DIY Filmmaking: Make Your Own Props & Special FX – Part 2 “GUTS” (metaphorically speaking)

February 19, 2008 on 11:42 pm | In DIY, General Resources, Pre-Production, Production | 1 Comment

In Part 1 (DIY Filmmaking: Make Your Own Props & Special FX – “BLOOD”), I listed several great resources for making your own “blood” related props and special effects. Now in Part 2 – the “Guts” covers several more great links. I used “guts” as a metaphor to describe all the internal building blocks that go into making movie props and special effects.

To be honest, the word “guts” just works well for a two part series: “Blood” & “Guts.”

We’ll start with a good segue to the “blood” post:

FAKE DEAD GUYS

A mixture of links from Halloween enthusiasts and filmmakers are comprised in this list.

- MicroFilmmaker.com – “Build a Dead Guy for Horror Films”

- StickTowhatYouKnow.com – “Making A Dead Guy 101″

- HalloweenOnlineMagazine.com – “Making A Corpse”

- I MakeProjects.com – “Charred Corpse”

And one of the signature DIY sites has its own contributions:

- Instructables.com – “Making a Dead Guy 101,” “BFX: How to Make a Fake Brain,” “How to Make Fake Heads,” “How to Make a Fake Hand”

DIY COSTUMES

- Costume.org – “How To’s”

- Studio Creations.com - “…tips and tricks that go into making professional style costumes and props that are used in the Hollywood Movies”

- DIY Life.com – “Costumes”

- Milieux.com – “Costume Resource Links”

- Costumepage.org – “The Costume Page (a lot of links)”

- Clara.net – “The Dyeing Guide,” “The Arming Coat,” “Dress Making Guide”

PROP WEAPONS

- Instructables.com c/o Indymogul.com – “How-to-Build-a-Big-F%40%25king-Gun”

- The DIY Guide to LRP (Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram) – “Sword Making Guide”

- Rmcybernetics.com – “A Hand Held Tesla Coil Battery Powered ‘Plasma Gun” (not exactly a movie prop but may be useful to someone – very cool nonetheless)

- Toyarcenal.com – “Toy Gun Replicas” (Not a DIY project but can be useful)

- Blueskeltonproductions.blogspot.com, c/o IndyMogul.com – “Flamethrower Prop (Nonfunctional)”

- Deathlord.net – “$20 Air Cannon” (sound fx)

- Detonationfilms.com – “Thunder pipe” (sound fx)

STAR WARS RELATED

- Apocalyptic Productions – “Light Sabers”

- TK409.com – “Do-It-Yourself Star Wars Props”

- C3PObuilders – “More Star Wars Stuff”

- Tk560.com – “Build your own prop replicas”

MISCELLANEOUS PROP LINKS

- “Snow Machine” and “Fake sugar glass molding” – Indy Mogul

- Stormforcepictures.com – “Make Fake Glass a.k.a. Sugar Glass”

- Instructables.com – “How to Make a Rain Machine” – Microfilmmaker has the info for this as well.

- Microfilmmaker.com – “How to Make Your Own Smoke Bombs”

- Fodey.com – “Newspaper clipping generator”

- Flashface.ctapt.de – “Ultimate flash face”

- PROPTOLOGY: The Journal of Props Professionals
- – “Papier Mache Recipes”

- Alleycatscratch.com – “Duct Tape Dummies” (this is for sewing projects but the technique could be used to make a prop dummy)

- Smoothonsecure.com – “Mold-Making”

- Australian Centre for Visual Technologies – “VideoTrace: Rapid interactive scene modeling from video”

- HalloweenOnlineMagazine.com – Halloween Stuff (a lot of links)