This is really helpful to visualize what's going on on set, but when I'm watching, I envision the armory and airlock as directly under the ops deck rather than offset. Goes to the directorial skills as well as the set-design brilliance I imagine, since if you slid the "first" floor under the second, you'd have that ladder going into the airlock :D
I agree...and what you've described is pretty much what I went for with the Lego 'Roci' I built....adjusting the angle of the ladder and adjusting its location via the Command Deck...seemed like a good work-around for the interior. I'll get more pics up in the next few days. :) Hope you have an Awesome Weekend. :D
While fans of The Expanse (myself included) laud the show as one of the most accurate representations of actual space science, we also recognize that it is a work of speculative science fiction. We accept some inaccuracies and flights of fancy such as the Protomolecule, the Epstein Drive, and roomy interiors in order to allow for more narrative freedom. I agree than the Rocinante's deck seems bigger than the actual exterior. But Season 4 showed just how big the Roci is up close, making it easy for me to reconcile the discrepancy in my mind.
@@EdGeLV Someone asked about why the Battle of Helm's Deep in LotR was so well lit, and the answer was "the light came from the same place as the music"
@@EdGeLV The sound effects are just part of the score :). Jokes aside, it's not like space has sound in-universe, they show it multiple times, one example being when they touch helmets to hear each other. The sound effects are for the viewer. There is no rule in filmmaking that says that the sound has to come from where the camera is.
It's not even about the spaces being bigger. They would fit if they were stacked as they are meant to be. It's about actually filming a show and creating a manageable set on a budget.
Even though the cameras used today are much smaller than the ones used in the original Star Trek the sets still need to be big enough to allow the camera(s) to follow the scene. Back to Star Trek as an example the bridge set was about twice as large as it would be if it didn't have to accommodate cameras. We have to accept that indoor sets will have to be bigger than they would be in reality to allow filming even if they cameras are digital.
What bothers me more with the sizing: In every scene you see the crew on the outside of the ship, or walking out the airlock, the ship is way to small in comparison. The size is off by a lot. The main airlock for example takes all the available space in the model/ship. When you think about all the space the PDCs would take up, or all the other tech and systems, it's quite obvious that there needs to be at least 1/3 more ship. Always found it quite odd, since everything else in the show is pretty accurate and to scale.
Same. Couldn't this have been resolves by simply making the main airlock half the size it is when seen on the exterior? If anything, the exterior of the ship should look excessively big to house the systems and structures for the ship to be secure and battle-ready.
That reveal of turning from the ‘front’ to the ‘side’ view really blew my mind when I saw it on your livestream! The interior on the show always felt allot bigger than it sounded in the books, especially so after I saw the actual scale of the Roci in your other video, so it made so much sense to see how it all fit together.
On the video game Space Engineers, I once made an Expanse-inspired ship to roughly the scale of a Corvette Class, and I can tell you the interior was cramped, borderline claustrophobic. Definitely nothing like the show set.
There are enough disconnect between shots of the airlock and the Ops Deck that it doesn't break the illusion of it not fitting into the ship. I always thought the armory is directly under Ops in universe anyway. Most of the time, these interior being bigger issues only arise in video games where you can directly run around inside and outside of the ship/location. Look at the hero ship from Mass Effect Andromeda, the inside layout has a lot of stuff that would protrude outside of the ship. The Normandy has similar issues, but the general shape still fits the silhouette of the ship and there are less opportunity to directly run around and on top of the exterior of the ship, helping to preserve the illusion of scale.
I forget if there's a word for this, but video games are actually perfectly capable of having geometries that ditch some of the real-life constraints, and you can have a room that is bigger on the inside once you enter it.
@@FlyNAA recently, in the indie scene, there’s been a lot of work towards non-Euclidean geometry games, which might be what you’re thinking of. Examples include hallways that shrink the occupants at the other end, rooms that are bigger inside than out, and doors that lead to the wrong place.
On one hand things like this (the warthog run in the pillar of autumn *cough*) drive me up the wall as a lore nut. On the other hand as an artist and writer I completely understand these sorts of limitations and design inconsistencies come up based on the media you are using. I've always loved the set design on this show, particularly for the roci.
