NOVEMBER | FEATURE
audience on their recent tour was
a collaborative thing, we knew
logistically how that would work.
How long do your creations take?
A hyper realistic face requires a
live cast, then sculpting, hair work,
etc, can take three weeks, but it’s
around six weeks for a full body.
We don’t tend to keep stuff.
Sometimes you have to destroy it
because it’s part of the agreement.
What are your career highlights?
I go back years to a small project
for a Mazda commercial. We
created a suit for a dancer which
even today I think was superb. It
was a fibre glass suit which was
jointed so you could move. He
was breakdancing in the suit at
one point. I wished we could have
filmed that!
It was around the time of
Robocop, when they created two
suits – one for when he was sitting
down, and I think we did better.
There were a lot of late nights
working on that one.
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Where do you hire staff from?
We hire from various
institutions. Wimbledon College
is good, and there’s various
model making degrees and prop
making courses nationwide. To
most parents it probably sounds
ludicrous, but now it’s quite
profitable.
Above: Mike Kelt
Do you have limitations?
We can do practically anything
you can think of. I encourage
clients and directors to think
about what they would like to
happen if they had a magic wand.
If it’s impossible we’ll tell you. It
might be unaffordable, but rarely
impossible.
Doing props for events is
satisfying because they last longer.
Sometimes the props we make
barely appear on film, but at an
event, it will likely go on tour and
has to be more durable and reliable.
Space is always a compromise
at events. There’s never enough
backstage, and it’s a bit of a
nightmare when you’re building
quite large items. It’s the nature of
the business though, and I quite
like working with that. Fitting our
props into an old Victorian theatre,
for example, is a challenge, but a
fun one.
The ambition of sets is ever
increasing as more money is
coming from tours, so there’s more
investment.
Have you considered using old film
props for event works?
Tableart talks about how to
integrate our props into seasonal
events. The things at event
doorways, and so forth. Budgets
for events are generally less than
a film. There’s not usually anyone
who thinks of the lifecycle of a
model because the film industry
is so compartmentalised. Keeping
stuff aside for Premieres is rare but
there is every opportunity to do
that.