Examples in Media and Art

Ames rooms are often used in video production to play with the viewer's sense of scale and have been used in a range of music videos as well as movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. One of the most famous examples of the Ames Room being used in media is in the filming of Lord of the Rings. While these movies employ a range of tricks to distort perspective, using trapezoidal rooms as well as playing with camera angle helps create a distorted sense of scale that was used to depict the actors in relative scales. By utilizing the same principals there, the actors are made to look smaller in scale to others, like in a scene where Gandalf appears to tower over Frodo.