Want to give input into a making a real movie prop?

Cabin Fever 2 is in production.

One scene requires a swordfish ice carving.

Obviously ice is not going to do, it. It was 70 degrees here yesterday.


The director found a mounted swordfish he likes.

It's about 3 1/2 feet long.

It needs to be reproduced to look like ice.

1- You have 5 days

2- Pressure casting is out of the question because of size of piece.

So gentlemen and ladies. Here it is!

Your shot at helping make a real film prop!

Please present your plan. If it is used, I'll see what booty I can come up with that's lying around the lot.
method, material, techiques, finishing

How close up will it be seen?

How much abuse is it supposed to be able to handle?

Etc.?

Otherwise go with a vacuformed copy. Lightweight, a little airbrushing should look decent (to give that slightly milky quality all large ice pieces have) depending on where it is, a little dry ice around to give off the "ice vapors" effect, good to go.

if i give a good answer, can i stop production on a sequel to a horrible movie? :P

obviously i lack the expertise of many of the people on the board, but i would hazard to just make a multi part mold (something easy and stretchy like oomoo), and use alumilite clear to cast it in pieces until you have one big fish. basically a big one piece mold with the pour hole and vent holes near the tail to minimize bubbles in the "sword" part of the swordfish.

itll be somewhat bubbled, but ice does look like that, and if you keep the entire fish in the mold and keep adding more and more clear resin to it in layers, it should all adhere together with little to no seam line internally. just dont knock it around and it should be ok.

best guess i can come up with.

chris

Skin it in a nice brushable silicone, give it a nice hard shell.
Use a great clear resin in three or four seperate castings/curings; like smooth on's Crysal Clear, let cure fully, use thin saw blade to make"blocks" after curing (cut or just scribe along pouring lines)

Have fun!

How about a hollow clear resin/wax rotocast version filled with water?? That way you can de-gas the resin before pouring into the mould and still get the weighty feel with the water. Just an idea.

form the main body out of vaccuformed PETG...then do do the same with the fin...form it, or reconstruct it out of either acrylic or PETG.

Then cast the mouth, eyes, and sword(snout), tail and fins with clear cast resin...

that should give it a good clear look, then you could just clear coat it. But glueing the pieces on with Weld On 4 should give a good seamless look...and then you could even coat it with a clear resin to give it a more "undetailed look" like it was actually cut out of the ice...or if you need it super detailed, just leave it be...

I agree with gnrlotto. Vac-form with clear plastic. Spray paint with matt and gloss clear to get the ice look. Spray some water to get the drip factor.

Ask Lord_Gita. Our friend Dave in Orlando helped make clear statues for Disney that were about 7 feet high.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Treadwell &#064; Feb 27 2007, 10&#58;48 PM) [snapback]1428427[/snapback]</div>

Ask Lord_Gita. Our friend Dave in Orlando helped make clear statues for Disney that were about 7 feet high.
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Isn&#39;t it sort of against the "rules" of this exercise to engage in such blatant nepotism?

Or should I go drown myself?

? Rick&#39;s asking for input and I suggested a source of advice from someone who would know what to do. You know, the kind of thing people on forums do for each other. Help.

edit:
per Rick&#39;s post below:

Ah, I see&#33;

I think I agree with the idea of a vacuform piece if you can...Thinking of the deadline though..

Or, if you have a huge amount of silicone around and happen to have clear resin...



How about a forced perspective etching (scratching, sanding, paint etc...) on an acrylic sheet (Plexiglass).

Or sculpt directly onto the acrylic with a thick acrylic paste medium, like you&#39;d mix with paint...there must be something sculptable and clear...

Build it up with plexi and saran wrap..maybe cheat a little aluminum foil in there here and there...

If all else fails, matte the swordfish out and add it in later with CG

I hope some of this inspires an idea.

Futher clarification. I know what I would recommend. Looking for how you guys would do it. Gnrlotto grasped the point.

1-This is coming out of a SPFX shop on Screen Gems lot. Materials and methods are not limited except for time constraints and a budget of let&#39;s say... &#036;4,000.00 from which a profit would be expected.

2-It&#39;s not supposed to be a focal piece, however the director likes it.

3- He is not interested in how anyone else would do the shoot.

He wants an ice sculpture of a particular swordfish that won&#39;t melt.

Lack of information is frustrating, welcome to the film business.

4 1/2 days left, stick to the shooting schedule&#33;

I say do a multi-part cast in clear resin. It&#39;ll have small air bubbles, but so does real ice.

