If you wonder how something so gigantic and destructive could look so tiny and harmless, the answer is a combination of techniques. One is the use of time-lapse, which makes you lose frames and gives motion a jerking quality that helps fooling the brain into thinking that you are watching miniatures. Another one is the angle, which makes you think that you are seeing something from above, like you would see a model on a table. Increasing the contrast, to obtain harder shadows, also helps in the deception.

The most important element, however, is tilt-shift photography. While tilt-shift photography can be faked blurring the image to simulate a very shallow depth of field, you need true tilt-shift to get so realistic.

Tilt-shift requires a special camera setup, a lens that can tilt—or rotate—and shift—move parallel to the image plane. With tilt you control the focus of the image, which works better in vertically oriented framing, blurring the closest and farthest part of the image. With shift you correct the perspective of the image itself, making things look flatter than they actually are. [Vimeo via Jalopnik]

The folks at Bent Image Lab also used a similar effect in parts of the video for Thom Yorke's "Harrowdown Hill":

And there's even more in this recent Metafilter roundup. Can't get enough of this right now. [Keith Loutit on Vimeo via Kottke, Metafilter, Bent Image Lab]