience.
But while the world looked like models, I noticed something else; I could interact with those models with much more freedom than I could with how I imagined the real world, despite both views being in my imagination.
I want you to try a mental experiment. Imagine the home you know best. Maybe it is where you currently live or a childhood abode. You probably know it well enough that you could navigate it in the dark. You can feel your way through that memory.
Now, mentally, go outside your home and walk around it. Can you also fly around it mentally? For me, flying takes a little bit more effort, almost like I have to energize my imagination.
Now, pick up your home and spin it around. Can you feel the resistance? I have to justify this action much more than flying around. Maybe I mentally bring in a crane or an earth mover. Perhaps I have to disable gravity. I can do it, but I have to find an excuse. What’s strange is that I can do this with buildings in my neighborhood that I do not know well. They are just like paper cutouts. But a structure I know resists flippant manipulation in my imagination. All my memories of the place tie that image to realistic behavior.
Now, rewind the home back to the starting position.
This time, create a home model that fits your hand, like a diorama. It should look just like the real thing. It can even have a miniature interior with all the interior decorations, furniture, and paint colors.
Now spin your home model in your mind. Make it the size of a monopoly house. Turn it upside down. Make copies of it and set them in a row. Make it bigger. Change the color. Add a turret to the model. Give it tank treads.
Do you feel less resistance to these mental actions? I notice it is significantly easier to manipulate a model in my imagination than to imagine the actual location. The effect is dramatic for me. It’s not hard to put tank treads on my model, but deciding what kind of treads is more challenging. I decided to go with the NASA crawler-transporter style ones.
It feels like there is a defense mechanism in my imagination. If I imagine a real place I know, there is resistance to doing impossible things. But if I change it to a model that looks just like the actual place, I suddenly feel much less resistance. I can easily imagine things with a model requiring much more effort for ‘real’ objects. I think there is weight to our memories and physics to our imagination, and making models mentally might be a fun tool to use and explore.
Daniel N. Blair 