all right i think it is time to start taking questions from y'all uh let's see here are we
there are some amazing questions by the way thank you for the submitted questions uh i was
going over some of them briefly before the live stream some ones we'd already pulled out and uh
just really exciting there's some stuff i'm looking forward to chatting about here um so
the first question is james catania asked do you wish you had been part of the prop department for
the star wars last franchise or your time there or or is your time there fond enough of a memory
um i would have loved to have worked in the prop department on any big science fiction movie that
uh that i really like uh whether it's the matrix or uh the star wars films um ghostbusters you know
that is absolutely a place that i i never applied my skill on live action props in
the film industry i did some live action props for the commercial industry but not for films
and here's something i want to say is the kind of building that i love to do it doesn't really work
in the in a film prop department it sort of works but how do i say this look a prop master's job on
a film is a freaking nightmare it is a really really hard job in which everything that in
which the perfect is the enemy of the done every second of the day and the kind of loving attention
i give to my pieces were like you know when my alien suit was here and i just finished it i came
in for a month like 30 days every morning with a cup of coffee and spilled some on it and weathered
it and brought it down none of that happens in a prop department in a prop department and is like
we need one of these right now okay i brought him should i weather it no whether or not go go
like everything's happened it's like a freight train and everyone i know who is a prop master
it is thankless and exhausting work and they do incredible stuff with it but um frankly
it's like it's way less uh
it's it's it's way more stressful than the kind of stuff that i do here
so part of me is like i'm fine not having done that on set
also when you're a prop department for a live action film um you know you've hired people to
build these things they have electronics they have mechanical components but no one cares
who built that stuff you're the prop master if it doesn't work it's on you so the amount of stress
that a prop department takes um people like my friend ben edie on afterlife or doug harlecker on
2049 the amount of stress that those folks eat as the supervisors of this as the business end
of the of the film's execution again it is super super stressful uh so part of me says yes
part of me feels like no i'm just fine not having serviced um because the other thing that you don't
know is how destructive actors can be it's not on purpose and they're not being willful about it but
having done props for theater and i did props for theater for years i was a
a day player at berkeley repertory theater for a couple years and i did props for beach blanket
babylon and a bunch of other theaters in the early 90s in san francisco and i can tell you
you could weld something out of quarter-inch steel plate that is a prop that gets handled
every night and hand it to the five foot two 98 pound actress that's going to use it every night
and i'm positive that a week later she's going to come to you with a part that's broken in half
and go i don't know how it happened it is mind blowing it is like when you hand a theater actor
a prop they become an x-men and they just like everything they do just starts to destroy that
prop it's astounding how much damage actors can do to props seriously yeah no they're prop makers
and prop masters all around the world watching this going oh yeah so much like this
all that being said i would of course love to have contributed a beautiful prop to a great
film franchise that i like 100 and who's to say it won't happen it might happen in the future uh
hope springs eternal and it is still something that's on my bucket list so you know we'll see
that is a terrific question though i um great question steamworks asks is there
a star wars film or scene in the series you didn't work on but wish you had oh
well look i wish i had been a storm trooper in one of the star wars films
i almost played jango fett's hand in episode two there's a close-up during one of the space battles
in which jango fett flips a switch to turn on hold on just a second
sorry about that that was thing two has stopped by to uh to give maggie a walk i think she's you
know where she is uh the least should be up front so um i would have loved to have been a
stormtrooper in one of the films and i like i said almost played django fat we were doing a scene
shooting on one of the smaller shooting on one of the smaller sound stages and uh they asked me
because like they doled this out right like they tried to spread it out so that every model maker
if there wasn't extra needed that they got this sort of perk and it was you know it was delightful
uh i have friends that played many different star wars characters through the through the films
and you know on this case i think it was steve golly that came to me or brian gernand and said
you could play django's hand i was like yes we got on set and john knoll comes in uh and
noel looks at the shot and he says the problem is django just flips a switch and if this is like a
missile that he's releasing shouldn't have a secondary protection and they make these
they make switches with a hood that you have to lift in order to flip the switch
but john wanted like a futuristic star wars type version of this and they said apparently uh
well uh if you want it done before we have to do this shot today we're just gonna have
to ask someone like adam to do it because he's fast and so then john comes to me and he says
i need you to build this switch for me but it means you won't be able to play django's hand
and i said whatever you need boss because that's the that's the film ethos and i went and i built
this little protected switch cover for the thing um i think in 90 minutes i think 90 minutes i had
it back on set ready to implement but sadly it meant i didn't get to play django's hand
uh t-rex 22 asks what is a star wars prop which is less well known that you have planned to
build or get your hands on in the future but have not yet found the time to do so
um okay you've asked several questions here it's not specifically a star wars prop but it's a
less well-known prop so that's an interesting question i love saul guerrero's costume i love sal
guerrero's entire costume in rogue one actually i loved so many of the costumes in rogue one um okay
i'm gonna have to think about this less well-known star wars prop that i want to get my hands on um
look i've always wanted to build a one-to-one scale land speeder and just drive it around like
there's this there's this footage of joe johnson and some other model maker down in uh
la on the first star wars driving around one of the light one of the land speeders dude
i love that i love that vehicle um i have always wanted to build a mouse droid it's a
pretty straightforward and simple build uh yeah i may have a more specific answer it's the less
well-known aspect i'm not sure how much how many star wars props are super esoteric i have like
wrapped my head around i've always wanted to make a probe droid an imperial probe droid from empire
simona asks what do you think star wars can teach us in these trying times well the the
the loveliest thing that has come about culturally in the past 20 years is the recognition that star
wars is just well maybe it's not just a recent thing it's it feels recent to me but that could
just be because i wasn't paying attention but the the the clarity that star wars is a dystopic
fantasy as opposed to star trek which is utopic science fiction two completely different genres
you know
star wars raises some really interesting questions about order and the cost of it
does it have any lessons in these trying times i mean
it's pretty straightforward you know the rebel alliance is a scrappy team of
can two uh can-do people working together not easily not trivia you know it's just difficult
to work together especially in disparate groups uh star wars exemplifies that but also that the
rewards are are myriad that is look i just was watching rogue one again this weekend
here is a here is a potentially controversial opinion but i think rogue one might be my
favorite of all of the star wars films right now it is yeah it feels like for me watching
it this weekend and again i think of empire as like one of the greatest movies ever made
and i was watching rogue one this weekend and i was thinking man i could just watch this movie
anytime i could watch it all the way through or any part of it anytime i
really i really love this movie i love its pacing i love all the characters k2so
it is amazing how frequently the star wars universe is able to make
robots really interesting and awesome characters and utilize some of the limitations of being a
robot as part of the character development and that's that that you know i remember
when episode seven was about to come out and we all saw the footage of bb-8 and you know i was
thinking yeah good luck trying to make something as cute as r2d2 like that's ever gonna happen and
lo they went and did it now i mean part of this is like you know he's got some of the greatest
designers in the world doug chang sound designers like ben burt you know this is institutional
knowledge like these folks understand this stuff better than anybody else in the world
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