Having been propsmistress for local amateur theater, I am one of those annoying people who notices them when at a show. I do behave and only rant about bloopers to my other half later on.
In Canada, we have a TV series titled Murdoch Mysteries. He invents everything in the 1800s that we have today, it tries to be humourous. But I digress. The set for this season has Inspector Brackenreid’s new office, with lots of “impressive” looking books behind him. Who knew those Reader’s Digest Condensed books with the lovely gold lettering on the spines were around way back then??
I give away a lot of books to local set directors via Craigslist-Free. They will take anything if their shelves need to be filled, so don’t be surprised to see RDCBs on the shelves of locally produced tv, movies, and plays.
Yep; I’ve more than once spotted books I’ve sold; with Durant’s “History of Civilization” showing up several times.
Although I was bummed to watch Young Sheldon, and they didn’t use the set of LotR that I sold to them (they used a different edition; which made sense considering that my set was a British printing. Still would have been cool to see the actual books I sold).
If I’ve sold any other books for set dressing etc., I don’t know what it was for, so can’t try to spot it.
Not books and not shows about the 1800,s but we sold our markers to both Glee and Bull. It was amazing to see on these shows a product that was produced in our shop on the big (60 inch Sony) screen.
Those books were such a yard sale staple back in the 70s and 80s, are they still?
I collect vintage kitchenware, mostly Pyrex. I always search the retro TV set background to find some treasures, and am quick to point out if it’s in the wrong decade.
Reader’s Digest Condensed seem to be finally showing up around here less and less. I had one regular customer who bought them all the time. She was a shut in and had the radio and books, but attention span suited the condensed books. Then she bought a television. I still have a box of them here that I had picked up for her. Thankfully they cost me nothing.
My biggest pet peeve with props is the cup with no liquid. Local amateur theater is almost expected (though disappointing to picky folks like me), but I have seen the empty cup thing in movies. The other night one was so egregious that even the other half mentioned it. That actor would have splashed coffee all over himself flinging that cup around.
I’ve never sold anything for movie props, my closest brush was selling a book (The History of Hydro in Scotland) to Diana Gabaldon for research on one of the Outlander books.
I soid books and other movie props. The biggest concern was offering terms or accepting other than credit card payments. What a bunch of deadbeats. Plenty of practice screwing their investors.
OMG, me too! Would it kill them to have cups that were at least weighted? Like put some spackle in there and let it dry so it has the appearance of holding something. You can always tell that it has no weight to it.
We also paid attention to the books in the background when everyone was working from home. So many of the TV commentators had Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” (about New York’s Robert Moses) featured prominently in the shelves.
