While pitching ideas for how to animate The Kardashev Scale, lots of options got tossed around. Supercluster contributor Keith Cooper had recently proposed a story on rethinking the entire construct, and we needed to do it justice.

Maybe 16-bit? Stop motion? Traditional cel animation? But when someone suggested we do the whole film in miniature — scratch-building everything ourselves — there was no turning back.

There's a model-building cohort within the Supercluster team, always sharing their robots and dioramas. There's Gundam, of course, and kitbashes, and post-apocalyptic scenes. We had the experience, and here was a medium perfectly suited for imagining distant, alien visions of hyper-advanced civilizations. We couldn't pass it up.

But it's definitely not the most efficient way to shoot a short film. Model building is a slow game. It's meditative and introspective. Sometimes it can feel like a huge time investment for such a (literally) small payoff. Honestly, it can be tedious, and difficult to explain the appeal. But it's a common experience to accidentally become obsessed, even if you don't know how exactly it happened.

"Why do you build models?" I asked James Stuart. "'The miniature grants a false dominion,'" he replied over Slack. Well, there you have it.

The completed city was inspired by equal parts Blade Runner, Trantor, and Coruscant. And probably a dozen other examples. It's really not difficult to find science fiction visions of a fully mechanized future planet, all scrap of greenery obliterated. Not sure what that says about us but it's probably not good. As far as model building goes tho — tons of fun.

Joe Haddad reflects on some of his processes on a build like this. “The power of kitbashing is that you leverage the complexity and meaning from each miniature sculpted piece you chose to combine. In the case of Kardashev, where our creative team has been tasked with constructing vast worlds and technologies that do not exist, kitbashing as a creative technique multiplies the impact of each decision. It literally creates worlds beyond our understanding.”

As originally formulated by Nikolai Kardashev, a Type 0 Civilization would cover anything from prehistory through where we find ourselves on Earth today, and even further down a technological trajectory until we reach total planetary energy capture.

But to contrast the grim machine future of our Type 1 diorama, we went backward toward an idyllic past, finding a calm campfire wedged in a sheltered canyon.

Building these things is only half the battle. You gotta figure out how to get them on film. And as Jack Nesbitt and Jamie Carreiro assembled our intricate rig and painstakingly selected the right lenses, the question was always "how do we create the illusion of scale?"

The Dyson Sphere is where we make our first mind-bending leap. Type 0 and 1 Civilizations are both at the planetary level. With Type 2 we're in control of a star. With Type 3, an entire galaxy.

“We built each of the four models to have a distinct style and texture to emphasize the tremendous distance in both time and technology that separates each civilization type," adds Jamie. "The motorized elements and miniature lighting incorporated into the models help add scale, drama, and enticing weirdness.”

Tristan Dubin weighed in on the editorial process. "One of the hardest parts of this project was deciding to cut shots. Every time we cut a shot, we were deciding to not show a model, or part of a model that we all had built. It’s one thing to cut a shot when it’s a picture a camera took. It’s another when it’s a model you’ve made yourself. It was necessary however, because in order for the piece to feel large enough, it was better to imply more and show less."

Check out our completed love letter to the (sometimes controversial) Kardashev Scale below.