Hey everybody, Adam Savage here from Tested with a little show-and-tell. I know
I'm dressed for a one day build but it's not a one day build.
It's a Show and Tell and of a piece that's in my collection that is also
from my delightful and amazing friends at Weta Workshop in Wellington, New
Zealand. Weta famously made all the props and hardware and weaponry and
armor and everything else that you could imagine for the Lord of the Rings films
and for the Hobbit films and I have as you might know I have several pieces
from Weta Workshop in my collection and I'm wearing a pair of them right now
I am wearing a pair of Weta made Aragorn vambraces and I gotta tell you these
things are so beautiful you can't even stand it
these are famously boromir's vambraces as steward of gondor hence the tree from
from Gondor and then after Boromir dies Aragorn puts on boromir's van braces and
wears them for the rest of the films it is a beautiful very unspoken thing how
that bit of costume moves from one character to the other and it's the way
that Aragorn remembers Boromir and pays him homage and really keeps him with him
he keeps Boromir in the whole rest of the movies by wearing these I don't know
if that's a feature from the book if that's an idea from the book or if Peter
and the whole team Philippa and friend and Richard and everybody if they
decided that this should be a thing but it's a thing in the films and I love it
and I was I've been slowly assembling an arrant costume over the years and when I
added these to my collection holy cow man they raised the stakes because ok
let's let's take close up look at these here first of all
you can see they're made of four major pieces of leather there's an internal
quilted bit of leather which is quilted inside and out it is honestly this feels
I mean it's not like I like the style of ermes but when you go into the air may
store and you see the stuff that they charge exorbitant sums of money for it's
really beautifully made I mean you have to admit it's really gorgeously made
this feels like that it feels like a piece of airbase hardware the quilting
is gorgeous the weathering this is in fact elastic the lacing here so it's
easy for the actor to get on and off these buckles are handmade by production
in a very Gondor style and then you've got on the outside you have these two
pieces of leather one is for the buckles and the second is for all the inlaid
leather work and so you see here the tree of Gondor you see all of this
Gondor iconography a tooled into the leather and meant to be worn over the
sleeve of his jacket that's a little bit loose on me right now this is just
there's so much beautiful storytelling in this a you know there's a lot of talk
in Hollywood and around the trades after everyone started to go to 4k it made the
work of prop masters and prop makers among the jobs of everybody else more
difficult because your stuff had to survive an incredible amount of scrutiny
I haven't spoken to a Richard tailor or Peter Jackson directly about this but my
guess is is that that was lesson problem for Wetty who just does this as a matter
of course on every piece even down to the stitching even down to the stitching
on this it's just everything about it is gorgeous everything about it feels like
something that was made by people who cared and the thing is about making
about the storytelling that's in a prop like this is that okay you can put in
the iconography you can have the tree you can have the tooling that's all
totally fine and that all communicates to the film
but there's an aspect that is less talked about and that is when something
is made by a real crafts person there is a love in the narrative that that piece
tells and frankly on pretty much everything I see out of what a workshop
I see the same thing these van braces were built by Darrin
Gordon a leather worker from what a workshop Darrin taught me some of his
techniques and some of the ways in which he styles the pieces he makes for Wetty
when we made our little film A Farewell to Arms and we'll include a link in the
in the description below you get to see both Darrin's handiwork and the real
impressive scope of his knowledge in terms of types of leather how to weather
it what to do and again these weren't when you're talking about master
craftspeople it's not like Darrin spent weeks building these things he has to as
a craftsperson come up with a way to build them in a way that is cost
effective for whether to be able to get something done and also make the money
it needs to keep the lights on and yet if you just like drop these somewhere
and someone else picked them up they'd be like who movies what craftsperson
lovingly put their heart and soul into this beautiful piece I'm just gonna spin
it for you so you can just see like that
there should be a word that describes a veracity past artifice right like there
there's there's a level of veracity within this that feels deeper and maybe
that's why I love all the folks Atlanta because every single person there put
that kind of heart and soul Darrin is no exception
and he's a what not only a wonderful crafts person but also wonderfully open
with his knowledge like everybody at Wetty i mean i know i'm
singing their praises but honestly when i when i am holding on to a piece that
originated from there and i'm thinking about the fact that i know the people
that made this i understand the process i can picture the room where this was
built the room where it happened it just it makes me happy as a craftsperson as a
as a maker of things as a storyteller every time i go down there to wellington
i feel like i'm visiting one of the mecca's of crafts storytelling and this
is a fantastic example of exactly why i love their output thank you guys for
joining me for this show and tell and i'm now going to spend this here for
some close-ups so that whoever cuts this whether it's Joey or Gunther or norm
they can cut this in but frankly you probably won't cut this in they probably
won't use this as overlay they'll probably cut this whole part in with me
talking about it I am I have been told that my coverage is getting better Oh
take I'll take whatever compliments I can get man I'm shooting alone here oh
yeah I watched one of my old videos I just like I've been reworking on a space
helmet the Asus helmet and so in order to reacquaint myself with it I watched
the video last night of the original aces helmet bill and that was shot by
Gunther well somebody was a joke no somebody got
there and man it made me miss having a cameraman in here I mean not just
because I like to concentrate on the work rather than the work plus the
camera although you know I have acclimatize to it it's also that when
Gunther or Joey are shooting they're adding all sorts of extra wonderful
story and pacing and context about the shop I just I love the way they choose
different shots from from around the kind of stuff that I can't do because
I'm working with my phone I will say that filming
one last thing I know I'm going off on a tangent but filming all this stuff on my
phone my iPhone thinks that I spend about 11 hours a day looking at my phone
i it's my screen time it's just off the charts I probably hold some record at
this point at any rate thank you guys for joining
me for this truly impassioned show and tell these are two of my most favored
pieces in the collection and if I ever finish that aragorn costume well then
I'll be a ranger all right guys have a great day see you next time