How specially rigged stunt props are designed for filming safe — and dramatic — fight scenes
- Hollywood creates and rigs special props to make fight scenes as dramatic — and safe — as possible.
- We visited prop master Josh Bramer's trailer and the US's biggest prop house, ISS, to find out how.
- See the process of molding fake stunt props behind the scenes at ISS' workshop.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Following is a transcript of the video.
[clattering]
Narrator: That's the sound of a real aluminum bat.
[soft thud]
And that's the sound of a prop bat made for Hollywood fight scenes.
Joe Avella: Not much feeling to it.
Narrator: Until you hear them
[clattering]
or squeeze them, you probably can't tell the difference. And that's the whole point. On camera, they have to look identical.
That's thanks to the skills of the prop makers, who mold rubber stunt props and add realistic textures and dramatic flair. Each move in a fight can call for a different, specially rigged prop.
[glass breaking]
Narrator: Depending on the scene, there can be as many as four different versions of a prop in the mix.
Josh: We had a scene on "Euphoria," and it called for one of our actors to approach another actor and basically hit him in the head. When you read something like that, my brain automatically goes to, "I need different versions of it."
Narrator: That's Josh, a prop master who's worked on "Euphoria," "Everything Everywhere All at Once," "Blonde," and "Don't Worry Darling."
And this is his prop truck in Los Angeles, where he keeps stuff like this dulled-down pie cutter from "Everything Everywhere" or this set of hammers used in "Euphoria."
Productions often use the real deal for close-ups or pick-up shots or for practical use.
Josh: Like, if we were going to be using one of the hammers with a real nail, we'd want to use a real hammer. Then when the actor goes in to interact with the other characters in the film, and then that's when a stunt hammer would come into play.
[laughing]
This has no weight to it. This is, like, wow. This is really light.
Narrator: Stunt props look indistinguishable from the real thing.
Joe: This has just the same level of distress.
Narrator: See all those little nicks and bumps? Prop-making houses, like ISS in LA, create molds to capture all those details.
Joe: How intricate can a thing you mold be?
Jack: We can pick up pretty much any detail.
Narrator: They add some structure by burying a superthin metal armature beneath the foam.
Joe: So, when an actor is, "I'm gonna get you," this isn't flopping around.
Jack: So, we have basically three different densities.
Narrator: There are supersoft foams, like the one we just saw, for when an actor's actually getting hit with the prop. A medium, which is used for stunts that, like, nobody's getting hit with it, but there's a possibility that somebody's going to get hit with it.
Joe: Sure.
Narrator: And then there's what this hammer was cast in.
Joe: Oh, man!
Narrator: The firmer rubber that Jack's pouring into the mold here.
Jack: Just our standard firm rubber. So this was one of our test hammers that we did on "Euphoria." Basically, we would put a bladder in here full of liquid, and then it would, whatever angle off-camera you wouldn't see it, and then as soon as it hit, you'd squeeze it, and then blood would come out. Smart. I feel like ... and I'm just going to be like. All right, so this, I'd probably be annoyed if I was the actor getting hit with this on, like, take seven or eight, I'd be like, "I think we got it."
Josh: If we were to use the blood that would come out of it, it's not an over-and-over kind of thing. This would be a complete reset of the actor. They'd have to get all the blood removed, all the hair redone. It'd probably get on their costume, on their skin. You'd have a lot of reset time. So it wouldn't be hit after hit with that one. You know, you could do hit after hit running into it.
Joe: Ooh. Yeah, that one has some feeling to it. And now I'll do the real one.
Josh: Yeah!
Narrator: They have ready-made molds like this one for hundreds of fight props, with everything from cast-iron pans and meat cleavers to fake armor and weights.
[grunts]
Joe: Now go get the fake ones, right?
[grunts]
Narrator: And they can make a realistic fake of basically any object.
Jack: Where people have brought in, like, fruit. They brought in apples, oranges.
Narrator: Making props for a fight scene isn't just about creating different versions of a given prop. Josh also often has to rig props to give them a specific cinematic flourish for each scene.
For this shot in "Everything Everywhere," he filled a dummy laptop with microchips and silver Mylar confetti, so it looked like the glass screen was breaking spectacularly on camera. He found that confetti looked better on camera than breakaway glass.
Josh: I had basically sawed down the middle and hot-glued it all together. So it was just as soon as it went into the air and it made contact with the pipe, it just blew apart.
Narrator: And for this shot just a few moments later, when Michelle Yeoh holds up a computer keyboard as a shield, the special effects team took a real keyboard and rigged it so that Andy Le could easily plunge the pipe through and it'd look like all the keys were coming out on the other side.
