Big Buck Bunny

...okay...
...okaaaaay...
Where is it? What the hell is that guy d -

...

Oh. *brain 'splodes accordingly*

I saw exactly the same thing about a week ago, except there was a model car with the hood open instead of a model tractor. I can't recall if it was on Neatorama or Digg, but the video looked as if it might have been captured from a kid's show like Sesame Street. So, this may not be original.

I remember something like that in the movie "Top Secret". It was a telephone, only the telephone was huge and far away and the scene was shot to make you believe the phone was regular size and close to the camera. Until someone picked up the oversized phone.

This technique goes back about 100 years. It's been used for placing miniatures or paintings into movie scenes before the invention of the optical printer, and even much more recently. It's very easy to do, as long as you have a lot of light, which creates the long focus area so everything from a few inches to infinity is in focus.

I used this technique in my teenage moviemaking days. A friend stood on a ladder far from the camera and a crashed spaceship model was placed right up in front of the camera, so it looked like he was climbing out of the top hatch of the ship. Those were the days!

in top secret they had also a librarian with a magnifier, but in fact he had a huge eye.

neat video.

Wikipedia has a neat explanation on "Depth of field"

I conjectured

Woulda worked better if you hadn't told everyone it was an illusion.

Here's an entire website of stills using the same technique. It's been around for at least 4 years..but I know the idea has been around much longer.
http://dubster.com/cars/index.asp?id=419

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q75sH71rHCA

Obviously this guy didn't do his homework. A John Deere D is bigger than the relative size of the Mercedes C. For someone wearing and driving the sterotypical professor accoutriments, i'd expect better.