Once it&#39;s assembled, spray it with some light mists of white and clear coat to give it the frosted look and then you can spray water on it to make it look like its melting.

-Fred

You can sculpt the swordfish in hard foam, cover it with urashell or something to make it sturdier, make a 2 pieces silicone mold with a fibrglass shell, and pour the clear resin in the 2 halves of the mold... You can repeat the operation 3 or 4 times to make a quite solid cast, but very light because it&#39;s hollow... 2 days of work (approx)...
Ice is full of air bubbles, so don&#39;t worry about them...

It&#39;s hard to describe the operation properly in English for me, but I can illustrate it if you want...

I think the clear vac forming is the best bet to get the overall piece done. I was thinking to add some depth to it to make it look like a solid piece, you might want to brush in slightly tinted clear resin/epoxy inside of the shell. Also, you might want to lightly sand the inside, this should help defuse the light and along with a little airbrushing on the outside and a clear gloss coat should give it the look you&#39;re after. I also like the idea of shooting it with a light mist of water right before filming will give it the "slowly melting" look.

Good luck&#33;
-B89&#33;

Quick, cheap, and easily replicable so they can make a bunch if it is going to be used in a scene?

How about making them out of ice. Make a swordfish ice cube tray out of heated styrofoam / craft foam using the original wall mounted fish as a mold master, it may not be very detailed, but the shape sould be pretty well on with very little work.

They could make several of them at a time to deal with melting and breakage. Keep them in the "Craft Services" cooler truck if they are filiming in the woods.

P.S. I loved Cabin Fever, and I hope this is another Eli Roth movie. Fun Cheesy horror rocks

First of all, REFERENCE MATERIAL If you THINK you know what is wanted, I´d say most times the director disagrees. Okay, you have the fish, but what about the surrounding stuff ? Just in case you didn´t do the pic research already...

























http://members.tripod.com/living_ice/id10.html

I like the lit up ones the most. You can see that most sculpts are not as lifelike and detailed as the real thing is, due to the material "ice". Hence the somewhat crude replication of details, which would certainly contribute to getting away with a sloppy cast swordfish

I can´t contribute to the technical process, but I´d say that GnrlOtto´s method would be the quickest and safest method. and probably the cheapest.

If I´d know how the shot was setup, I´d dare to suggest ordering one of those crystal marlin

I hope that I was able to return a bit of the favor that you did me about two years ago when I asked for pics of functioning magical pendants


Michael

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ghadrack &#064; Feb 28 2007, 03&#58;50 PM) [snapback]1428590[/snapback]</div>

...
They could make several of them at a time to deal with melting and breakage. Keep them in the "Craft Services" cooler truck if they are filiming in the woods.

...
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Oooh, the nitpickers will love that &#33; "Now its molten, now its not &#33;"

And the continuity folks, the light folks, the set dresser, the set decorator, the props people, and especially the director, when in a crucial shot the sword breaks off due to a lamp too near the swordfish

Furthermore, after initial filming is done, and all of the real sculpts are gone, what if they have to do a reshoot ?

Nah, I´d say that the decision to have a fake fish is the only way to be safe. Real ice sculpts seem to be cheaper at first, but in the long run...

In addition, the fish can reel in some dough when auction off or directly sold to one of those silly as hell props collectors Costs minimized

Michael

Well, I was going to say, first you find old army surplus stuff, like a grenade from an English weapon. Then a knob from a sink...

Oh. Sorry. No, I have no worth while input to this thread. :P

-- Tim

Looks like this is pretty well covered, but here goes-

Mold fish in accelerated silicone, 2 part mold side to side

Cast fish in water clear resin, maybe hollow to save materials and weight

clean up seams, wet sand seam areas till shiny again

"frost" fish with airbrushed white paint

Mount fish in clear PLASTIC punchbowl, seal all joints with clear silicone caulking to waterproof

light from beneath

fill bowl with colored water to simulate punch.

add chips of dry ice for a little fog.

how&#39;s that?

-Sarge

Jus tmake sure to finish it off with glyceryin (SP?) mixed with water. That way the water doesn&#39;t run off and it will look wet. BUt I&#39;m sure you knew that. :P

When you say mounted, you mean like those talking bass or whatnot?

Hey I was just tossing it out there

You could just coat the original in a white power coat, like a christmas spray snow that will wash off, then coat it with transparent liquid latex :P That stuff a slightly opaque though, god only knows what it would look like when finished :P

- Two part mold the swordfish in plaster, allow to cure/dry.
- Line both halves of mold with stage glass (or sugar glass).
- Repeat step two above several times until thickness is desired.
- Glue two halves together.

