This is a collection of notes I've made from personal experience and stolen from other sources. Mostly stolen from other sources.

Technique:
1. Use a Frasier lens. You see the same thing with CF 16 Zeiss up way close.
2. Make the model as big as budget allow.
3. Light to as deep an f-stop as possible. Lighting will be a big concern, because lack of depth of field really looks fake.
4. Get a copy of Raymond Fielding's THE TECHNIQUE OF SPECIAL EFFECTS CINEMATOGRAPHY (Focal Press, ISBN 0-240-51234-0.) It is out of print, but can be picked up second hand or from your local library.
5. Film at a high speed. Filming miniatures at high-speed makes them appear larger and more substantial. It smoothes out the appearance of the action when the film is run at a normal speed. 120 frames per second for most miniature effects shots, but that depends on scale

Divide the miniature size into the actual, life size of the scene; the square root of this result is the cranking factor by which you multiply the cranking speed.

Ex.: Real bldg. is 120 feet high; miniature bldg. is 10 feet high. The product is 12. Square root of 12 is 3.5. Multiply 24fps X 3.5 = 84fps, the theoretically correct cranking speed to shoot at.

Then shoot tests to see what the actual cranking speed should be. The final determination is what looks right. But the formula gets you close, at least.

Filming some miniature models is helped by robotic cameras. The Dykstraflex is used by ILM. It's housed in a crane that sits on a track and is operated by remote control or through preprogrammed coördinates. The computer then remembers the crane movements, camera rotation, speed, focus, and lens aperture, so the shot can be repeated endlessly. A poor man's Dykstraflex could be built on the cheap with a few servos and a lamp arm. A little motion control software and you are set.

Repetition is crucial because the final scene is many different shots. If the camera is off by even a little, It looks fake.

The repetition isn't just necessary for the models. The coordinates can be imported into graphics programs, or be saved for future additions like backgrounds which might even be on a different scale. Not sure how to do this on a consumer level, but software like Commotion Pro, Boris FX or After FX can do motion tracking so it shouldn't be much of a thing to work around.

Details:
Various photographic and design tricks are used to make things look much larger than they actually were. Tricks like breaking up the otherwise smooth surface of a model with lines, panels, and hatches to eliminate fake looking straight shadows and light reflections. Some models are also dirtied up and dented to make them look used. An Airbrush will really help in painting.

A lot of models are built by "kit bashing", Taking inexpensive kits from store shelves and modifiying them for your purposes. Such miniature vehicles are normally heavily detailed with striping tape panel lines and dirtied with paint to break up their shapes and present a true scale appearance. This was used for 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars.

Effects:
Model roadways are covered with a fine granular substance called Fuller's Earth. Vehicles are fitted with small downward pointing engines which disturb the Fuller's Earth, simulating road dust or exhaust. Titanium Tetra Chloride which smokes spontaneously in contact with air. This is often used on model missiles to give the appearance of volatile fuels boiling off prior to launching. Miniature road vehicles are fitted with sponge rubber suspension systems so the wheels would track properly when negotiating miniature roadways. There is a tiny mechanism which caused the nose of miniature motor vehicles to "dip" when stopped to simulate the application of brakes at high speed.

Models are either filmed stationary in front of a moving background or are pulled along a line. A roadway and a sky backdrop that are fashioned as endless belts mounted on a pair of rollers creates an effect called "rolling ground" and "rolling sky". Basically, a stationary vehicle is secured on the rolling road by wires and when the rollers are started up, it presents the illusion of motion as the roadway rolls past the vehicle.

The rolling sky provided the same illusion of motion to model aircraft that were filmed in front of it. One trick often used with aircraft filmed in front of the rolling sky was to blow an occasional puff of smoke between the model and the camera. This not only provided a convincing three dimensional cloud illusion, but if timed correctly, the smoke would hide the join line on the sky backdrop as it passed into view of the camera. Model road vehicles filmed in motion were either pulled along stationary roadways by wires, moved from below with a stick in a slot, or were held securely in one position by a pair of wires (front and back) on the rolling road. Occasionally, wires would break while a model vehicle was being filmed on the rolling road. Sometimes, the motion of the rolling road would throw the model vehicle violently to the floor.

A thin profiled glass tank filled with water and small tropical fish placed between the camera and the model being filmed creates the illusion of being underwater. small air hoses were added to the bottoms of these tanks to provide the occasional tiny air bubble. Additionally, overhead lights mounted behind revolving filters provided the illusion of sunlight streaming through the depths. Filming the miniature ships and submarines and getting waterborne explosions to look correct require filming at very high speeds. Detergent is added to the water to simulate foam and often tiny air lines were fitted to the bows of model ships to create a proper bow wave. Ship models were usually attached to small trolleys running on subsurface tracks and towed across the tank using thin cables.

Filming on top of water is more difficult because a tank of water will always look like a tank of water. Some people add a little green dye to get a more ocean look. Another trick is to make one side a little smaller so that you have a waterfall in the back of the tank. Keep circulating the water and you get current, add a backdrop and you get depth of field. For things coming out of water, most people add some sort of chemical to the water to make it break up a little easier, but it still looks like water. This a case where the larger the prop the better.

Many explosions use a gelled gasoline similar to napalm which causes great fireballs. Sometimes they are packed with all kinds of small kit bits and Fuller's Earth to create incendiary projectiles and showers of dust when the explosives go off.