Signs
- Thread starter Rick
- Start date
Ian
Notorious member
Hmm. I wonder if maybe the gunpowder and Dynamite were stored somewhere else, like NOT behind the counter, or if the set director just overlooked that little detail? I mean in "real life" frontier towns, who would have sold gunpowder, percussion caps, primers, nitroglycerin, blasting caps, etc, and how would such have been stored? Wood closet at the back of the store?
I spent 34 years in TV/motion picture industry and was on the sets of a huge number of various shows including Gunsmoke. The Gunsmoke series was finished before I got into the industry but the Gunsmoke sets were still there at that time on the backlot of CBS Radford Studios. They didn't tear down those sets until the late 70's, maybe early 80's to make room for new stages. Nothing is real in any of the sets on any of the shows, not even the buildings. It's all built for a particular scene in a particular show. Everything in the scene is either props or set dressing. What's the difference between props and sets dressing? That's where the unions come in, doesn't much matter what it is if an actor handles it that makes it a prop and the property department and their union put's it on the set. If it's anything else in a scene, say furniture or signs on the wall then it's set dressing and a different union. All of such signage is custom made for each scene so in the case of this Gunsmoke episode that sign either came from the Art Department or from the Set Decorator, most likely the Art Department. Not including live TV anything in front of the camera in feature film or episodic TV was put there quite intentionally, nothing is filmed by accident and I mean nothing, even visible brand names are removed. Anyway a sign like that is sure not something your likely to see from Hollywood these days which is why it caught my attention.
Where did the General Store keep powder/dynamite etc. in the real old west? I dunno but I'll bet a fire at the store could be quite exciting.
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Where did the General Store keep powder/dynamite etc. in the real old west? I dunno but I'll bet a fire at the store could be quite exciting.
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smokeywolf
Well-Known Member
I suspect most flammables and explosives would have been kept in a storage shed behind the General Store.
At MGM we had "The Sign Shop". They made nearly all the signage for the studio and any of the productions who asked for their services and could provide a charge number.
Worked the same way in "The Metal Shops". If a set designer, set decorator, UPM needed something made and had a charge number, we made it. I worked on effects and set pieces for Brainstorm, War Games, 2010, Red Dawn, Ice Pirates, Last Starfighter, Dallas, CHiPs, Fame, Max Headroom, Dracula, Hook, Turbulence, Air Force One, and a few others.
Had an uncle who was in charge of the MGM Property Dept. back in the '50s. He ended up working as a "set decorator" on well over a hundred movies and TV shows. I've seen his name in the credits of "Get Smart", "The Courtship of Eddie's Father", at least one John Wayne movie, a Tom Cruise movie and at least one Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor movie.
The motion picture and television industry is huge, but still a small world. About a year ago, I was sitting in the radiology dept's waiting room at the motion picture hospital, waiting my turn to get my broken foot xrayed. Got to talking to a retired transportation driver who knew Rick.
At MGM we had "The Sign Shop". They made nearly all the signage for the studio and any of the productions who asked for their services and could provide a charge number.
Worked the same way in "The Metal Shops". If a set designer, set decorator, UPM needed something made and had a charge number, we made it. I worked on effects and set pieces for Brainstorm, War Games, 2010, Red Dawn, Ice Pirates, Last Starfighter, Dallas, CHiPs, Fame, Max Headroom, Dracula, Hook, Turbulence, Air Force One, and a few others.
Had an uncle who was in charge of the MGM Property Dept. back in the '50s. He ended up working as a "set decorator" on well over a hundred movies and TV shows. I've seen his name in the credits of "Get Smart", "The Courtship of Eddie's Father", at least one John Wayne movie, a Tom Cruise movie and at least one Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor movie.
The motion picture and television industry is huge, but still a small world. About a year ago, I was sitting in the radiology dept's waiting room at the motion picture hospital, waiting my turn to get my broken foot xrayed. Got to talking to a retired transportation driver who knew Rick.
Pistolero
Well-Known Member
Smokeywolf,
Very cool. I really think The Last Starfighter is a tremendously underrated movie, in a lot of ways. First off, it was the
first major (well sort of) motion picture where a large part of the action was entirely computer generated. Being in the simulation
business from before the days of screens on terminals (we had teletypes to start with), I was involved in developing pretty
much all computer graphics, usually as a user and implimentor, occasionally as a developer. I got to spend a few hours
with Ed Catmull and a number of other REAL pioneers in computer graphics for both engineering and movies back during
a two week long conference in Utah. Mr. Catmull was working at Industrial Light and Magic at that time and went on in
Lucafilm and was a Pixar founder. The differences between what we did to present our finite element simulation
results to our customer engineers and what the film guys were doing for pure entertainment were, for quite a while,
very closely allied - we were inventing everything as we went along. Interesting times. The computer generated scenes
in The Last Starfighter were certainly less crisp and detailed than today, but still stand up pretty well decades later.
Red Dawn was another, IMO, really underrated movie. I'm sure it was interesting to work on those shows.
Rick, did everyone in LA work in movies and TV?
