Props can be made out of anything, as long as it's going to do what the shot calls for it to do - it's durable and won't break if the actor goes nuts with it - and it'lll hold up to repeated use if it's in more than one scene. It also has to look really good on camera from all the angles it'll be seen from, and has to ”read“ as what it is.
I've made a lot of hero props out of resin - which is exactly what a lot of prop replicas are made of - and using the same techniques that the replica folks use, although not as expertly as some of them! In fact, I've seen plenty of replica props that looked a LOT better than the one that was in the film or TV show. I mean, really WAY better. haha.
As an example - Here's how I made one of the most obscure and unknown props in film history (yes, that's an exaggeration, but it's how I felt at the time. haha). There's a scene in the first HELLBOY where he's in the cemetery with what appears to be an ancient compass that seems to be playing music-box music. He's saying, ”Find me a talker....“ And after all the time I put into it, you can barely see it in the final edit!! I'll bet nobody reading this can even remember that there was a prop in that part of the scene.
The idea for that prop (which we called The Corpsefinder) when through a few different iterations before that one was ultimately used. There's a pic in the ”Art of Hellboy“ book showing a totally different ”amulet“ that was intended for that scene, but that one was used to actually revive the corpse later (and is seen very clearly, I might add) - so the director asked for something that looked more like a really ancient magic compass/music box/device. A mechanical thing that's maybe 5,000 years old was how I remember the concept. The propmaster is a good pal of mine, and I was therefore trusted to design and make this thing, plus I've done a bunch of stuff like this - so I started by digging into a lot of reference. Archaeological, mechanical, Egyptian, Chinese, etc... One piece of reference/inspiration I photographed in Disneyland waiting in line for the Indiana Jones ride. Some obscure sculptural detail near the base of one of the artifacts - inspiration can come from anywhere. I drew up a few sketches until someone said, ”COOL! I LOVE IT!!“ Which is nice to hear occasionally.
The next step was to make a paper mock-up from scale blueprints I drew in Illustrator to see how it fit in someone's hand, and how it would open, etc... Basically figuring out if there were any problems inherent in the basic shape, size or functionality of it. I wanted it to be able to open, and for Hellboy to be able to make tweaky adjustments on some type of inner ”finder“ mechanism. Very simple stuff, but I wanted it to be awesome. At this time, the production was already over in Prague, and I was emailing progress photos to the folks over there, doing my best to keep them updated.
Once I had it all fine-tuned, I added more design details in Illustrator and printed out the patterns to scale. Then I got the Super Sculpey out and started sculpting it. It was a multi-sided shape, so I made one side in Sculpey, molded it and cast up enough to build the shell, then I made a mold of that. It was assembled from about 7 pieces. The base, the lid, and the inner dial which was made from a rotating ring with some metal parts, and a central domed lens that I cast in clear resin with some amber dye mixed with some grunge to make it look ancient. I epoxied the hinges on it, and glued the whole thing together really solidly because I had to ship it (actually about 6 identical duplicates) to Prague where it was shot on a location that was below zero and either drizzly, rainy or flooding. Around that time I became thrilled that I hadn't scored a trip to the location and was nice and warm in my sunny Los Angeles workshop.
It turned out pretty cool, but for some reason it was one of those props that just didn't get much screen time. Hopefully not because it looked stupid. haha.
I heard a rumor that the director kept one, and gave another one of them to Harry Knowles, the Ain't It Cool News guy.