I kinda wished they just rented out a grain silo and built the sets in that. Had that Serenity kind of feel of being able to walk 9or in this case climb) across the entire fictional ship was amazing for the show and the fans trying to understand the ship.
I completely accept this explanation for something that always kind of bugged me, but not seriously enough to impact my enjoyment of the show. Thank you!
I have to say that I really enjoyed this Video Chris...especially considering I was talking about Exterior/Interior scale issues with someone earlier today....Great work! ...as well as Fantastic timing! Hope you have a great weekend. :D
This is precisely what I needed-and I didn’t even know it! In the end I’m okay with giving up an interior that matches the exterior for the opportunities it presents for filming. A good DP can tell a marvelous tale in just a few well placed angles, well timed pans, etc.
I always thought it was a weird choice to have that second ladder. they could have spun the airlock 189* around the ladder so that it opened directly under the pilot. if they also swapped it for a true vertical ladder, it would also make the ship feel more like a "stack" because it wouln't stop in the armory
As long as you make it look like it COULD fit, it's all good. I never had a doubt that each environment was one of a few tiny rooms stacked on top of each other vertically. The only thing was the flight deck looking a little bit too long for the section of the ship, but it was more of an "aspect ratio" thing and it never really bothered me
While I am a stickler for scaling in ships, I have to admit that there were so many good things going on in the scenes that I can comfortably dismiss the TARDIS technology that they secretly employed on the Roci. I have not read the books, so half the time I'm too busy wondering if Amos would murder the crew to be bothered with scaling details :)
Yeah. Thats pretty much a common issue with most exterior/interior layouts of various crafts in shows, movies and games. The interior never fully match up with the design of the exterior without rearranging it a little.
I think it would be a lot closer (though not completely) if the ladder near the ops deck holotable was removed and the whole lower deck moved so that the other ops deck ladder led to the armory. Having visited the set myself, it really doesn't matter to me that it's 'bigger on the inside'. It's just so cool!
Amazing insight into your work. But I’d like to wipe it from my memory as the illusion of filming makes the decks look stacked like the art work that shows the deck by deck plan It’s a bit like finding out Santa’s sleigh is powered on methalox and not fairy dust (yes I know Santa doesn’t exist!) Still, excellent stuff as always. In my mind those decks all fit within the exterior visuals and that keeps me happy!
I always wondered about this. I would watch scenes where the cast was walking down corridors in the Rocinante and think: "There is no way that corridor fits in the ship as shown by the outside model. I've seen some deck plans where they do just as you mentioned, stacking each part of the set vertically to make them fit. The authors of the books themselves contributed to one such set. They managed to keep the aesthetic of the ship, but the areas were much tighter, with no corridors to speak of. Most of the decks were connected by a central ladder rather than offset stairwells.
I think the scale is just wrong. Scale down the flight deck set to fit inside, dont forget, the ROCI also has TWO HULLS. I think its much bigger than your original set. There may be an issue with the airlock door size appearance from the show vs the model, but cmon, this thing is HUGE, with space between hulls for crew members to work? Scale down your flight deck to fit inside and fudge it up against the hallway with the airlock door. THEN see how the other decks play out. Youll have much more room for the double hull and all the workings of a spaceship that would add to all that space.
I don't see why this is a bad thing, I'd love to see an expanse-doctor who cross over with ships that are bigger on the inside. Jokes aside, I was kind of always aware of this but just imagined it being the same thing, just like compacted so everything is just a like a metre or two closer together, and the armoury and airlock sort of flipped around to be underneath ops
All they had to do was make that door smaller. I think it was season 4 when I realized just how small the ship was. The Millenium Falcon is an uncomfortably tiny ship, yet seems to have more room than the TV roci.
This is all good reasons for why the show should have been entirely CG including the actors. They could have motion captured the actors and it would have given the directors and writers a lot more freedom. Like Starship Troopers: The Roughnecks
The CAD model of the set (at 2:20), are these yours or something available somewhere? Does anyone know if there's a decent model of the Roci's decks somewhere? Great video, bang on about the practicalities of filming v. FX models. Thanks!
