Support The Earl Hays Press by checking out their props: www.theearlhayspress.com/memorabilia-prop-shop Follow Props to History @PropsToHistory at th-cam.com/users/propstohistory
Just heard about Mr. Hays a few days ago in a video about the BTTF newspapers! I want to buy and frame a set of replicas but they're about $80 total and I have bills lol
Never really thought about it, but to fill a shot with a ring-sized ring, you would also have dust and minute unwanted details take up tangible real estate of the shot
I feel pretty dumb for never realizing this... it's so obvious... why deal with macro lenses and light and depth of field issues when you can just make things bigger 😅
In the movie "Top Secret" they made a joke based on the "Forced Perspective" technique where a ringing telephone close to the camera when it's answered is shown to be gigantic.
Top Secret! is one of my favorite movies about movies without being “about movies”. It’s like they show how the magic works by pushing it too far. Like the scene in the bookstore where it’s all in reverse (and the owner removes the magnifying glass to show he has one giant eye), or the underwater saloon brawl. It has all these moments from every genre of film and uses them to point out the silliness of genres.
1981's _The Incredible Shrinking Woman_ was an all-call for oversized props. If a prop house had it, that picture rented it. The movie's star, Lily Tomlin, had worked with an oversized rocking chair for her Edith Ann TV sketches a decade prior, and knew from this that all sorts of oversize props then existed made for shooting TV commercials and such.
I remember hearing the story of the opening of, "Star Wars: Episode IV" (we all know how it begins, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." The easiest way for Lucas to create that scroll was to simply print it very large, roll it out on a warehouse floor, and then manually drag a suspended camera over the top of it to give the scrolling effect.
I'd heard about the ear used in _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,_ where the actual ear for the Ceti Alpha V creature was like 10x scale. After the prop sat for awhile suddenly one day a gigantic Q-tip appeared next to it.
I guess they could still be useful if you wanted a close up with a background in focus. A larger object greatly reduces the depth of focus you need as it can be further away.
2:41 he says they don't have the big printers because it's not needed anymore but at 3:35 he says Earl Hays still makes stuff like that every day. I'm a bit confused.
Oh man this is why learning about filming techniques is so interesting! All these tiny little tricks they use during the making that you would never know about when watching the actual movie. From the actual framing and angles they incorporate to the creation and use of props, it's all so creative!
Really great to see you with Mike (@propsto history) again. His knowledge of prop history is amazing! And isn’t the Earl Hays Press an utterly fascinating place!!!!
I don't think you have to throw them away. You could auction them off of eBay for example. I'm sure people would buy them. I'd love to have a ridiculously oversized pink flamingo in my front yard. 😆
It would cost me upwards of fifty bucks to have a small envelope posted to me from certain countries with one or two A5 sized sheets of laser-cut craftwood inside, after a purchase price of twelve. A pen the size of the 32' stops of the organ in Exeter Cathedral? Not a snowball's chance in Hell.
I remember seeing an oversized prop in the original Star Wars movie scene in the trash compactor. It was a large scribe/pick from the Land of the Giants TV series. watch the scene with a cheap, double ended pick in your hand and you will see what I mean.
0:40 I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to know more about this piece of machinery in the lower right corner with the apparent typewriter keys. What is this? What does it do and how do it do? How old is it? Does it still work and see service?
I once used a 3ft tall crayon next to a clay seal on a history report cover. The seal was 5" in diameter. Looked great. I also remembered in the movie "Stripes" the ending scenes had diffrent shots of magazines and the cover subtitles.
If they are reproducing old movie props are they altering them at all to identify them as reproduction? Loving this series it's such an oddly specific skill they have and fascinating to see what goes into making some of these otherwise unremarkable items.
I was wondering the same thing. Maybe some objects that we've seen in movies, possibly amulets in Indiana Jones or something, were actually double the size, but made smaller for them to be 'playable' props for cosplay or something.
@@Games_and_Music my worry is if they were the original creators of these movie props they could make copies that are indistinguishable from the real thing making it impossible to know which one was actually used in the movie years from now.
