hey everybody it's norm from tested here once again we are visiting prop store brandon great
to see you hey thanks for coming down absolutely and thanks for bringing out all these amazing
miniatures so you guys have an upcoming auction uh december early december 1st and 2nd december
1st and 2nd in london actually this is our second entertainment memorabilia live auction of the year
this one's out of our london office uh bidding of course takes place by phone and online we're
not doing anything in person because of covid uh it's gonna get started about pm uk time so it's
a little bit early if you're in the west coast it'll be 6 a.m every day on the 1st and 2nd and
even if you're just a fan just want to see these things being sold there's a great live
stream where you can watch the auctioneer and follow all the action well even better than
that is being in person here where you have some of the actual props and costumes and miniatures
and miniatures is what i want to talk about today because everything we have on the table here is
from the film moon in the film directed by duncan jones of course over 10 years ago now in 2009 but
very striking i love like the story of the film i think sam rocco did a great job but also the
world building they did of having these vehicles having this base on the lunar surface can you
tell me about the team that made this yeah well you know it's really interesting for us to have
these pieces go through our hands because we sold these originally so after moon came out in 2009
prop store in london worked with duncan jones the director and stuart fennigan his producer
to put together an auction of all the assets so props costumes and models and these model pieces
were sold in that option at this time so we've actually seen these pieces before not for a little
while but they were part of that original moon auction and you know what we love about these is
just the fact that they're middle model miniatures and they immediately make you think of the model
miniatures of the 70s and 80s and in fact the crew the team that did this that you're mentioning uh
was led by a guy named bill pearson uh bill pierce and another model maker named steve howarth
did a lot of the work on the moon models and when you look at them they totally
evoke that classic 70s sci-fi charm right right it's you know it's right out of as if it's
out of the world alien like a william yutani like they of course have their own fictional
lunar industries their mega corporation and it's the the near future so you have these things that
have you know the just the angles like and then the panel lines here they feel very near future
and yeah and i love the distressing i love the moon dust that's all over everything and it's
kind of been dry brushed into the crevices uh it you know it all has it's a great design great
production design throughout this film totally but everything has a continuity there's a visual
language here that we're seeing with these moon models that carry throughout each one of them and
you know some i mean they're actually we call them miniatures but they're actually pretty large
right they are the harvester here it it doesn't currently have the side pieces the big rakes
installed but once they're on it it's something like 10 or 11 feet wide i mean it's it's massive
but there are things that tell you the different scale something i'm noticing is you know they they
use their decals like right here you have lunar industries there at different sizes may look
like the same size between you know two different vehicles but there are things telltale signs like
the the step you know the the the handles or like a door right that tells you how that's supposed
to be skilled for the actor right things that allow you to relate it to the size of a man right
yeah a man on the moon oh my gosh some of them have lights you know i don't think there's any
i don't think any of them actually have motion like there's no drive system in this rover but
it is wired for lighting it was probably pulled along the surface with cables in the film or maybe
this one may have just been used for shots where it was static and not not moving
um i think the big harvester has lights the jamming tower may have lights as well
and a lot of kit bashing going on with these also right so when you look at them you can tell that
they've taken little bits and pieces little greeblys this hatch might be a hatch off of a
model miniature tank for example and especially i feel like when you see a lot of detail in a little
component maybe some of the boosters on on the shuttle here they've they've robbed that
out of the kit right which is the model making technique that they've been using for decades now
your variety techniques you can tell where there's the scratch build we're just pieces
of styrene on top of each other but the way they're blended the way they have the panel
lines kind of wrap around the gray blaze all of that again reads a scale things like vents
yeah this is it's it's so gorgeous again and the film it's all on the moon you know there are big
wide shots of these um especially things like the rover but the fidelity is all there even when you
get up close yeah yeah and these i think play so heavily in the movie right i mean we get we get
a lot of time with these things out on that lunar surface and you were commenting before we started
a minute ago about some of the story points like the the luke name that was crossed out there right
yep this you know sam rockwell's character as he's making that that base his own as he's the
sole operator on it um it's so so cool uh and then there are so many of these these are all
individual lots they are yeah they're being sold one by one so you know you've got the harvester
you've got the rover you've got the shuttle you've got the jamming tower i believe the cranes and the
lights are all in a single lot together and then there are a couple of other lots as well there's
the rescue ship that comes in and there's i believe a module from the command center also
so there's there's six or seven lots in total from from moon all model miniatures they've
been in one collection the collector has decided it's time for them to move on to a new home and
that home may be yours the journey that these miniatures take from production to collectors
hands is always an interesting one there are so many different types of miniatures i saw there's a
another cane phil tippett kane robot yes yeah that is that's true yeah um the tippecane is a great
one because the stop-motion puppet right we also have i really liked it one of the attackers from
independence day one of the alien attackers from that it's a really nice model big big size to it
there's a couple of models in this auction from the star wars special edition so there's actually
a model miniature of obi-wan kenobi's house with one of the moisture evaporators from tatooine and
basically in the original star wars they just had a random building that they found on location in
tunisia that served as obi-wan's house they felt like they needed to improve that for the special
edition that came out in 97 so they built a model and it's very simple basic foam cork as
some of these moon pieces are quite quite simple i don't think these are foam core they're more
wood and styrene construction but what they have in common with these moon models is the
expert finish you know it's that beautiful detail and paintwork finish that gives the piece scale
and gives it realism and and so we love handling models we never get that many models for for our
auctions partly because they just don't make that many models anymore um but we love handling them
and we're happy to have a few good ones in this auction i think you and i have talked about before
where there was that just that era those couple decades where miniatures were at their peak and
so many shops making them and became really a point of pride for those shops
to to show the kind of work that they can do with distressing and yeah and all that weathering and
today i think with models mostly what they do is for pyro right because for whatever reason it's
still more cost effective to build a model blow it up and film it than it is to try to
digitally simulate that explosion and all those little bits of flame and debris and whatever
but you rarely see them build models like this that are being used as the hero models
throughout the film you know typically this stuff is done digitally now
that's so cool thank you for bringing this all out and these are all part of the auction
that's starting yes december 1st and 2nd yes awesome thank you so much brandon thanks for
coming