In a fascinating piece for Movies Insider, narrator Abby Tang spoke with such renowned movie and television prop masters as Tim Schultz and Scott Reeder to explain how silent props are made so that their sounds don’t affect what’s going on in the scene. Noisy items such as paper bags, pool balls, ice cubes, and plastic wrap make a great deal of intrusive noise, so the prop master must take steps to muffle the sound to ensure that the dialogue can be heard.
Some objects, like paper bags, ice cubes, and pool balls, make an unexpected amount of noise. This can be a big problem on set, as any of these unwanted sounds can get in the way of dialogue. To ensure the sound team gets the best sound possible, the prop team will create silent versions of real products.
Separately, Reeder has been sharing fun facts about props on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Filmmaker Rishi Kaneria has created "Why Props Matter", an impressive supercut of a great many films that celebrate the incredible power that props lend to the identity of a film, whether big or small, shiny or dull, overt or subtle. Great props can transcend the boundaries of the films they…
Great Big Story visited with Ross MacDonald, a talented illustrator and prop master of all things paper. For the last 25 years, MacDonald has been creating era-appropriate items such as maps, diaries, wanted posters, government reports, match/cigarette boxes and newspapers. MacDonald is extremely skilled at his craft, but remains humbled…
The LES Ecology Center in New York City has always been a leader in urban sustainability but in opening their E-Waste Warehouse in Gowanus, Brooklyn, they hit upon genius. The warehouse is stocked with vintage televisions, computers, video games, cameras, clocks, telephones, and radios, all of which has been donated…
For the past 40 years, Seattle-based artist Dan Reeder has been making remarkably detailed sculptures of animals and mythical creatures out of paper mache. Reeder is able to create large, colorful, intricately textured sculptures through an unusual hybrid paper mache technique--rather create a delicate skin of paper mache over a…
During an interview with the long-running CBS show 60 Minutes, guest Kit Harington took host Anderson Cooper on a tour of the warehouse where all of the props, masks, and costumes from Game of Thrones are stored from show to show. Among the items that Harington pointed out included soldiers…
Adam Savage met with Chuck Costas of The Prop Store to talk about the different props that were used in the AMC series "Better Call Saul".
Lori Dorn
Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.