There's a great scene in the movie Top Secret! that pokes fun at the concept of oversized props when a phone rings and someone walks all the way across the room to answer what turns out to be a gigantic phone
There are shots in anime a lot where a character will hold something outstretched towards the camera, where the object takes up half of the frame and has an exaggerated tapering towards the character. I'm thinking primarily of when a character is holding out a weapon at the ready. I'm curious if there are live action films where they've done shots like this and had to build a prop that tapers from comically huge to being regular scale where the actor holds it. Like if the tennis racket Adam was holding at the top was as big as this prop is, but by the time it gets to the handle it is just a normal racket. I think that would be really cool to see.
That's funy, Michael is right, seeing an ordinary object blown up like that, it gives you that weird surreal feeling in your stomach, it makes me giddy. And i never though about the Ring being oversized as well, but now that i know, it makes perfect sense. It's much easier with focus and detail etc., everything, except for wearing it.
Heyyyy, nice to see Norm in this video! He hasn't been seen in any of the other Earl Hays vids, and I'm glad he got to go and experience this place too!
I used to make TV promos for a living. One of them opened with a screen-filling shot of a pair of dice and then pulled back to reveal the actor behind them. Budgetary reasons meant that we had to use a pair of real, normal-sized dice, and they looked pretty terrible in extreme closeup - you could see all the imperfections in their construction. The money we had to spend in post making the dice look good was probably about the same as we'd have had to spend to get two giant dice specially made.
sorry to ask. but did they build large hands to hold the ID's and magazines? (lol) one of the saddest "too large to keep" stories was about the "Inferno" (The Goonies) Spielberg was practically giving it away, but no one wanted it so they destroyed it.
Movies and TV... where we make tiny models of huge things, and huge models of tiny things. It's like explaining to my wife why I'm painting rocks to look like rocks and sticks to look like sticks on a diorama I'm making.
I wonder if they have one of those giant drivers license cards with a hole where the photo goes you see in so many films/tv shows when a kid goes to get a fake ID?
@@my3dviewsthe thing about that movie is that the shrinkifying process cannot be reversed, so they had to shoot the movie out of sequence. And the studio was sued by the kids' actual parents (settled out of court).
That just made me think, now I really want to see you take a cedar 4X4 and make like a 6' long pencil, machine the eraser cap, put something fun in it.
I instantly had to think about the spoof movie "Top Secret!" when that telephone in the foreground rings and a dude goes to pick it up and the holds the huge speaker to his ear. Hilarious!
There is a scene in the biker film "Torque" where a young FBI agent has to jump into his humvee? truck urgently and chase the baddies after they've caused a pile up on a freeway, he jumps in and you see from the perspective of the foot well him putting in a key that's as long as 2 chess boards, it's over in the blink of an eye so I had to pause it and go frame by frame, but I found it soo funny to see and later hear them talk about it in the special features audio commentary, I bet not many people noticed but I was pleased I'd noticed it and that this practice happens in movies for people to notice, Colin furze uses a mannequin hand in some sly shots instead of his own, and mighty car mods do a few seconds of a bare foot pumping up a hydraulic lift in some of the fast paced b roll of doing up a car and it's really funny because it's so random and so hard to spot lol..😂
Hey Adam... biggest fan here... a question... would you agree if someone proposed you to set the "perfect workshop " somewhere around the world for them? Cheers from Egypt
Curious question ,Why are shows on TH-cam not saying the names of the movies they're talking about .I've seen other shows recently not bring names up .
for a magazine cover you could just create the magazine digitally then get a close up shot of it without even using a camera. same with any other flat object.
So when SpaceBalls had that "industrial sized hair dryer".....was that a re-used jumbo prop left over from some other movie or commercial? Someone found it stuck in a corner collecting dust and said, "You know what would be really funy is..." Now I'm thinking it was an inside joke we didn't completely understand.....
