Post by indakin on Dec 22, 2007 12:42:57 GMT -5
Well a small few of you might know I worked on the film National Treasure 2 this past spring and summer, creating the main book props with an Illustrator I know. Its been hard to not talk about something so cool for so long, but now that the film is out, I guess its ok to let you guys know about the experience and show some photos of the work I did. The props I personally made pretty much completely by myself was the Diary of John Wilkes Booth. I also assembled the Presidents Book of Secrets and did alot of work on inserts that went into the book (which you dont even see in the final cut lol), and a few other books including Riley's personal treasure book he writes.
I was given the opportunity to work on the film back in my final spring semester at school, through my teacher who was good friends with the illustrator and he was looking for some students to help him out on the new film he was working on, so my friend Keri and I were selected. We expected to go for only a few week sessions for some help here and there, but it turned out to be a 3 month process going into his art studio at least 3 times a week, sometimes for a full few weeks of work at a time. It wasnt as much of a stress on me as it was for our boss because he had some many other project deadlines to work on besides the movie because when doing a film you really dont get paid until work is finished, so you still have to do alot of other projects to keep and income coming in. Basically the Booth diary is what I focussed on making. Keri was assigned to the computer side of things which involved scanning, cleaning up booth pages, and printing out 60+ copies of the diary.... Trust me, that was ALOT of work and I realized how much a pain it was when we did some pick up work in October and i had to print 20 extra copies because they apparently ripped up all the other copies with takes.... i still dont get how it took 60 takes lol.
Anyways I was put to the task of fabricating the entire leather structure of the booth diary. Anything involved in making the actual diary (besides the pages) was my job. My boss is very knowledgeable on the history of book making and has alot of old printing press equipment, which is why he was hired for this film. All the props we made were Hero versions for the upclose screen shots. I really had no clue how to make a book, but my boss showed me the basics of working with leather to make books and about binding, and the rest from there was really me coming up with how to replicate the real booth diary. Thats the big challenge and fun part about making the prop is that it wasn't a made up diary, this was the real diary booth carried with him (its on display in fords theater). I was given a few to scale pics of the diary from the FBI and i had to figure out how to make it from there. We found goat skins to be the best to work with because its tough and would hold the detailing we needed which ranged from the score lines running accross the inner face and any embossing and distressing I needed to do. A full diary could be made in 1 day, which was a test I set for myself and was able to pull off once ( but that was after i had cut everything out and had it ready to jsut be assembled). Figuring out the construction process and how to replicate the intricate details of the diary took me a few weeks of mock up work and testing. I made a total of 3 diarys for the film. Two versions were older more distressed versions used in the present day lab tests. A slightly newer version was used in the opening Tavern scenes when the pages are actually torn out. We had to do alot of little things to make the diary film friendly too, like having the pages be able to slip in and out for the multiple takes of Tomas Gates ripping out the Booth pages. I enjoyed making the diary because it was like my realistc portrait drawings I love to do. There are so many details in the original diary that i had to notice and add. I was pretty nervous to hand over the finish prop to the head prop master because I mean, I just made the Hero prop that the films based apon largely and , what if i didnt make it good enough? Its alot of pressure never doing this before. But on a good note we were actually told that Jerry Brookhiemer was completely blown away with the finished prop stating that he thought we had actually stolen the real diary from fords theatre. This was apparently a big compliment to us all because producers and directors usually expect this type of quality and they dont say much about these things ever. Jerry is a big prop guy too I guess with his work on CSI so he likes this stuff. Anyways so thats the basics on the booth diary without getting into too many more details. One of the cooler thing sin the end was actually get ahold of a real diary from that time period and seeing how it was really made. I was surprising pretty dead on, besides the leather being almost paper thin in the real one.
For the presidents book I helped build the final cover and i worked on inside documents. We came up with ALOT of cool images for the book, its really stuffed with some cool photo fakes we did. We had shots of JFK and Marylin kissing. Faked moon landing shots, alien documents too. My favorite was getting to make an alien autopsy photo which the conner of is only seen quickly sticking out of the book. As heartbreaking as it can be to be asked to make soooo many details for props like these, and really not see any of it or only small portions, its alot of times there to help the actors feel more in character too. We made only 1 BOS for the film because of deadlines, and the book was literly watched and looked after like it was the REAL Book. The actors are told to handle these props as if they are real historical pieces, because in actuality some of these props cost more to make with everything that goes into them, then some actors get paid in the film lol.
Other things we made was the book Bens reading through at home about the early explorers looking for the treasure. My boss worked mainly on the 4 or so illustrations in those shots. They were alot of work for planning and making them look like old engravings. He worked on those while we did the fabrication process. In all the experience was AMAZING, and I want to do more work badly. I might be working on Brookheimer's new film PRINCE OF PERSIA, but thats not confirmed yet.
Bellow is a gallery with the props in them. Please dont go reposting these around, I wanted to share it with you all because the film is up the alley of Indiana Jones, and being a Gearhead and costumer definitely helped me in understanding details for making these props. I hope you all get to check out the film, its definitely a fun time, not as thrilling at points as the first in my opinion, but still a really fun film to watch. Thanks for Reading!
And yea I have pics of the entire construction process, but I dont know if I will be posting them. IF you have any questions Ill be happy to answer. Enjoy!
tell me if the gallery doesnt work:
s228.photobucket.com/albums/ee162/IndakinSL4885/NT2%20props/
