COVERSTORY
The Wonderful World of Prop Design And… Action! It’s midnight. In the far distance, the skyline of New York shimmers, a city the ghostbusters have to defend. The monster they face today is a Gozer with red, gleaming eyes and womanly shapes. She crawls towards them on hands and feet in a wisp of white smoke. She hisses and unfurls her teeth. The ghostbusters hold their proton guns with determined faces and steady hands. “Let’s show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown,” Peter screams, “Strike!” Pure, crackling, bright power shoots from their proton guns, hitting the yowling Gozer with such great force she shoots into the sky. by Susanna Osinga and Stein van Veggel | special thanks to Merlijn van de Sande and Pierre Bohanna
When you watch this scene, you don’t focus on the proton guns our four heroes hold, not really. You will look at the Gozer or the sweat pearling on Winston’s forehead. The actors, the sets, the costumes or the special effects are not easy to overlook. However, props are often the unsung heroes of movies. GUNS AND UMBRELL AS Props. They come in ever y shape and size. Weapons, instruments, slightly lopsided bir thday cakes, jeweller y, books. Sometimes, props are so impor tant that they even show up in the movie title: Lord of the Rings; Raiders of the Lost Ark. Props can become iconic and irreversibly connected to characters: the umbrella from Mar y Poppins; the necklace from Titanic. And, in some cases, props tell just as much as words could: the spinning top from Inception; the origami unicorn from Blade Runner. In a way, it’s great that almost no one wonders how these props were made, because they are there to provide subtle subtext. However, as designers, it might be time to take a closer look at the wonder ful world of prop design. To do this, we approached two
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prop designers, both working in an entirely different par t of the business. BRINGING THE MAGIC TO LIFE The first prop designer that we reached out to was Pierre Bohanna. Even if you don’t know his name, you probably are familiar with some of his work. He runned depar tments designing and manufacturing props, models and special costumes for movies like The Dark Knight, Star Wars and Harr y Potter. Bohanna star ted out in the business of engineering and boat building. According to him, there isn’t really a difference between designing props and designing objects for regular use. “All things come from a requirement of form and function. What you do have to do as a prop maker, is consider what the requirements are for the piece in question, in the sense of how the stor y tellers want to use the object in telling their stor y. For example, a bottle of wine is standing on a table and is featured as a scene plays out. The film is set in the 1700s and the place is in a French Chateau, so it has to match the style of the period and be in keeping. Then, it is smashed over the head of the lead character. Now, it has to be 1
April 2020 | turn the page