Big props immediately make me think of The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Lily Tomlin, 1981! 🎵"Galaxy Glue...Galaxy Glue...Life would go to pieces without Galaxy Glue..." 🎵
I wonder if this is how they make all those foot-tall pictures of figures in White Dwarf? Given that when I get the minis that close to my face I cannot focus on them at all...
Support The Earl Hays Press by checking out their props: www.theearlhayspress.com/memorabilia-prop-shop
Follow Props to History @PropsToHistory at th-cam.com/users/propstohistory
Did they make the War of the Worlds panic scene stack-o-newspapers?
Just heard about Mr. Hays a few days ago in a video about the BTTF newspapers!
I want to buy and frame a set of replicas but they're about $80 total and I have bills lol
Never really thought about it, but to fill a shot with a ring-sized ring, you would also have dust and minute unwanted details take up tangible real estate of the shot
That and the props were made by hand and the flaws in the making will become painfully obvious on a large scale.
Yea I had no idea this was a thing but it makes lot of sense 😮
I feel pretty dumb for never realizing this... it's so obvious... why deal with macro lenses and light and depth of field issues when you can just make things bigger 😅
much easier to hide the supports to hold it at an angle when its huge too
Yeah I think there were six different versions of the One Ring made, if I remember rightly??
I like how Michael's so practiced in trademark avoidance that he obliquely refers to a certain famous trilogy that involves a ring.
Also, this may have been filmed during the strikes when naming *any* production was verboten.
@@movingforwardLDTH?? I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a thing, even if it was, neither of them is part of DGA/SAG so it wouldn’t even apply to them
To that, I also liked how casually he mentioned that the large magazine had been cleared in the same sentence with which he introduced it.
Two trilogies even.
But there's no trademark infringement in mentioning Lord of the Rings while talking about movie props.
In the movie "Top Secret" they made a joke based on the "Forced Perspective" technique where a ringing telephone close to the camera when it's answered is shown to be gigantic.
Was thinking of that too. I wonder if the "Dial M for Murder" prop was the inspiration for that joke?
I was going to mention this and thought I should check first to see if anyone else had that idea 😁
Top Secret! is one of my favorite movies about movies without being “about movies”. It’s like they show how the magic works by pushing it too far. Like the scene in the bookstore where it’s all in reverse (and the owner removes the magnifying glass to show he has one giant eye), or the underwater saloon brawl. It has all these moments from every genre of film and uses them to point out the silliness of genres.
Was just thinking of that scene when they talked about the giant phone.
I know a little German. He's sitting over there.
1981's _The Incredible Shrinking Woman_ was an all-call for oversized props. If a prop house had it, that picture rented it. The movie's star, Lily Tomlin, had worked with an oversized rocking chair for her Edith Ann TV sketches a decade prior, and knew from this that all sorts of oversize props then existed made for shooting TV commercials and such.
These Earl Hays videos are fascinating and some of my favorites. It's great to get a peek at the Behind the Scenes stuff that isn't normally covered.
I remember hearing the story of the opening of, "Star Wars: Episode IV" (we all know how it begins, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." The easiest way for Lucas to create that scroll was to simply print it very large, roll it out on a warehouse floor, and then manually drag a suspended camera over the top of it to give the scrolling effect.
And, of course, all the space ships were made over sized, too.😂
Norm having so much fun with all those forced perspective shots. Well done good sir.
Thank you so much for helping tell the story of this wonderful place
Inviting you and Adam in was the perfect move for Earl Hayes
Thanks for keep on sharing The Earl Hays Press videos. They bring me such joy and happiness when I watch them. I love them very much so for that!
I love impossible objects too. Last year I made a wooden clothespin that's about 30" long, with a spring made from 1/2" stock. It works as it should.
This series is so WILDLY fascinating.
These buildings would be a fun place to take a tour of.
Please never stop making these videos with Earl Hays. These videos are so great, amazing movie history!!!
Would love a video of Adam making an oversized prop for fun
I'd heard about the ear used in _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,_ where the actual ear for the Ceti Alpha V creature was like 10x scale. After the prop sat for awhile suddenly one day a gigantic Q-tip appeared next to it.
