Got told my fake books looked too clean for a 1990s apartment scene

A prop master I worked with last year said my stack of paperbacks had no spine creases or yellowing, so they looked brand new. I spent a whole weekend roughing them up with sandpaper, coffee stains, and a heat gun to get that lived-in feel. Has anyone else had to deliberately damage props to make them read as realistic?

3 comments

3 Comments

jackson.jenny27d ago

and I remember reading somewhere that the prop masters for the show Glee used to bake their fake yearbooks in the oven to make them look aged and worn. it's funny how much work goes into making something look like nobody cared about it.

bettyk5327d ago

Hmm, I see it a bit differently though. That kind of detail really shows they cared about making the show feel real and lived in, not like nobody cared. It's the little things that make a show special.

white.alex26d ago

There's actually a whole real world version of this with those fancy "distressed" jeans that cost 200 bucks. Someone had to sit there and manually sand them to look like you've been wearing them for five years, which is just hilarious when you think about it.