While we were in Lyon we had the chance to see some amazing places like this old theater in the photo above. We didn’t get many of these places on video so I’m going to share this story with you in photos.
Some of these places were very grand and impressive like this restaurant.
And still others were just very interesting spaces like this attic.
But there is one thing that all of these places have in common that makes them absolutely amazing. If you haven’t guessed it yet let me give you a few more photos to look at. See if you can spot anything unusual in any of them.
Did you see it? It’s not the lack of people, there is a very real reason there isn’t anyone in any of the photos. (And it has nothing to do with our VIP status.)
If these photos have you fooled then you are not alone. Millions of people are tricked by things like this on a daily basis. You can thank Hollywood for that.
Actually, you need to thank Hollywood for that, because these are miniature sets that were used to make films. If you recognized any of the “locations” than you have an amazing eye for detail!
This is the Musée Cinéma et Miniature which is the Museum of Cinema and Miniature of course! It’s shocking how detailed each and every one of these sets is. All of the objects in each one is a miniature as well, take a look:
This one is a little more obvious…
or maybe it was this one …
To be honest we didn’t expect to spend much time in this Museum, but several hours later we had to pull ourselves away to go check on James. They had props, the animatronic alien from “Alien” and full sized sets complete with mannequins in costume. It was the highlight of our visit to Lyon, and I recommend it to anyone who is visiting the city.
I’ll bet you are wondering what these things look like on film. Well, check this out:
That’s Bob Marley’s house. Or at least a miniature of it for the movie. And this is an awesome little grocery store:
You are probably wondering why they would go to this much trouble to build miniatures rather than just find a place to film.
It’s all about the money.
They can build out exactly the space they want for under $100k as a miniature with perfect lighting. Shoot a few scenes and then shoot on a sound stage for the closer shots. OR They could build a life-size building somewhere, make the structure safe, buy/make all of the furnishings, wire it up, etc. then tear it all down when they are done. In the end it’s much less expensive to make the miniature. (The Museum explained it much better than I did, but you get the point.)
I’m going to leave you with a few more images of some props that I thought were pretty cool. I hope you like them too.
