Making a tunnel

R

rabidiga

New member
Hi guys!

I need to make a small, fake, earthen tunnel. By small I mean about 5' high, 4' wide and 6' deep. Dimensions might be slightly off but not much, I am actually going to make this in the film directors basement, yay low budget! I was wondering if anyone would have any idea's of how to make a realistic dirt wall. Can't be rock, or at least not entirely. I was told specifically it must be dirt.

As I said before this thing is insanely low budget so any corners I could cut would be great. I would guess that my budget for this tunnel is about $50. A real tunnel isn't an option either.

Oh yeah, any reference pics or video links would be greatly appreciated too. I usually work on costumes and small props. This is my first set but I am quite handy.

Thanks!
 
Well since you have no real budget, the cheapest way I can think of is:
Set up a frame to hold up some shaped chicken wire as the tunnel shape.
Paper machè over the wire.
After the paper machè has dried spread on some wet glue and let some dried dirt fall onto the wet glue surface.
Get some plant roots.
Poke a few holes in you're phony tunnel in several spots small enough so you can stick the plants roots through.
Tape the roots in place from behind.
Use glue and dirt to clump around where the roots stick through in the front.

Voilá, instant dirt tunnel.
 
Ok I could try paper mache! I havent used the stuff since I was a kid so would you recomend the strips of paper or the stuff shredded to a pulp? Thanks :)
 
you can also get rolls of craft paper used for masking areas for painting and crumple it up and staple it in random patterns to a frame or even to walls. it's already brown and with some creative painting and addition of roots as was mentioned above it can be very convincing, and much less time consuming and less messy than paper mache.
you can see a bit of a set o worked on that used this technique here
http://www.lodinews.com/news/article_56e2ea31-a772-5046-81d2-a271f3aff564.html
 
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