Bill
Very cool. I really think The Last Starfighter is a tremendously underrated movie, in a lot of ways. First off, it was the
first major (well sort of) motion picture where a large part of the action was entirely computer generated. Being in the simulation
business from before the days of screens on terminals (we had teletypes to start with), I was involved in developing pretty
much all computer graphics, usually as a user and implimentor, occasionally as a developer. I got to spend a few hours
with Ed Catmull and a number of other REAL pioneers in computer graphics for both engineering and movies back during
a two week long conference in Utah. Mr. Catmull was working at Industrial Light and Magic at that time and went on in
Lucafilm and was a Pixar founder. The differences between what we did to present our finite element simulation
results to our customer engineers and what the film guys were doing for pure entertainment were, for quite a while,
very closely allied - we were inventing everything as we went along. Interesting times. The computer generated scenes
in The Last Starfighter were certainly less crisp and detailed than today, but still stand up pretty well decades later.
Red Dawn was another, IMO, really underrated movie. I'm sure it was interesting to work on those shows.
Rick, did everyone in LA work in movies and TV?
Bill
No not everyone. Between the major studios and all the independent producers the industry is certainly huge but even bigger is the support industry that's spread out literally all over the SoCal area.
Red Dawn is like though not quite as irritating as the ABC mini series Amerika. Both shows start out with the Russian military already here and in full control of the U.S. from coast to coast. Huh? Say what? No war that we lost? Just sure here, take it? At least in Red Dawn the high school kids (but not their parents) had the gonads to fight.
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Red Dawn is like though not quite as irritating as the ABC mini series Amerika. Both shows start out with the Russian military already here and in full control of the U.S. from coast to coast. Huh? Say what? No war that we lost? Just sure here, take it? At least in Red Dawn the high school kids (but not their parents) had the gonads to fight.
.
Pistolero
Well-Known Member
When I was a kid, you could still buy dynamite in the hardware store in rural Virginia, and I
heard that you could get it in central Fla, too. Never tried - frankly that stuff always sort of
scared me...... still does.
As far as the premise for Red Dawn, it was a Cuban invasion by paratroops in southern
mountains, say southern Colorado or maybe NM. They were holding a piece of territory,
and we were fighting them for it... maybe not so super realistic, but at least one possible
scenario. I do think there would have been a few of us old farts out there popping away
with the kids, and hopefully some retired military folks teaching tactics and methods to
make the kids more effective. I liked the movie, it showed some folks (albeit only the
kids) standing up to the thugs. We had tanks in there fighting and aircraft - remember the
pilot that they saved who worked with them in the tank fight.
Bill
heard that you could get it in central Fla, too. Never tried - frankly that stuff always sort of
scared me...... still does.
As far as the premise for Red Dawn, it was a Cuban invasion by paratroops in southern
mountains, say southern Colorado or maybe NM. They were holding a piece of territory,
and we were fighting them for it... maybe not so super realistic, but at least one possible
scenario. I do think there would have been a few of us old farts out there popping away
with the kids, and hopefully some retired military folks teaching tactics and methods to
make the kids more effective. I liked the movie, it showed some folks (albeit only the
kids) standing up to the thugs. We had tanks in there fighting and aircraft - remember the
pilot that they saved who worked with them in the tank fight.
Bill
smokeywolf
Well-Known Member
Setting for Red Dawn was supposed to be a small town in Colorado, but it was shot in Las Vegas, NM.
Production company had rented some plain wrap tracked vehicle from a movie vehicle rental place and got permission to convert it into a T-72 Soviet tank. We did the conversion. Most of the work was done in, and in the alley behind, the sheet metal shop. I remember seeing the ring gear for the turret being unwrapped (we had made on the outside).
We did a good enough job that the CIA, at some point on the set or during transportation, spotted the tank and as the cold war had not come to an end yet, wanted to know where the production company got hold of the Russian tank.
We also converted a British half track vehicle to a Russian armored personnel carrier.
One more little piece of trivia, we got news one day that the previous night, the Director, while out on his own, scouting location, got lost in a surprise snow storm. He was lost for about 3 hours.
I'm kind of with Rick, the movie was something I watched about 5 years later on cable when I had nothing better to do. I got a lot more from the overtime worked. Because we were working on "2010" (sequel to "2001, a space odyssey") at the same time as Red Dawn, we worked 70 hour weeks for 3 months.
Production company had rented some plain wrap tracked vehicle from a movie vehicle rental place and got permission to convert it into a T-72 Soviet tank. We did the conversion. Most of the work was done in, and in the alley behind, the sheet metal shop. I remember seeing the ring gear for the turret being unwrapped (we had made on the outside).
We did a good enough job that the CIA, at some point on the set or during transportation, spotted the tank and as the cold war had not come to an end yet, wanted to know where the production company got hold of the Russian tank.
We also converted a British half track vehicle to a Russian armored personnel carrier.
One more little piece of trivia, we got news one day that the previous night, the Director, while out on his own, scouting location, got lost in a surprise snow storm. He was lost for about 3 hours.
I'm kind of with Rick, the movie was something I watched about 5 years later on cable when I had nothing better to do. I got a lot more from the overtime worked. Because we were working on "2010" (sequel to "2001, a space odyssey") at the same time as Red Dawn, we worked 70 hour weeks for 3 months.
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