b'words: Kate Williamscolourful people pictures: Kallan MacLeodmodelbusinessA plantation of waving palms and another of blossoming pink plums. Rows of tiny dream homes tucked on a tray. A drawer full of miniature people going about their business: White-clad nurses pushing patients on gurneys, businesspeople lugging briefcases, elegant diners lingering over their meal.Welcome to Steve Snows world, where everything is one twentieth or one two-thousandths the size of real life. Where all is unblemished and perfect, held together with glue and miniature brush-strokes. Here, in a converted church on the edge of Devonport on Aucklands North Shore, Steve and his crew of skilled model-makers have spent more than 20 years creating models and miniatures forlm-makers, architects, developers and designers.Calliope Studios is one of the largest of only a handful of professional model-building workshops in the country. Film-based studios such as Richard Taylors WetaWorkshopsfocusontheglamourendofthemarket:Mechanical models, miniature sets, masks, prosthetics and props (and yes, thank you, there is plenty of life in that sector after the Peter Jackson blockbusters). Steves artists, on the other hand, have become specialists in the business end of the market, in particular helping to sell apartments and subdivisions nationwide and around the world.A brochure or architects drawings can only do so much to convey the feel of a property, explains Steve. Put a model in front of people and they can immediately see how they could live there. Many of his models are living objects, changing with the real world. Steves artisans are currently re-working a lakeside development in Wanaka that startedve years ago. Rows of tiny houses have been scraped off, roads re-laid, parks repositioned and trees grown to convey the look of today, ready for a new batch of buyers to view. 102 |'