I have started construction planning on Rear Window and immediately panicked. I have plenty of plans that are available in a book on Hitchcock’s architecture and they have given me some nice details that it would have been hard to figure out.
BUT…
The scene is just too big to fit in our allocated space (36 inches wide by 24 inches deep) and the scale we use (1/12th) makes me have to give the rooms 8 inches minimum depth (the width of two twin beds and a night table as in Thorwald’s bedroom:
Remember that these are old-fashioned Greenwich Village railroad (or shotgun) apartments that have tiny rooms in a row. When I did a mockup of them, they resembled a doll’s house!!!
And they are way too close, unless you were already looking through binoculars at them!
Hmmm, I could make a mask for the viewing window that simulates the round view of the binoculars or, could have a set of weak binoculars hanging at the window for people to use to get a closer look!
At any rate, Hitchcock made each of the windows in Rear Window look like a mini movie and so I am going to play with that idea. Instead of the apartments merely being photorealistic, I want them to look like mini-movie sets. All of them have minimal furniture and accessories (most of which I have already purchased so I can’t back out now) and memorable actions.
Panic still? Yes, but at least I am not falling out of the Rear Window just yet!
Anthropology of the World's Fairs 