I'm gonna be an absolute prick here.

I'd say almost 90% of the 'dio sets' I see make me roll my eyes.

I am a SUCKER to-scale or in-scale stuff. You want to do a set with tanks and etc, frikkin make EVERYTHING around it look to scale. A tank is NOT gonna be 3/4 size of a mountain that we can assume is as big as a ski mountain. I won't FAULT everything because i can use my imagination here and there (BATs bigger than the regular Joes, etc).

Everyone here knows that I'm a sci-fi freak and watch the MAKING-OF all the time. I pay close attention. I KNOW that you can't build a lot of sets without making them modular. It's not necessarily cuz of size, it has to do with taking the shot from different angles. So someone wants to build a building. THye build a 2-3 story building and just cut off a side. That doesn't work for me cuz ANY movie will shoot the specific scene room to room, area to area and they only use the building EXTERIOR for a specific purpose. You want to see the people walking thru a hallway, build a hallway OUT OF SCALE to the rest of the building!

You want reference how to do things? Check out Transformations. Episodes 1 &2 are available thru Lesreh's site! There are corridor sets. A lobby set. Just sets galore. BUT you NEVER see the WHOLE thing, the whole installation, etc. And that's how it should be. Think Aliens. You NEVER see the whole inside of the compound. Think Event Horizon. You NEVER see the whole inside of the ship at once. It's not a cross-section!

So when doing modular, think in film terms. The VIEWER never sees the whole game. That's called MANIPULATION and a lot of the fun of building sets. YOU show what you want. That creates the mystique and the wonder of just how the set was made. And I know, some of you guys have done some GNARLY jobs w/ your 1-shots in terms of set!

This is why I always made my sets so they had removable walls. So I can (ahem) try and get different angles. Let's face it. IF we had our own photostudios, we'd be set. We can set up the table in the middle of the room and move the camera around to get angles. And trust me, angles are huge in that... in that... you can tell a story and never change the posing!

Anyway, I'll shut up. Want to impress me? Build your own USS Flagg so the Thunderwings actually fit to scale.