Josh: They actually just bored a hole straight through the center the size of the pipe. The reverse side, where it was flat, it was just a piece of card stock that was painted to be the same color of the keyboard. And then on the front side, all the keys that we had removed when we cut it, we just hot-glued them back into place.
Narrator: They also had crew members off-camera tossing loose computer keys into the air.
Josh: To add more drama to it, just to give it that extra hit of debris.
Narrator: Regardless of the type of prop, keeping everyone as safe as possible includes swapping out tiny details, like removing the small pieces of exposed metal on the riot shield that Michelle had to spin around in fights or the zippers and buckles on Ke Huy Quan's fanny pack.
Josh: There's a scene in the film where Ke actually uses it like a nunchuck. I would replace all the plastic, anything that would come in contact with an actor.
Narrator: The buckles and zippers became pieces Josh cut out of foam.
Josh: Yeah. See? Child's refrigerator art.
[laughs]
Narrator: And this key chain became a little yellow ball of tape.
Josh: If you have the same general shape, the same general color, when it's flying through the air really fast, it's hard to tell with the naked eye unless you pause it right at that moment. Well, I almost wanted to create a foam version of this. But because of the shot style and the close-up of it, it wasn't as practical as having the real thing would be. The fanny pack itself is already a soft leather. And then I would fill it with bubble wrap to make it look bulky and able to swing.
Narrator: Safety is primary, even if no one's actually getting hit with the prop.
Josh: There's camera tricks that you can use where, you know, you hit somebody and it just grazes their face, and with reactions, you can ...
Joe: Do that again. Ugh! Geez, dude, I just asked!
Josh: It's almost like a camera trick.
Narrator: Like with this crowbar fight in "Euphoria."
Josh: It's very hard to tell in that scene. We actually didn't have the actor getting hit with it. So it's kind of like a backhand swing, and then the actor goes flying. And they actually had put a mat painted to look just like the cement underneath, and then it had tapered edges.
Joe: It looks like it's on the concrete.
Josh: Yeah. It was very seamless.
Narrator: So why use this rubber crowbar? If the actor's swing is slightly off or the person on the receiving end moves slightly and ends up making contact with the prop, it adds another layer of safeguarding.
And it's not just weapons that need forethought. Sometimes it's the environment. That's where these customizable blood rugs come in.
Josh: Our blood, it's usually glycerin, water, and then red food coloring. And it can stain. So if we have an instance where there's no interaction with an actor with it, and say an actor is on the ground and they have trauma to the head, there's just a pool of blood, these are a perfect way to get around having a cleanup.
Narrator: Besides saving resetting time, these mats have other advantages over fake liquid blood.
Josh: Because it is a glycerin, it's a very slippery material. It eliminates the risk of stepping in it and slipping or tracking it around. So if somebody stepped on this, they would probably leave a dusty footprint, but you could clean it off with Windex. Versus stepping in a pool of blood, you'd leave a trail of footprints around the set.
Narrator: Victims of a fight may need to be faked as well. Stunt dummies, or action mannequins. One of ISS's most commonly rented props.
There are two varieties: basic stunt dummies, which are stuffed with cloth limbs, and more realistic articulated dummies, made out of rubber or plastic. The first kind is floppier, while the second kind is posable and will sink or fall in a more humanlike way.
Hayden: And it's all adjustable. So you can open up the torso, and then there's some bungees in there that are connected to all the limbs that you can adjust the tightness of.
Joe: Oh, nice.
Hayden: Black is left leg, white's right leg. If you want the legs to be dislocated, you can dislocate them.
Joe: No, I don't, actually. That's really unsettling.
Narrator: Dummies might be used instead of background extras for shots that would be uncomfortable.
Hayden: If there's an aftermath of a war scene, so they have 50 people laying facedown in the mud, they don't have to pay background artists to go in there. They dress these dudes and ladies in wardrobe. If they want weird dislocated parts or weird positions of the limbs, they can go in there, loosen up those little bolts, pull them tight to cinch it, and then all the joints stay in place.
Narrator: These can also stand for actors in scenes involving unsurvivable hits or stunts.
Hayden: Yeah, I mean, these things have fallen off buildings. They've been inside cars that have driven off cliffs. You can see some of them are pretty charred up. It's a lot better for them to put a $1,100 dummy in a car that's going off a cliff and exploding
Joe: Than a person.
Hayden: Than a person.
Narrator: When filming a fight, every move needs to be thought out, every variable controlled for, to the point where you could have four different versions of a prop in rotation, with a different version used in every shot.
Josh: So, when he was approaching her with those, those would be the real ones. So then when we set up this shot, he would have the stunt versions.
Narrator: And the audience never knows the difference.
Joe: I mean, when you got this back, were you like, "What did you do to my dummy?!"