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By Steve Fronczek
20 January 2008
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What props did White Monkey Design build for Battlestar Galactica?
We did the Cylon cuffs and lots of bibles, tons of everyday items. Battlestar Galactica, when you watch the show you'll see that the actual props are everyday items that have just been slightly altered. Like the radios are radios. They just have "ABC" on them instead of "FM" or whatever and they've got funny little antennas attached. Everything is what we call Galactiguised.
All the books have got corners cut off them, all the paper's got corners cut off them. We take the phones and change them. We'll take parts of aircraft stuff and we'll slightly modify it and a lot of times because it's such a dark show, there's lots of destruction so we age things. A lot of aging. Stacks of Helmets... when we do the helmets we have to break them and crack them because they have the space fights and all that kind of stuff.
Of course Baltar's interrogation chair. The guns - rubber guns and holsters. We do a LOT of rubber guns for production. Rubber knives, shards of glass, shards of mirror. Those containers and things for set decoration when they are growing the Cylons.
We won't do creature effects, it will be Bill Terezakis doing the effects for Battlestar. In the case of Battlestar it's usually just everyday things, except for the occasional torture instrument. Something the Cylons would put in Baltar's ear.
The whole brain child of my website is to figure out how different props are made and what the origins were before they got Galactiguised. What do you do to Galactiguise them?
Well, usually the props are from second hand stores or from the scrap yard. The show is so dirty and the stuff is so everyday.
[ed note: Booth gets a call on his cell, this time to discuss work on the "Space Buddies" movie. When he gets back his answer takes a bit of a deviation.]
Again like I said the props are... you've got your guns. The real guns are supplied by an armorer. We've all got a gun license in this business. In Canada the gun thing is really, really tight. Nobody is wandering around with a gun in their pocket. It just doesn't happen. You've got to register the guns when they come into the shop and write down the serial numbers, what make and model they are.
Somebody has to have a business license to be able to even transport them. So everybody in my shop has a gun license for prohibited and restricted and I have a gun license for that as well as for possession. Nobody can transport any of those weapons, including the rubber weapons, they have to be locked in a case. If you think about it a good replica of a real gun might as well be a real gun. It's under a lot of control. So at any given time I've got roughly ten to twenty five people with their gun licenses, first aid, all that stuff and TDG, which is Transportation of Dangerous Goods.
Did you work on the guns for the Razor Episode?
What did we do for Razor? I can't remember now. Like I said once we finish we're finished. It's like... I've got molds that I did two days earlier and I don't even know what they are for because I'm so busy doing something else.
So you don't keep a record of what props you've done?
Well, yes we do because we photograph everything that we do, pretty much. If it's everyday stuff, again if all I'm doing is aging a bunch of clothes or helmets or something like that, I'm not going to take a photograph of it. It's that kind of show, what you are seeing in that show, when you look at the inside of the Viper or anything like that, film and lighting do a lot of magic to those things. It's kind of funny because it's deceiving, once you're on set and you look at the stuff it's not how it looks on film. So there's a lot of it from the director of photography and set decoration, the paint department, construction. They do a lot of film magic. We have to be very careful. We can't over age things, we can't under age things. It's a fine line.
Where do you acquire the parts to build the props for the series?
Sometimes they're from garage sales. You know the microphones that they use in the press conferences. I bought two of those in particular just from a sale. I found these really cool looking mics at a garage sale. I scurried down to Ken and said "Hey, look at these." and he goes "Oh, those are great." And we just add something to them and a way you go. They were like from the late 60's or early 60's sometime. They looked really great.
A lot of times stuff comes from the scrap yard. I'm constantly perusing scrap yards looking for things that I might be able to turn into a prop for Battlestar and for any other show for that matter.
Do you find yourself on your days off seeing something and saying to yourself, "Oh that looks cool, I could use that as a prop."
Oh yeah absolutely! Especially if we go into a... I just spent two months in China for instance, and that's what I spent part of my time doing was shopping for stuff. Looking for things I might be able to use in the show. Going to different markets.
A few years ago we were doing "Fantastic 4" -- the first one, and we had to make a bunch of scientific equipment that was super light, so we had all these ordinary things that we were taking apart, putting back together, cutting and making super light and stuff like that. For a month afterwards I kept seeing plastic things I could take apart and turn into scientific equipment. Yeah, everyday stuff... we use it all the time.
You have to work closely with Ken Hawryliw, Prop Master of the series. Do you have a lot of personal input when it comes to choosing how and what the props will be made? Does Ken give you free reign or is there a set design you have to follow?
Well it all depends on how involved the Production Designer is, and how involved the Art Director is, and then it's up to Ken's discretion how much freedom I have at that point. If he wants me to do something on my own, the common phrase is "Have fun with it." (chuckle) That's when I know I can do what I want. Other than that, I have to pay close attention to what the needs of the production are and what they expect to see and what they want.
So you really have to weight available resources along with budgeting to fit within their needs.
Exactly. When I'm building for him I keep in close contact. So if there's any questions, communication is the key. That's the most important thing, constantly communicating with each other so we know there's no mistakes. Props have to work a certain way when it's script driven and sometimes miscommunications can happen. For instance, a prop looks great but it's not doing the one thing it's supposed to do... something like that.
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