We see this all the time in movies and TV shows. Almost every airplane cockpit is 2.5 to 3 times larger than in real life. Cockpits tend to be cramped and cluttered leaving no room for cameras or lights, let alone the ventilation needed under those lights. And sometimes they are just outright ridiculous like in Start Trek Discovery where every corridor is 25 to 30 feet wide. Expanse did a pretty good job all things considered, but I thought that the CGI model was just too small by far, especially when you allow for the inter-hull space shown in one episode.
actually it did not answer the question I came here with. Why was the model not build in a way, that the Set would have fit into it? The exterior did not have to be that slim.
Because the set and the exterior were developed at the same time. VFX is handled by outside vendors. VFX vendors don't build models so sets can fit in it. In TV, we design sets that look good and fit the script. We don't build sets to fit inside VFX models that are in development. th-cam.com/video/D7d5tEZpGH4/w-d-xo.html
@@chrisdanelon I know I'm late to the party, but... I'm convinced the set was built thinking the Rocinante would be lying on its belly (like spaceships have always been depicted in movies and such). The reason I believe this, is that the inside walls of the set, follow the outside form of the cgi model when laid down flat on its belly. I guess there was a planning error along the way, but it's obviously just a personal conspiracy theory. Anyway, nice video and I really appreciated the animations of both, the inside and the outside of the Rocinante.
We get the set needs to have a size in order to be able to film and put cameras arround and so.. The question then is why not make the Roci bigger so they would fit .. Ironically the cargo bay set seems correct in size.. and the galley too.. the work shop however...
The galley has connecting corridors that would stick out of the ship. Also by making the roci bigger you would also have to make the donnager bigger so I'm not sure how that would work. Hindsight 20/20. In TV and film quite often sets don't exactly 'fit' in exteriors.
@@chrisdanelon absolutelly.. the Millenium falcon set for example wouldnt fit in the canon size of the ship.. and then there is the ethernal discussion of the Klingon bird of prey size vs interior sets. And then there is the Starbug from Red Dward wich became a recurring theme / joke how it went from a medium shuttle to a ship with 3 decks and "miles of corridors" XD
@@sparrowlt I know how common it is in scifi, but people have been asking for years about a 'roci cross section' so I felt like I had to make this video 😄
It’s not a tin can it’s multi hulled with space to walk between the walls. your model didn’t account for that space, where the airlock and pdc’s wouldn’t poke through the ships interior
This ship is the 1st one I am going to build myself just out of scrap parts, I have a brother with a 3D printer & knows how to use it for any of the specific bits I can't craft myself, wish me luck.
Why would the set need to fit into the model? It's THE SET, it's made to film the show, it needs to feel right, it doesn't need to be geometrically correct. And it does it's job really well.
I doesn't need to fit, however, some fans of the show think it does. This was a light hearted way of explaining how in the film biz works. We don't build sets to fit in VFX exterior spaceships (especially when they are still in development).
So the whole flight deck and ops deck is level higher than than the airlock right. If so, then there just wee little space above the airlock that's visible in the exterior model. Was that a mistake, why make the airlock so high, if everything was to be above it?
It's not a mistake its just the way it was designed. We are making a TV show not building actual space ships. Also, when we built the Roci sets the exterior VFX model was not finished.
I feel it is a bit of a let-down to flunk the architecture, after getting so many other things right. I understand, that you cannot build the skyscraper, but you could have built elevators/stairs and do a connecting shot, e.g. climbing up, cut, then arriving from the bottom in the next level, like they did with the staircase in The big bang theory. They only had one elevator door and half a staircase up and down and then shot the stairclimbing over several levels by using the same elevator door with a different sign on every time.
The width of the Roci exterior is about the size of the Airlock so it wouldn't make a difference. Also, they housed electronic panels and other stuff under the ops deck.
I suspected this was the case. Sorry to see it confirmed though. For a show that supposedly takes its physics seriously, it breaks them in some pretty blatant ways.
Okay, you've explained why the set couldn't be altered to fit the exterior VFX model, but that leaves open the question of why the exterior VFX model couldn't be modified to fit the set.
All the VFX are made by external vendors and sometimes there is a disconnect between them and the production. Also making the sets fit in a VFX model is a VERY low priority for the production.
well, in the book is is described as stacked floors - just like you see in the game I *think* that the boys based the books on (Space Opera). That the TV folks fudged some things the Rossi is the absolutely LEAST of their sins. Good lord, Season six was disgraceful.