-G

Big update. Sorry been a little busy.
Fish is to be an ice sculpt at a "prom dance&#39; All hell breaks lloose and some girl gets the sword bill through the back of the head and out her mouth. WE originally were told it was to sit in a punch bowl but now the bowl disappeared or something. Fish is not a "hero" piece so to say but does have a "hero" side&#33;

ONE of you guys scored 100% on alternative way to do this fish. Should figure out who by this weekend.




Here is the swordfish. Someone in the producer&#39;s office bought it off ebay. They liked it, we gotta make it work. It&#39;s a half fish wall mount. Basically what we have here is an LL Bean type fish we have to pass-off as one from Fantasy on Ice&#33;






Just completing sculpting the clay filled side of the swordfish.

Here is Mark- RPF&#39;s 8perf and Mastermodeler at the Carolina FX workshop on Screen Gems Studio lot.

Mark is the one with the shorter nose just a bit more hair...




Shot of fish so you can see sword.




In background a turn of the century air ballon for another production is being made. It&#39;s covered with foam sheet and then burlap. The smaller completed one on the left was made by good &#39;o lDave Beavis who I mentioned earlier did FX on the Star Wars OT. The shop is currently geared up to do 3 films and I think a fourth is coming down the pike. A lot all at once. Want to see Mark work? Pick up a camera&#33; He comes to life&#33;



There is a cannon in the loft from some forgotten film, and a great White Shark head sculpt by my production partner Rick Pour . It was used in Surface, an adult NIM got the rest of the shark for dinner. I think the gator was used in Surface as well but originated from another film.



Gator board and hot glue mold box&#33; About an inch of plaster in bottom as backer for mother mold. We are over at our office/workshop next to Screen Gems where the climate is a tad more controlled and there are not people coming through with stuff that ignites, blows up etc. Platinum silicone and clear resins are a bit sensitive to variances in temp and humidity. I&#39;m not big on things with fuses and flame thrower nozzles. Especially in the same area.

Just beyond the mold box is a roughed out "ice wave" base I did and covered in gesso. Waiting for art directors approval. I overbuilt it offerring 2 styles of &#39;waves&#39; figure he&#39;ll want it cut back and I&#39;d rather cut back than add on&#33;



Sliced off the sword so SPFX can build appliances. We&#39;ll mold it seperate. One half of our fish with a salmon colored jacket of platinum base silicone ( Silicone Inc). One we have both sides jacketed we&#39;ll build a mom mold around it in the mold box.



Art director came by. Saw all my Bladerunner stuff and checked out my Queen and Alien warrior busts...he just finished working with Ridley Scott&#33; . Rather painless after that point though we&#39;d heard he was pretty egotistical. Cut base back like I figured. So here is final base clayed up, sprayed with clear urethane and ready for a silicone jacket.

Tommorrow is mold day, degass resin day and do small clear cast of sword. Hope to have big mold done so we can get some plaster bucks by Friday AM at latest.

My partner is key make-up SPFX for "Bolden" which started yesterday. Though much of the film will be done here, 8 or 9 days will be shot in New Orleans. Hopefully I&#39;ll have some inside SPFX/Prop stuff to share. Ton of ramshackle cabins all over the lot waiting for something. I thought it was Cabin Fever2 but nope. All of Cabin Fever2 is at a school??? Stage 4 is being built into a turn of the century French Quarter for Bolden.. Carpenters have been working for weeks. Looks cool in bare wood as painters and plasterers have yet to start.

GOSSIP&#33;

Hydin will be happy to hear that Cabin Fever 2 just lost several days of production time. They were to start filming at UNC-W this AM. Location had been reserved, insured, contracted and approved months ago.
Some big muckity muck with the university evidently read the script last night (DUH&#33 stopped them this AM as they were setting up. UNC-W decided they didn&#39;t want a bloody horror film being done on campus. That&#39;s going to cost BIG PRODUCTION BUCKS&#33; I&#39;d venture the base cost loss running well over &#036;200,000 for today and another 450,000 to &#036;100,000 a day until they get back on schedule. I hope they sue the crap out of UNC-W. The same UNC-W with a so called "film school program"

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hydin &#064; Feb 27 2007, 10&#58;07 PM) [snapback]1428408[/snapback]</div>

if i give a good answer, can i stop production on a sequel to a horrible movie? :P
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IT&#39;S FUNNY BECAUSE IT&#39;S TRUE