Movies

Behind the Scenes on a Sci-Fi Movie – ‘Prospect’ – Part Five

Prospect is an indie sci-fi the film I worked on in 2017 building and finishing props and sets. It saw national theatrical release in November 2018 and is now available to pre-order on Blu-ray or on iTunes!

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This is part five of an eight-part weekly series that will culminate with the movie’s home release on March 5th.

Cee Helmet

Cee's Helmet was made by someone else, but it was my job to do some of the final finishing on the helmet to meet the director's aesthetic. When I got the helmet, there were a lot of shiny "metal" parts that looked out-of-place in our far future, gritty frontier, and I was tasked to make them look more matte black and beat up. I relied on my trusty old friend, Plasti-Dip!more
After masking everything off, I coated the metal looking parts in Plasti-Dip then careful scraped edges and bits to reveal the original metallic paint for scuffing and wear and tear.
I also added these cool screw heads onto the helmet so these pieces didn't just look stuck on to the face plates.
Because these were hero helmets that would be worn a lot, the face shields were actually made in triplicate. This allowed for cleaning and easy swapping between takes and as emergency backups. However, for the sake of continuity, all the weathering had to match. It was a lot of fun ensuring that all three had identical wear and tear and dirt.more
The final element of the helmets were lights. Almost all of the helmets in the film had removable flashlights/headlamps, and I was tasked with finishing and figuring out how to attach them. Cee, Damon, and Ezra all had this same style of light. For both Cee and Damon's helmets they attached via magnet. Ezra's helmet was a bit more difficult and I ended up making a custom clip for it to slide onto the frame of his facemask while looking like it wasn't clipped on. (Sorry I didn't manage to get a photo of that.) As far as techniques go, I used one of my favorite for scratched, painted metal—make it as real as possible! Instead of painting silver/metallic over the paint where I wanted chipping, I actually painted the entire thing with metallic paint first, then the outside layers of paint, then very carefully scratched and chipped off paint where I wanted wear and tear. It gives a lot more realistic chipping and wear in my opinion. The dirt and grime are just a variety of acrylic paints.more
Publicity shot of Sophie Thatcher in her helmet in the film.

Air Filters

Ezra, played by Pedro Pascal, had a special version of the air filter with a four button control system and double hookup. I also made all of the filters that go inside the filter box. You can see a little orange poking out and that is painted EVA foam wrapped around the ends of a length of foam backing rod. Some of the filters were made new and packaged (didn't make it into the movie) and others were weathered at various stages of use.more
The four button side addition was scratch built by me using various parts in our junk bins.
For all of the air hoses, we wanted them to be easy to put on and off, so quick connects seemed like a no-brainer EXCEPT we didn't want anything to be obviously recognizable as modern technology so for all of the connectors on the filter boxes, I hid the base of the quick connect in a resin cast cut off from some other parts we were using. This also gave us a nice easy way to mount them onto the filter boxes.more
A variation on the filter can also be found in the Green Moon Guide (which you can get on the Regal Cinemas app or site with reward points).
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This post was last modified on February 17, 2019 1:55 pm

Will James

Will is a geeky CosMaker and father of 6-year-old and 3-year-old geeks-in-the-making living in Seattle, Washington. He loves reading, comics, cosplay, games (tabletop and video sorts), and robots - especially Transformers. He's also a custom prop and costume builder at Billythebrick Cosplay.

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Will James
February 18, 2019 6:00 am

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