1:47 a bit rude of Adam to snatch the driving license from the guys hand. He was taken by surprise and did a fake scratch of the neck.
Lol. I missed it at first but now that you mention it, yes, and it's hilarious. I think Adam thought the guy was handing him the license?
A favorite memory of mine was visiting Universal Studios in the 70s and playing on the Land of the Giants props. Fun!
Haven't really watched Tennis since Björn Borg, that looks like a regular sized modern tennis racquet to me.
I guess they could still be useful if you wanted a close up with a background in focus. A larger object greatly reduces the depth of focus you need as it can be further away.
2:41 he says they don't have the big printers because it's not needed anymore but at 3:35 he says Earl Hays still makes stuff like that every day. I'm a bit confused.
I kind of love that you can tell this was filmed during the strike because Adam and Michael are still playing movie charades
Oh man this is why learning about filming techniques is so interesting! All these tiny little tricks they use during the making that you would never know about when watching the actual movie. From the actual framing and angles they incorporate to the creation and use of props, it's all so creative!
I love how Micheal is just chilling in the background waiting for his cue to enter the shot but little he knew... He was already in it.
Really great to see you with Mike (@propsto history) again. His knowledge of prop history is amazing!
And isn’t the Earl Hays Press an utterly fascinating place!!!!
Props to History is a great channel, happy to see this colab
I don't think you have to throw them away. You could auction them off of eBay for example. I'm sure people would buy them. I'd love to have a ridiculously oversized pink flamingo in my front yard. 😆
It would cost me upwards of fifty bucks to have a small envelope posted to me from certain countries with one or two A5 sized sheets of laser-cut craftwood inside, after a purchase price of twelve. A pen the size of the 32' stops of the organ in Exeter Cathedral? Not a snowball's chance in Hell.
Happy new year Adam!! I love you so much dude
Great opening shot, with smooth entrance from Michael. How many takes? 😄
I remember seeing an oversized prop in the original Star Wars movie scene in the trash compactor. It was a large scribe/pick from the Land of the Giants TV series. watch the scene with a cheap, double ended pick in your hand and you will see what I mean.
It seems unlikely that a prop from an American series would have found its way over to Elstree Studios in the UK.
0:40 I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to know more about this piece of machinery in the lower right corner with the apparent typewriter keys. What is this? What does it do and how do it do? How old is it? Does it still work and see service?
Props to History!
I once used a 3ft tall crayon next to a clay seal on a history report cover. The seal was 5" in diameter. Looked great.
I also remembered in the movie "Stripes" the ending scenes had diffrent shots of magazines and the cover subtitles.
Those probably would have made cool posters that they could have sold to fans.
If they are reproducing old movie props are they altering them at all to identify them as reproduction? Loving this series it's such an oddly specific skill they have and fascinating to see what goes into making some of these otherwise unremarkable items.
I was wondering the same thing.
Maybe some objects that we've seen in movies, possibly amulets in Indiana Jones or something, were actually double the size, but made smaller for them to be 'playable' props for cosplay or something.
@@Games_and_Music my worry is if they were the original creators of these movie props they could make copies that are indistinguishable from the real thing making it impossible to know which one was actually used in the movie years from now.
I would love it to become a regular thing for these two to talk about props together.
There's a great scene in the movie Top Secret! that pokes fun at the concept of oversized props when a phone rings and someone walks all the way across the room to answer what turns out to be a gigantic phone
I love oversized props. It solved a problem in a way that makes the most sense and it is comical at the same time
There are shots in anime a lot where a character will hold something outstretched towards the camera, where the object takes up half of the frame and has an exaggerated tapering towards the character. I'm thinking primarily of when a character is holding out a weapon at the ready. I'm curious if there are live action films where they've done shots like this and had to build a prop that tapers from comically huge to being regular scale where the actor holds it.
Like if the tennis racket Adam was holding at the top was as big as this prop is, but by the time it gets to the handle it is just a normal racket. I think that would be really cool to see.
