sorry to necro-post, but i'm new, and just stumbled across this.That makes a lot of sense... I wasn't aware of just how popular the 1/350 scale was for other types of models.
Thanks.![]()
it is more or less irrelevant now due to everything being CG, but it goes back to the days of physical models used for shooting.
"build em around 3 feet, any smaller and it just looks small, any larger and it just costs too much"
Well, I dunno about that. While the original concept model of the Enterprise was 33" the one built for production photography was about 11 feet long. The Botany Bay was IIRC around 4'. The Enterprise for TMP was about 5' long. The V-ger spacecraft was over 50' long. So long they couldn't photograph both ends of it at the same time. E-D was at least two different models, 4' and the earlier 6'. The DS9 model was IIRC around 13' in diameter. Voyager was something like 5' long. And not just Trek. The "usual" Millennium Falcon was 5' wide (though smaller ones were built too for longer shots). The ISD was about 4' long. Princess Leia's blockade runner was over 6' long. The podracers from Episode I were also over 6' long (I've seen all these Star Wars models in person at a traveling exhibit at OMSI here in Portland a few years ago. Took about 1,500 pics.) Don't even get me started about Lord of the Rings and King Kong or any other WETA Workshop project. So most photographic models are considerably larger than 3'. Those smaller are really the exceptions.
*End rant mode*
Sorry about that. I've been obsessed with movie models since I was a wee lad so i just couldn't contain myself.

--Alex