You know the medbay, crew quarters, ops deck, airlock, between the hauls, the cargobay, machine shop, and every other roci set cannot fit in the ship. When I overlaid the only sets were airlock, ops, and flight which is not every set and those barely fit...
"star trek syndrome" unfortunately has nothing to do with most of what you just said &more to do with your last few words &set builder incompetence (actually the showrunners/lineproducers fault set builders just do as they're told) You can easily plan out something like this accurately &keep it within build/shoot dynamic parameters if you plan it out properly then keep a record of the proportion dimensions &adhere to them.. unfortunately the sets are built before a CG model is finished &the sets aren't built to any common sense standard of what the ship WOULD look like So when the models finalised it's always kaka This is why every &I do mean EVERY ship in star trek makes zero sense proportion wise.. &is something this hapless nerds have been struggling to invent back bending justifications for for decades for instance all the problems in this piece are easily solved by making the roci 55-60 meters.. but this (to whomsoever wrote it) betrays the "little ship" doctrine/aesthetic somehow I just always thought (especially when it landed on ilus) the cg model is WAY too small.. even for the numbers given the crew to ship size differential whenever they were on its surface doing repairs etc was also usually off There's a multitude of reasons for this of course from incompetence to three diff CG teams handling models can easily lead to things like.. but the biggest cause is the showrunner didn't care enough The level of scrutiny the rest of the physics in the show came under shows they have the ability to make sure such minute details are 100% accurate.. but they decided to prioritize other elements. It is what it is.
Ahh since it is so easy how many TV shows and movies have you worked on? The film industry is a wild and crazy industry. Getting the sets ready for camera quickly within budget is a huge challenge. The VFX is done out of house and it is very difficult to get multiple departments to be on the same page for something as petty as it HAS to fit in the exterior model. Also things constantly change in the film biz. It really is petty because we don't design sets to fit in VFX models. We design sets to fit the script and the directors/crew needs. Also the show runner has much bigger fish to fry like trying to keep the show afloat rather than if a set fits in a VFX model.
@@ericssmith2014 when that person say "it's easy enough to plan these things out" clearly stated from someone who has never spent a single day in the film industry.
If you liked this check out my video on how big the Roci is: th-cam.com/video/BBkZ5gnPXPo/w-d-xo.html
This is really helpful to visualize what's going on on set, but when I'm watching, I envision the armory and airlock as directly under the ops deck rather than offset. Goes to the directorial skills as well as the set-design brilliance I imagine, since if you slid the "first" floor under the second, you'd have that ladder going into the airlock :D
I agree...and what you've described is pretty much what I went for with the Lego 'Roci' I built....adjusting the angle of the ladder and adjusting its location via the Command Deck...seemed like a good work-around for the interior.
I'll get more pics up in the next few days. :)
Hope you have an Awesome Weekend. :D
Agreed. In the books the floors are all on top of each other. The offset nature I always just assumed was a sacrifice to filming practically.
@@edwardkane7361 hey, is there a place where you share the pics of your moc?
While fans of The Expanse (myself included) laud the show as one of the most accurate representations of actual space science, we also recognize that it is a work of speculative science fiction. We accept some inaccuracies and flights of fancy such as the Protomolecule, the Epstein Drive, and roomy interiors in order to allow for more narrative freedom. I agree than the Rocinante's deck seems bigger than the actual exterior. But Season 4 showed just how big the Roci is up close, making it easy for me to reconcile the discrepancy in my mind.
If torpedos and pdc's made no sound the battle scenes would be very dull after a while :(
@@EdGeLV Someone asked about why the Battle of Helm's Deep in LotR was so well lit, and the answer was "the light came from the same place as the music"
@@EdGeLV The sound effects are just part of the score :). Jokes aside, it's not like space has sound in-universe, they show it multiple times, one example being when they touch helmets to hear each other. The sound effects are for the viewer. There is no rule in filmmaking that says that the sound has to come from where the camera is.
It's not even about the spaces being bigger. They would fit if they were stacked as they are meant to be. It's about actually filming a show and creating a manageable set on a budget.
