extensively, particularly on the flying butresses that rise up on each side if the tower. The core of the pyramid was composed of polystyrene and plastic patterns cast in clear polyester, backed with acrylic sheets cut to size. Internal lighting for the pyramid me from florescent tubes built into the model,shining through thousands of holes scraped at random in the painted plastic panels.Additional lighting on the towers atop the structure were axial lights; “Axial lights were developed primarily for illuminating liquid crystal display watches” (Cinefex, p.17). An oversized section of

the pyramid was built for the close-ups needed for the film’s opening fly-by. The photograph was double exposed to show the computer-controlled camera movement, in this case an upward tilt. The model was four feet high, five feet wide, and included several working lifts, which included three inch tall cars. Since the fly-bys required the camera to‘see’ into specific offices, two tiny rooms were built and matched to the full-scale sets. These miniature rooms included one-quarter-inch tall figures and tiny ceiling fans.

       Unlike the pyramid, the ‘Hades’ landscape had to be lit using fiber optics. “Holes were drilled in the Plexiglas base of the model and the fiber optics were threaded up from beneath the table and positioned behind the etched-metal grids, with just the tip of the fiber to be the camera” (Ibid). Initially planned to be between
“fifteen or eighteen feet wide”(Cinefex, p. 17), the Hades landscape was set up as a forced perspective model, but Ridley Scott and Douglas Trumbull had other ideas, “Ridley and Doug didn’t want to be tied to a single point of view. So we then changed it [Hades]over to a diminishing perspective - the difference being that the forced perspective model could be shot from only one point of view,whereas the diminishing perspective one would be suitable from a general camera angle” (Cinefex,p. 18)

       The turret-shaped police headquarters building and its ancillary buildings were influenced by the science fiction film Metropolis (1926, Fritz Lang).