Guy Nacks wrote:Of course, it also helps that that entire shot is hazy as fuck, so it helps disguise whether it's a miniature or not.
In all honesty, the cinematography for the entire live action sequence is amateurish at best and outright terrible at worst. It's like they didn't even bother hiring a DP or renting the most basic Lowel kit.
Well, if those buildings were a miniature set, then someone must have had to have rented lights at some point during the production. Also, I don't know if a lack of a light kit during principle photography is inherently a bad thing. Much of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining was all shot using the available lighting in the hotel, and little to no light kits for the movie, it it looked fantastic. But I do see what you're saying about the amateurish aesthetic of the scene. But seeing as how that amateurish aesthetic was painstakingly carried over into a very carefully choreographed special effects shot involving futuristic sci-fi buildings, I think that the lo-fi look was entirely intentional. And its use reminds me more of Jean Luc Goddard's Frech New Wave film Breathless, which makes sense seeing as how we've discussed in the past that genre's influence on Evangelion's storytelling and shot choices in general. So in the end, I can't say that it was bad, or that I didn't even enjoy it. The LA scene made me very happy, including in its carefully orchestrated lo-fi, French New Wave styles.