Even though the cameras used today are much smaller than the ones used in the original Star Trek the sets still need to be big enough to allow the camera(s) to follow the scene. Back to Star Trek as an example the bridge set was about twice as large as it would be if it didn't have to accommodate cameras. We have to accept that indoor sets will have to be bigger than they would be in reality to allow filming even if they cameras are digital.
What bothers me more with the sizing: In every scene you see the crew on the outside of the ship, or walking out the airlock, the ship is way to small in comparison. The size is off by a lot. The main airlock for example takes all the available space in the model/ship. When you think about all the space the PDCs would take up, or all the other tech and systems, it's quite obvious that there needs to be at least 1/3 more ship. Always found it quite odd, since everything else in the show is pretty accurate and to scale.
Those were the only scenes that really bothered me. Seems like the roci changed sizes from when they are in space to when they land on Ilus.
Same. Couldn't this have been resolves by simply making the main airlock half the size it is when seen on the exterior? If anything, the exterior of the ship should look excessively big to house the systems and structures for the ship to be secure and battle-ready.
Yeah. I just wish that outer door was smaller. Half what it is. That would fix everything.
That reveal of turning from the ‘front’ to the ‘side’ view really blew my mind when I saw it on your livestream!
The interior on the show always felt allot bigger than it sounded in the books, especially so after I saw the actual scale of the Roci in your other video, so it made so much sense to see how it all fit together.
On the video game Space Engineers, I once made an Expanse-inspired ship to roughly the scale of a Corvette Class, and I can tell you the interior was cramped, borderline claustrophobic. Definitely nothing like the show set.
Fully understand the reasoning, and don't see a better solution, yet I still would love to have the decks stack like they should be. Love the show
There are enough disconnect between shots of the airlock and the Ops Deck that it doesn't break the illusion of it not fitting into the ship. I always thought the armory is directly under Ops in universe anyway.
Most of the time, these interior being bigger issues only arise in video games where you can directly run around inside and outside of the ship/location. Look at the hero ship from Mass Effect Andromeda, the inside layout has a lot of stuff that would protrude outside of the ship. The Normandy has similar issues, but the general shape still fits the silhouette of the ship and there are less opportunity to directly run around and on top of the exterior of the ship, helping to preserve the illusion of scale.
I forget if there's a word for this, but video games are actually perfectly capable of having geometries that ditch some of the real-life constraints, and you can have a room that is bigger on the inside once you enter it.
@@FlyNAA I mean an issue with immersion, not as in the inside clipping out of the ship model.
@@ArchOfWinter I agree about the immersion issue, I just pointed out the thing as an aside.
@@FlyNAA recently, in the indie scene, there’s been a lot of work towards non-Euclidean geometry games, which might be what you’re thinking of. Examples include hallways that shrink the occupants at the other end, rooms that are bigger inside than out, and doors that lead to the wrong place.
In my head I just doubled the size of the Roci. In the book, it was supposed to have space for 20 people - crew and marines.
It is a weirdly small warship but I guess Martians can kick ass with only 4
@@The_Jovian it should have a full crew of 6, a second crew, and a contingent of marines onboard for long haul
On one hand things like this (the warthog run in the pillar of autumn *cough*) drive me up the wall as a lore nut. On the other hand as an artist and writer I completely understand these sorts of limitations and design inconsistencies come up based on the media you are using. I've always loved the set design on this show, particularly for the roci.
I kinda wished they just rented out a grain silo and built the sets in that. Had that Serenity kind of feel of being able to walk 9or in this case climb) across the entire fictional ship was amazing for the show and the fans trying to understand the ship.
In a mere 3½ minutes you packed so much information and great points, great job!
Thank you glad you enjoyed it!
I already knew there was no way the set fit inside the ship but it's great to see it like this. Thanks for this video!
So Cool Chris, Really nicely visually explained. Thanks for posting this...next up Chetz.
I completely accept this explanation for something that always kind of bugged me, but not seriously enough to impact my enjoyment of the show. Thank you!
I have to say that I really enjoyed this Video Chris...especially considering I was talking about Exterior/Interior scale issues with someone earlier today....Great work! ...as well as Fantastic timing!
Hope you have a great weekend. :D
Whoever that was, must have been a smart fella!
@@PHDiaz-vv7yo I wholeheartedly agree! ;)
This is precisely what I needed-and I didn’t even know it!
