Prospect, the film we worked on in 2017 building and finishing props and sets, is now out on Netflix in the US! Prospect is a sci-fi western full of practical effects starring Pedro Pascal in a helmet. It is also available on Blu-ray if you want a physical copy! This 8-part series of posts does not contain any spoilers so you can check them all out without fear of ruining anything if you haven’t seen the film yet!
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One of the first things I worked on was the Aurelac case. I was handed a Pelican case that had already been altered, painted, and weathered to fit the world and asked to make the interior look cool for displaying a cache of Aurelac. I started by cutting a layer of EVA foam to fit the lid and over the normal Pelican foam.
I decided 9 octagons would look pretty cool, so I drew it out with a ball point pen and straight edge. This is a trick we like to use when we need to make super clean cuts through thick foam. First you score the lines into the foam with a snap blade, only about 1mm deep.
Then heat seal the foam with a heat gun. This not only seals up the top layer but also gets those scores to really pop. This ensured that the very top edges were sharp and crisp.
I then proceeded to cut the octagons out all the way through the foam and then hit the cutouts with the heat gun again. This results in nice clean, sharp edges – all done by hand.
Next, I dug out some squares from the Pelican foam and tacked down a length of cotton tube sleeve to make a pocket. This was the quick first mockup for sign off from the Production Designer and Director.
With a green light, I proceeded to remove the rest of the foam squares for each hole. The cotton sleeves were put into place using Super77.
Lastly, the EVA foam was glued down over the sleeves with Super77 (those glue spider webs just wipe right off the top) and loaded up the Aurelac! Ready for its big scene!
We hope you enjoyed Part One of our Prospect behind the scenes series. We’ll be posting a new behind the scenes build every day. In the meantime, go watch Prospect!
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