scale

Scale is not created by geography but by performance concerns. We are used to seeing cameras flying through space and zooming in to a particular location on earth. Yet, these shots rarely seem to have a sense of scale; they read simply as an effect. Scale comes from the way in which things are shot. One of the reason that Zack Snyder’s Watchmen (2009) looks small despite its big budget sets is that its shots are over-controlled. We never catch inadvertant glimpses of the locations—nothing looks improvisational. We feel locked within a set that seems to exist solely for the sake of the film and never discloses anything beyond it.