Would that be the opposite of ‘forced perspective’, or a subset?
@@steveschunk5702 perhaps, I really have no idea. I don't know much movie terminology
I love how Michael is just stalking in the background in the beginning, just waiting.
Silently.
That's funy, Michael is right, seeing an ordinary object blown up like that, it gives you that weird surreal feeling in your stomach, it makes me giddy.
And i never though about the Ring being oversized as well, but now that i know, it makes perfect sense.
It's much easier with focus and detail etc., everything, except for wearing it.
I love your permanent childlike wonder. I think that's one of my favorite things about you and this channel.
I'm genuinely surprised that Tested and Scott, Prop and Roll haven't run into each other...And now I want them to. "Hey Adam! Cinder block!" 😁
I would like to reference the oversized phone scene in Top Secret, for all who remember that masterpiece of cinema.
...Or Peter Cushing's oversized eye in the magnifying glass shot
Heyyyy, nice to see Norm in this video! He hasn't been seen in any of the other Earl Hays vids, and I'm glad he got to go and experience this place too!
I used to make TV promos for a living. One of them opened with a screen-filling shot of a pair of dice and then pulled back to reveal the actor behind them. Budgetary reasons meant that we had to use a pair of real, normal-sized dice, and they looked pretty terrible in extreme closeup - you could see all the imperfections in their construction. The money we had to spend in post making the dice look good was probably about the same as we'd have had to spend to get two giant dice specially made.
Its Adam Savage and Stone Cold Adam Savage, together on camera.
sorry to ask. but did they build large hands to hold the ID's and magazines? (lol) one of the saddest "too large to keep" stories was about the "Inferno" (The Goonies) Spielberg was practically giving it away, but no one wanted it so they destroyed it.
The large ID and magazine would be for an inset shot where the magazine words etc fill the whole screen 😊
I was immediately thinking of the pirate ship from The Goonies when he brought up prop and set disposal.
This all reminds me of one of my favorite Saturday Morning shows as an adult: Movie Magic.
Another good oversized prop, is an oversized Terminator eye for the close up in T2. It is huge!
Movies and TV... where we make tiny models of huge things, and huge models of tiny things.
It's like explaining to my wife why I'm painting rocks to look like rocks and sticks to look like sticks on a diorama I'm making.
We need more one day builds!!! these are cool but ODB is why i come to your channel!
I love both of you guys! I learn so much!!!!
I recall that the close up alarm clock in Groundhog Day was about six feet tall - which gave that great slow fall as the digits changed.
Adam snatched the diver’s license out of his hand…🤣
One of the best oversized prop gags was the telephone in the "Top Secret!"-movie 😁
This kind of hack is normally what you'd do in game engines - I'm very tickled it actually predates them
So was the typo on the oversize drivers license an intentional goof or an actual typo? "Eyw Glasses"
It might not be a typo. I read it as "Eyewear: Glasses."
Somebody call Shaquille O'Neal and tell him he misplaced his racket😬
Now to watch the video😅
I wonder if they have one of those giant drivers license cards with a hole where the photo goes you see in so many films/tv shows when a kid goes to get a fake ID?
Wait, so you're telling me that "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" _wasn't_ filmed in a real backyard with actual tiny children?
Next, you will be telling me that Antman wasn't shrunk down to the size of an ant either. 🤔 😂
@@my3dviewsthe thing about that movie is that the shrinkifying process cannot be reversed, so they had to shoot the movie out of sequence. And the studio was sued by the kids' actual parents (settled out of court).
@@takix2007 They figured out how to reverse the process in the sequel.
Top Secret has a perspective trick in the film that's given away.
That just made me think, now I really want to see you take a cedar 4X4 and make like a 6' long pencil, machine the eraser cap, put something fun in it.
Awesome!!! I love learning more about the prop part of films!!! Happy New Year Adam ✌️
There is something special in my heart for large props, mostly due to the show pappy drew. I always thought it would be so fun to have a giant pencil.