In the end I’m okay with giving up an interior that matches the exterior for the opportunities it presents for filming.
A good DP can tell a marvelous tale in just a few well placed angles, well timed pans, etc.
I always thought it was a weird choice to have that second ladder. they could have spun the airlock 189* around the ladder so that it opened directly under the pilot. if they also swapped it for a true vertical ladder, it would also make the ship feel more like a "stack" because it wouln't stop in the armory
Yeah, as it is described in the books, I always imagined it to be a straight ladder.
As long as you make it look like it COULD fit, it's all good. I never had a doubt that each environment was one of a few tiny rooms stacked on top of each other vertically. The only thing was the flight deck looking a little bit too long for the section of the ship, but it was more of an "aspect ratio" thing and it never really bothered me
While I am a stickler for scaling in ships, I have to admit that there were so many good things going on in the scenes that I can comfortably dismiss the TARDIS technology that they secretly employed on the Roci.
I have not read the books, so half the time I'm too busy wondering if Amos would murder the crew to be bothered with scaling details :)
Yeah. Thats pretty much a common issue with most exterior/interior layouts of various crafts in shows, movies and games. The interior never fully match up with the design of the exterior without rearranging it a little.
I’m glad you did this. It’s been causing some cognitive dissonance with me for a while now.
I think it would be a lot closer (though not completely) if the ladder near the ops deck holotable was removed and the whole lower deck moved so that the other ops deck ladder led to the armory.
Having visited the set myself, it really doesn't matter to me that it's 'bigger on the inside'. It's just so cool!
Amazing insight into your work.
But I’d like to wipe it from my memory as the illusion of filming makes the decks look stacked like the art work that shows the deck by deck plan
It’s a bit like finding out Santa’s sleigh is powered on methalox and not fairy dust (yes I know Santa doesn’t exist!)
Still, excellent stuff as always. In my mind those decks all fit within the exterior visuals and that keeps me happy!
I always wondered about this. I would watch scenes where the cast was walking down corridors in the Rocinante and think: "There is no way that corridor fits in the ship as shown by the outside model. I've seen some deck plans where they do just as you mentioned, stacking each part of the set vertically to make them fit. The authors of the books themselves contributed to one such set. They managed to keep the aesthetic of the ship, but the areas were much tighter, with no corridors to speak of. Most of the decks were connected by a central ladder rather than offset stairwells.
I think the scale is just wrong. Scale down the flight deck set to fit inside, dont forget, the ROCI also has TWO HULLS. I think its much bigger than your original set. There may be an issue with the airlock door size appearance from the show vs the model, but cmon, this thing is HUGE, with space between hulls for crew members to work? Scale down your flight deck to fit inside and fudge it up against the hallway with the airlock door. THEN see how the other decks play out. Youll have much more room for the double hull and all the workings of a spaceship that would add to all that space.
In film, we don't build sets to fit in exterior models, especially when they are still in development.
My brain has just adjusted the set layout to fit in my head.
Loved the explanation. Thanks for sharing.
No problem, I feel like not a lot of people understand what goes into making sets on The Expanse and I hope this helps.
So cool man! Love this. Great work 👍🏼
Thanks Cole!!!
Love the analysis. Thanks Chris.
I knew the answer was 'no' but I didn't realise it was such a resounding no! It's damned close to 3x as wide!
I think that if the lower deck was rotated 180° it would fit a bit better in the space
Thank you, Chris!
I don't see why this is a bad thing, I'd love to see an expanse-doctor who cross over with ships that are bigger on the inside.
Jokes aside, I was kind of always aware of this but just imagined it being the same thing, just like compacted so everything is just a like a metre or two closer together, and the armoury and airlock sort of flipped around to be underneath ops
Making the airlock smaller on the model would make the set fit better and make more space for fuel and machinery
All they had to do was make that door smaller. I think it was season 4 when I realized just how small the ship was. The Millenium Falcon is an uncomfortably tiny ship, yet seems to have more room than the TV roci.
This is all good reasons for why the show should have been entirely CG including the actors. They could have motion captured the actors and it would have given the directors and writers a lot more freedom. Like Starship Troopers: The Roughnecks
I would like to see the same description of the inner Anubis!
