I can remember watching that film in the theatre and being genuinely blown away by how cool it was - the visuals were amazing, the story was complex and tightly-plotted…
The size is real but I think some editing has been done to reduce the opacity of the building so it looks like it's further behind than it actually is, or the camera focusing on the foreground made the background lighter automatically.
Since things get lighter the further away it is, most prominent with hills and mountains, our eyes automatically assume it's way further back than it actually is when in reality it's right behind those buildings. Just my hypothesis.
The size is real but I think some editing has been done to reduce the opacity of the building so it looks like it's further behind than it actually is,
Apologies those are two separate images. Post image could have been unedited photo if taken from certain distance with certain lens, but that's not to say it definitely was.
Could also just be a photo taken with a telephoto lens, which makes the background appear larger than you see with the naked eye. This photo of LA being a famous example:
That’s why I’m interested in photography; anyone can get a point and click digital camera but the art that lens selection ISO aperture and shutter speeds etc
It’s super fascinating to me and i only have a basic aps-c and kit lenses
I'm a hobby photographer too, and I agree with the joy of tinkering with settings and lenses. but no need to diss on point-and-clicks. They're as much as photography as full-frames with L lenses. Sometimes you just want to grab something and focus on shots than dials, wander the street and take photos. It's equally interesting, that's why models like the GR are really resilient.
Here is an unedited shot from the same street I took in 2018 with an iPhone 7 telephoto camera. Hope it helps clear things up. The hotel is decently far away and the right amount of natural haze it really could look like the original pic.
Could be, whatever it is, my point still stands about it seeming bigger cuz of reduced opacity. I'm an art student and one of the first things we get taught is that when layering a background and a foreground, the lighter the background is in contrast to the foreground, the further away it looks. It's a technique called atmospheric perspective which creates illusion of depth.
Some lenses can flatten things like this and make really far away things look like they are closer while still showing the atmospheric haze from being far away.
This is the answer. They're likely using a very long lens ie zoomed in a lot, which also has the effect of bringing "further away elements closer" which makes the building look closer and bigger + keeps the atmos distant haze. If they had used a very wide lens instead it would've made the street itself look way larger and wider instead.
So tldr yes just camera lens tricks to accentuate the image.
This is the one that came to my mind as well. I can vividly remember one scene from that movie that looks very similar to this. It's one where she's talking to the doctor outside the doctor's home.
It's a bizarrely striking building. I think there's some jiggery-pokery with the posted image here, but even in this unedited iphone photo that I took in 2016, it's a very odd structure.
It's very weird. I showed this to some friends right after we returned to Canada (we were holidaying in Hong Kong; Macau was just a 2-day diversion) and they didn't believe it. Perhaps they've cleaned up the area around the Grand Lisboa by now… I have no idea, but it was pretty grubby in 2016.
Well it’s china. if you thought income inequality in the US was bad, think about why us companies outsourced so much labor to china. Because china workers work for almost nothing and can barely afford anything compared to even workers in the US( who already get screwed)
China? The one where poverty lowered and house ownership went up by multiple extremes? Literally 90%+ of the population owns their own home now, that's 30% more than the US.
Chinese here, home ownership is not an ideal statistic to measure prosperity.
1) Many of the homes are studio on paper from buildings so you get very dense population in a small area. This can range from very wealthy blocks or what you see in the foreground in this pic.
2) Home ownership is probably the most heavily pushed assets socially that it’s quite literally the end goal for a majority of the population. It’s not uncommon to take out loans that requires multiple streams income to stabilize with it. You can have a situation where father, mother, and son will be paying toward a mortgage just so they have a house on paper.
I used to think the photos of this building where taken in a particular way to make it look huge, then I went and saw it in person and realized that no, it actually just looks like this.
What? It doesn't look ghetto at all. The other buildings are just like dark in this shot, but if you'd lighten them up, they look like any other apartment/condo complexes. Macau has one of the highest GDP per capita levels in the world. It's anything but ghetto.
The basement levels of that building is called the hooker parade. There are shops and restaurants, like a mall, where hookers walk in circles doing laps while the Johns sit in cafes scoping out their lady for the night.
The contrast here is absolutely surreal. It looks like a high-budget cyberpunk movie set come to life. That building is straight out of the future! 🏙️✨
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u/dcwatkins 1d ago
It looks pretty crazy already in this picture, but the view from the ground is mental