I instantly had to think about the spoof movie "Top Secret!" when that telephone in the foreground rings and a dude goes to pick it up and the holds the huge speaker to his ear. Hilarious!
My 2 favourite creators... In some kind of crossover episode.... YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
There is a scene in the biker film "Torque" where a young FBI agent has to jump into his humvee? truck urgently and chase the baddies after they've caused a pile up on a freeway, he jumps in and you see from the perspective of the foot well him putting in a key that's as long as 2 chess boards, it's over in the blink of an eye so I had to pause it and go frame by frame, but I found it soo funny to see and later hear them talk about it in the special features audio commentary, I bet not many people noticed but I was pleased I'd noticed it and that this practice happens in movies for people to notice, Colin furze uses a mannequin hand in some sly shots instead of his own, and mighty car mods do a few seconds of a bare foot pumping up a hydraulic lift in some of the fast paced b roll of doing up a car and it's really funny because it's so random and so hard to spot lol..😂
Such a fascinating place.
Hey Adam... biggest fan here... a question... would you agree if someone proposed you to set the "perfect workshop " somewhere around the world for them?
Cheers from Egypt
Let's not forget the amazing in-camera magic of a miniature steam train and an oversized diary prop in Coppola's Dracula
Great video sir
I would LOVE one of those giant newspapers.
Curious question ,Why are shows on TH-cam not saying the names of the movies they're talking about .I've seen other shows recently not bring names up .
Please tell me they gave you the giant racquet! That was pretty interesting. Makes sense!
This was so cool and interesting ❤❤❤
for a magazine cover you could just create the magazine digitally then get a close up shot of it without even using a camera. same with any other flat object.
So when SpaceBalls had that "industrial sized hair dryer".....was that a re-used jumbo prop left over from some other movie or commercial? Someone found it stuck in a corner collecting dust and said, "You know what would be really funy is..." Now I'm thinking it was an inside joke we didn't completely understand.....
Smol Adam.
Big props immediately make me think of The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Lily Tomlin, 1981!
🎵"Galaxy Glue...Galaxy Glue...Life would go to pieces without Galaxy Glue..." 🎵
A++ intro!
Make all of the videos you shot there into a playlist... unless you have already.
"TOP SECRET" got that Big Telephone as a gag
thinkbig was also a company that made large things - every day objects
Any idea on the movie his talking about about some ring in short in newzeland ?
That guy reminds me of Will.
Hahahahahah I think Adam moved to Earl Hayes, and I love it!
I wonder if this is how they make all those foot-tall pictures of figures in White Dwarf? Given that when I get the minis that close to my face I cannot focus on them at all...
Great, now I'm not going to pay attention to the movie anymore and look for all the giant props. Thanks Adam ! 😅
Anyone know where I can see a clip of the scene from "Dial M for Murder" that uses the over-scaled prop?
I remember seeing a huge ring like that for The Lord of the Rings
That would be “that trilogy of movies shot in New Zealand” that was referenced.
@@ivanheffner2587 I wrote my comment before getting to that part 😅
@@ilikemandalorians9861 😆
Honey I shrunk Savage and Corrie !
No dear. You blew up the racket ! 😛
Honey we shrunk Adam !
Adam, what the heck. What is it with PA and you?
So somewhere out there, is a model of the one ring that is the size of a hula hoop?
If i recal correctly (and I probably don't, so don't quote me,) it was about a foot in diameter...maybe a bit larger.
I'm sure they had a hand in the photoshoot scene in "Tootsie" - the transitions from shoot to magazine were suspiciously too crisp!
The Lord of the Rings ⚔️had a close up of a huge ring for the scene where Elrond held his council .That's trilogy filmed in New Zealand 😂
I want to see someone try to play tennis with that thing!
[Adam, looking at Roger Federer]
- "That's not a tennis racket… THIS is a tennis racket!"
Awesome.
I wonder if they made a large Farva for Super Troopers.
Me thinks Earl Hays is bottomless pit of content for Tested.