The CAD model of the set (at 2:20), are these yours or something available somewhere? Does anyone know if there's a decent model of the Roci's decks somewhere? Great video, bang on about the practicalities of filming v. FX models. Thanks!
I did not design this set and those models are not available for download
@@chrisdanelon ah, bummer. thanks for replying!
Whenever they are crawling inside the outer hull the roci seems to be at least twice the actual size.
We see this all the time in movies and TV shows. Almost every airplane cockpit is 2.5 to 3 times larger than in real life. Cockpits tend to be cramped and cluttered leaving no room for cameras or lights, let alone the ventilation needed under those lights. And sometimes they are just outright ridiculous like in Start Trek Discovery where every corridor is 25 to 30 feet wide. Expanse did a pretty good job all things considered, but I thought that the CGI model was just too small by far, especially when you allow for the inter-hull space shown in one episode.
actually it did not answer the question I came here with.
Why was the model not build in a way, that the Set would have fit into it? The exterior did not have to be that slim.
Because the set and the exterior were developed at the same time. VFX is handled by outside vendors. VFX vendors don't build models so sets can fit in it. In TV, we design sets that look good and fit the script. We don't build sets to fit inside VFX models that are in development. th-cam.com/video/D7d5tEZpGH4/w-d-xo.html
@@chrisdanelon I know I'm late to the party, but... I'm convinced the set was built thinking the Rocinante would be lying on its belly (like spaceships have always been depicted in movies and such). The reason I believe this, is that the inside walls of the set, follow the outside form of the cgi model when laid down flat on its belly. I guess there was a planning error along the way, but it's obviously just a personal conspiracy theory.
Anyway, nice video and I really appreciated the animations of both, the inside and the outside of the Rocinante.
Wasn't that the same issue back in the day with Star Wars where the interior of the Milennium Falcon wouldn't actually fit in the exterior model? 🙂
Could you redesign the Rosaritea to better accommodate the layout of the set while still following the rules of the universe?
We get the set needs to have a size in order to be able to film and put cameras arround and so..
The question then is why not make the Roci bigger so they would fit ..
Ironically the cargo bay set seems correct in size.. and the galley too.. the work shop however...
The galley has connecting corridors that would stick out of the ship. Also by making the roci bigger you would also have to make the donnager bigger so I'm not sure how that would work. Hindsight 20/20. In TV and film quite often sets don't exactly 'fit' in exteriors.
@@chrisdanelon absolutelly.. the Millenium falcon set for example wouldnt fit in the canon size of the ship.. and then there is the ethernal discussion of the Klingon bird of prey size vs interior sets.
And then there is the Starbug from Red Dward wich became a recurring theme / joke how it went from a medium shuttle to a ship with 3 decks and "miles of corridors" XD
@@sparrowlt I know how common it is in scifi, but people have been asking for years about a 'roci cross section' so I felt like I had to make this video 😄
It’s not a tin can it’s multi hulled with space to walk between the walls. your model didn’t account for that space, where the airlock and pdc’s wouldn’t poke through the ships interior
This ship is the 1st one I am going to build myself just out of scrap parts, I have a brother with a 3D printer & knows how to use it for any of the specific bits I can't craft myself, wish me luck.
Does the square footage fit though? Like if properly rearranged, could it fit in the vfx model?
FAscinating; thanks!
Why would the set need to fit into the model? It's THE SET, it's made to film the show, it needs to feel right, it doesn't need to be geometrically correct. And it does it's job really well.
I doesn't need to fit, however, some fans of the show think it does. This was a light hearted way of explaining how in the film biz works. We don't build sets to fit in VFX exterior spaceships (especially when they are still in development).
I've bitched about this for ages lol. I even put a diagram on reddit several times.
So the whole flight deck and ops deck is level higher than than the airlock right. If so, then there just wee little space above the airlock that's visible in the exterior model.
Was that a mistake, why make the airlock so high, if everything was to be above it?
It's not a mistake its just the way it was designed. We are making a TV show not building actual space ships. Also, when we built the Roci sets the exterior VFX model was not finished.
By the way!
Do you only make the decks shown in this video?
Or will the living and engineering decks be in the game as well?
There is no game
I spoke too soon 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Very cool video!
I've come across this myself ...
Thank you.
Where can I get the schematics used in this video?
Or is it prohibited information?
