Ordinary objects as props or set decoration.

MattinSTL

MattinSTL

Sound Modulator
Anybody else have an eye for ordinary objects used as props? Sometimes I think it's cool to spot commonplace items... other times I'm annoyed by it.

In the latest Star Trek, the committee all have a Blue Baby Bottle in front of them... so I'm looking at DOZENS of regular mics, completely unaltered, that you could buy at Guitar Center (more or less)... For me that was really distracting.

In the regular Star Trek TNG I always laughed at the Sonex sound tiles, and the 55 gallon plastic barrels that are commonplace in the chemical industry.

I was just watching a few minutes of Aliens... and noticed the big guns are all gun props on steadicam rigs (they're just floating a fake gun right where the cam belongs)... and the shoulder lights are Paglites (or similar ENG-style on-cam lights)...

On O2 we were all impressed by the spaceship set... with various shapes and wall patterns created by anything from tripod cases to foam hamburger boxes...

So what regular objects have you noticed in tv shows or movies?
 
In Star Wars, isn't the lever pulled in the Death Star part of a Grass Valley video switcher?

RE: Aliens/steadicam. You JUST noticed that? That's like the oldest bit of trivia in the book. :beer:
 
Deepfocus88 said:
In Star Wars, isn't the lever pulled in the Death Star part of a Grass Valley video switcher?
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Sure is. Was noted on day 1 of broadcasting school for me.

And on the Aliens note, I believe those are "smart" guns, and being on a steadicam style rig was intentional; not to make them look just futuristic, but for application of relieving weight from the users arms. These guns have some sort of ability to track it's targets as well if memory serves me correct. Yeah, I'm kind of a dork for Aliens/Predator.
 
arges03 said:
Sure is. Was noted on day 1 of broadcasting school for me.

And on the Aliens note, I believe those are "smart" guns, and being on a steadicam style rig was intentional; not to make them look just futuristic, but for application of relieving weight from the users arms. These guns have some sort of ability to track it's targets as well if memory serves me correct. Yeah, I'm kind of a dork for Aliens/Predator.
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I'll raise you one Aliens dork point and add that in the script, the part where Vasquez lets it rip while in the alien nest, the description states that she doesn't even look at her targets. She looks into a small monitor that is part of the computer-aided tracking system of the smart gun, only firing when the gun locks onto an alien. In the final film it doesn't come off that way though, more like she just swings the gun around manually and the steadicam harness is for added support. Still a cool concept for supporting a big old futuristic gun.

This kind of stuff always happens in sci-fi films. Another one in Aliens is the marines have Vietnam War era helmets with a some tech thrown on them to hide that fact. One thing that is distracting with lots of older sci-fi films is the sets are sometimes littered with old CRT monitors, which seems funky since we now live in a flatscreen world.

The worst had to be this low budget film I caught on the sci-fi channel one night. It was one of those post apocalyptic man vs. robots scenarios and had the human soldiers wearing bicycle helmets instead of some type of military helmet you would expect to see on a battlefield. It wasn't some Mad Max scenario where they scrounged up everything from various odds and ends, because they all had identical uniforms, helmets, guns, etc. like a relatively well supplied army would.
 
If you look closely at the various hand props used during the opening 'Enterprise-B' sequence in Star Trek: Generations, you might notice that they are cobbled together from assorted Sharper Image hand massagers, cup warmers, flasks, etc (then we laid graphic tape stripes on them, so's they'd look: futuristic!

The Trek shows are really the worst offenders when it comes to using lots of recognizable odds and ends as props and dressing, but it's a frequent science-fiction and military-genre thing.

Re: bicycle helmets - depending upon who's wearing them, not so unrealistic: Special Forces operators have great latitude in picking non-standard weapons and gear, and those helmets do sometimes show up (in fact, IIRC some of the SF characters are wearing them, and accurately so, in Black Hawk Down.)
 
MattinSTL said:
In the latest Star Trek, the committee all have a Blue Baby Bottle in front of them... so I'm looking at DOZENS of regular mics, completely unaltered, that you could buy at Guitar Center (more or less)... For me that was really distracting.

In the regular Star Trek TNG I always laughed at the Sonex sound tiles [...]
So what regular objects have you noticed in tv shows or movies?
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 Well, the ‘Scopitone’ interrogation machine from Alphaville (1965) was visually represented by a blinking light, and couple of Neumann U87s randomly orbiting around a ’47… Well, whaddya know? – the whole film is on Google Video! Skip to forty-seven minutes in for the scene in question...

Then there was the use of the classic Eventide Ultra Harmonizer (multi-FX) to visually decipher alien radio signals or some nonsense in Contact (1997) – just because it had a cool-enough sounding name…(I’m guessing that that makes me sound at least fifteen years older than my actual age – I was actually only seventeen when Contact came out!)

EDIT: Oops! Alphaville Link

 
Forgot to mention that the Aliens Smart Guns are German MG42 general-purpose machine guns, perched on those Steadicam arms.
 
And as befitting this site, lets not forget the new Battlestar Galactica TV crews used DVX 100's! And thousands of years before they existed!
dvx03.jpg

dvx01.jpg

dvx02.jpg
 
More jarring than usual, in that they're using modern compact camcorders in a futuristic science-fiction story, to represent...

...modern compact camcorders.

Just lazy. I mean, come on, at least stick some model airplane parts to it, or something...
 
Anyone here remember 'Space 1999' the Sinclair Microvision was a pocket tv from around the mid 70s and was used as the personal communicator on this show.
I guess They thought they would up the tech stakes a bit as Star Trek then only had audio comms.!!

And as for early Dr. who, the turn indicators and sink plungers the Daleks had, were clearly no match for the Dr's silver-sprayed milk-crates that decorated the Tardis!

Cheers, Theron.
 
Blue_Food said:
Then there was the use of the classic Eventide Ultra Harmonizer (multi-FX) to visually decipher alien radio signals or some nonsense in Contact (1997) – just because it had a cool-enough sounding name…(I’m guessing that that makes me sound at least fifteen years older than my actual age – I was actually only seventeen when Contact came out!)
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Let's not forget that the rest of the lab was outfitted with TASCAM DA-88 recorders... all those meters that bounced as the signal was tuned in.
 
I just saw "Moon" (which is awesome, see it everyone!) and noticed two interesting ones:

1.) When Sam pries open a small panel near the floor to set off an warning light, the panel (and others in the set) is an IKEA-esque silverware tray!

2.) in the command area where Sam monitors the four harvesters, one of the console keyboards is one of those silicone spill-proof rollup keyboards. link

The second one is incredibly odd because I am writing a science fiction film and I had planned to buy a few of those very same keyboards to integrate into my set! I was even describing them to my wife on our way into the theater!
 
Nektonic said:
Watch out Mattin, they mostly come out at night... mostly.
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Speaking of mostly. My buddy has Newt. Not the little girl, but the dead [cocooned] Newt. Just kinda hangs out in his room. She is wrapped in SaranWrap plastic.

e
 
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