Join us on Wednesday, April 20 at noon Pacific for the Movie Prop Electronics Hack Chat with Ben Eadie!
It wasn’t too long after the invention of cinema that the need for special effects became apparent. If you want to tell stories, especially the science fiction type of story, you need to build a plausible universe, including all the gadgets and gizmos within it. And so right from the start, propmakers and set designers have had the challenge of making things look futuristic using the technology of the present day.
All too often, the realities of budgets and time constraints have reduced this crucial world-building to an exercise in blinkenlights. But not always. Ben Eadie is a maker and inventor who works in the world of movie magic, specializing in props and practical effects. While he’s certainly as much in love with blinkenlights as any of us, there’s more than that to making a movie look good. He’ll stop by the Hack Chat to talk about how he incorporates electronics into his practical effect builds, and perhaps even reveal some of the movie magic for us.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, April 20 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.
Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator?
Someone?
Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth shattering kaboom!
Oooooo… You are making me very very angry…
No Boom. Susan Ivanova : No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow.
A lot of props used to be existing electronics. So in Silent Running, Bruce Dern talks into an oscilloscope. I think it was the Munsters, they used a shortwave receiver as a transmitter. Jacob’s ladders used to add “authenticity”. Grab some test equipment from the repairshop to dazzle the audience. In the Die Hard movies, they are clearly using VHF walkie talkies, but they refer to it as CB, even police dispatch, “get off the frequency”. In the third one, they use a ham transceiver for ship to shore.
Most people never notice.
The Jacob’s ladder was a staple of 1930’s Republic scifi serials like Flash Gordon & King of the Rocket Men.
Last week to enter the Sci-Fi contest. Just sayin’.
https://hackaday.io/contest/184314-sci-fi-contest