Sorry I can't share the schematics
@@chrisdanelon Don't worry, I understand.
Just rotate the armory and airlock 180 degrees
It still wouldn't fit. About the Airlock would fit on its own
@@chrisdanelon i wouldn't fit, but just barely
I feel it is a bit of a let-down to flunk the architecture, after getting so many other things right. I understand, that you cannot build the skyscraper, but you could have built elevators/stairs and do a connecting shot, e.g. climbing up, cut, then arriving from the bottom in the next level, like they did with the staircase in The big bang theory. They only had one elevator door and half a staircase up and down and then shot the stairclimbing over several levels by using the same elevator door with a different sign on every time.
Hindsight is 20-20, also studio space is limited and you need lot's of space for the camera team and lighting dept.
why didnt they just flip the armory and the airlock the oposite way ?
it would have savesd tham space and would have made sence.
The width of the Roci exterior is about the size of the Airlock so it wouldn't make a difference. Also, they housed electronic panels and other stuff under the ops deck.
I suspected this was the case. Sorry to see it confirmed though. For a show that supposedly takes its physics seriously, it breaks them in some pretty blatant ways.
I'd assumed it was 'cos the Roci was like Dr Who's TARDIS, bigger on the inside!
Okay, you've explained why the set couldn't be altered to fit the exterior VFX model, but that leaves open the question of why the exterior VFX model couldn't be modified to fit the set.
All the VFX are made by external vendors and sometimes there is a disconnect between them and the production. Also making the sets fit in a VFX model is a VERY low priority for the production.
Interesting!
well, in the book is is described as stacked floors - just like you see in the game I *think* that the boys based the books on (Space Opera). That the TV folks fudged some things the Rossi is the absolutely LEAST of their sins. Good lord, Season six was disgraceful.
Yep figured as much 😂
It’s like the tardis
No it doesnt give me insight as to why it doesn't fit, it seemed to fit when you overlaid the interior with the ship
You know the medbay, crew quarters, ops deck, airlock, between the hauls, the cargobay, machine shop, and every other roci set cannot fit in the ship. When I overlaid the only sets were airlock, ops, and flight which is not every set and those barely fit...
Thanks for ruining The Expanse for me ;)
"star trek syndrome" unfortunately has nothing to do with most of what you just said &more to do with your last few words &set builder incompetence (actually the showrunners/lineproducers fault set builders just do as they're told)
You can easily plan out something like this accurately &keep it within build/shoot dynamic parameters if you plan it out properly then keep a record of the proportion dimensions &adhere to them.. unfortunately the sets are built before a CG model is finished &the sets aren't built to any common sense standard of what the ship WOULD look like
So when the models finalised it's always kaka
This is why every &I do mean EVERY ship in star trek makes zero sense proportion wise.. &is something this hapless nerds have been struggling to invent back bending justifications for for decades
for instance all the problems in this piece are easily solved by making the roci 55-60 meters.. but this (to whomsoever wrote it) betrays the "little ship" doctrine/aesthetic somehow
I just always thought (especially when it landed on ilus) the cg model is WAY too small.. even for the numbers given the crew to ship size differential whenever they were on its surface doing repairs etc was also usually off
There's a multitude of reasons for this of course from incompetence to three diff CG teams handling models can easily lead to things like.. but the biggest cause is the showrunner didn't care enough
The level of scrutiny the rest of the physics in the show came under shows they have the ability to make sure such minute details are 100% accurate.. but they decided to prioritize other elements. It is what it is.
Ahh since it is so easy how many TV shows and movies have you worked on? The film industry is a wild and crazy industry. Getting the sets ready for camera quickly within budget is a huge challenge. The VFX is done out of house and it is very difficult to get multiple departments to be on the same page for something as petty as it HAS to fit in the exterior model. Also things constantly change in the film biz. It really is petty because we don't design sets to fit in VFX models. We design sets to fit the script and the directors/crew needs. Also the show runner has much bigger fish to fry like trying to keep the show afloat rather than if a set fits in a VFX model.
"incompetence," my goodness.
@@ericssmith2014 when that person say "it's easy enough to plan these things out" clearly stated from someone who has never spent a single day in the film industry.
@@chrisdanelon You notice of course that the guy never responded to you because of obvious reasons.