Narrator: This is Dumbo, Brooklyn,
in the opening scene of "Bridge of Spies."
And this is what that same block actually looks like today.
To make this scene convincingly look like 1957,
every detail in this street had to be changed,
right down to the font on the signs.
This was all Rena DeAngelo's job,
an Oscar-nominated set decorator
who's worked on period pieces like "The French Dispatch,"
"West Side Story," "The Post," and "Mad Men."
Rena: Here's a newsstand that's in every movie.
Every single decorator in New York
has probably used it about 10 times.
Narrator: Rena took us through Eclectic/Encore Props in NYC
to show us how she turned a modern New York City street
into a 1950s time capsule.
When a location is scouted,
the first order of business is hiding things
that don't belong in the era.
That starts with taking down security cameras
and swapping all the cars in the streets
for vintage ones with period license plates.
One of the most important details to swap
is any and all signage.
And knowing what signs to put up means knowing your history.
Rena: They used to paint advertisements on benches
in the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s.
These are great. I would put these in a smoke-shop window.
Narrator: This big tire sign used in "Bridge of Spies"
helped make Dumbo look properly industrial for the '50s,
as opposed to its current look
of high-rise apartment buildings.
A lot of neighborhoods were also historically defined
by their communities,
so you'd need cultural signifiers,
like these signs in Hebrew
or specific food advertisements.
Rena: I think I used Murphy & Ashcom salted fish
in "Bridge of Spies."
When they're hand-painted, that makes them look older,
because they haven't been printed.
They're not mass-produced.
Narrator: Small details can make all the difference.
This raised text means
it's probably from the '50s or '60s,
while the flat text on these
means they were produced a bit later,
since most cities stopped embossing road signs
in the '70s and '80s.
The font is also a giveaway.
That spitting sign looks older than this hair parlor sign
because that typeface has been around
since the 19th century,
whereas this category of sans serifs
was more popular in the '80s.
Besides font and embossing,
the main thing that set decorators look at
when deciding what fits into their era is materials.
This means knowing what signs were made from
in previous decades.
Rena: Metal.
Wood.
Probably from the '20s or '30s,
because it's cast iron.
Narrator: As opposed to the plastics used
in more recent decades,
which made signs lighter.
Signs, however, can only do so much.
Some contemporary giveaways are literally
bolted into the ground.
So Rena will cover those using hollow crates and barrels.
Old telephone booths can visually block
other modern features.
This one would fit right in on a Manhattan street corner
from the mid-'50s to the late '70s.
Rena can tell these pay phones are from the '50s
based on the width and style of the dial.
The plastic dial and push button came later,
in the '70s and '80s.
Strategically placed kiosks can also hide larger giveaways,
like modern traffic lights or streetlamps.
She made six of these more contemporary-looking newsstands
for the '70s setting of "The Post."
For a '50s movie, she'd take this sort of newsstand
and fill it with magazines, newspapers, signs,
and products all specific to the decade.
Luckily, Eclectic has a ton of those.
Rena: And it's all real packaging,
all this stuff.
Narrator: Besides getting period products
from prop houses like this one,
set decorators will scour the basements
of local grocery stores,
where shopkeepers often keep surplus products
from decades ago.
Rena: Stuff that's good for a hardware store,
a beauty parlor.
Narrator: According to Rena,
the key to making storefronts look real
is the quantity of the products.
She'll sometimes scan this packaging,
print copies of it,
and use it to wrap rows and rows of empty boxes.
Set decorators also do a lot of research
into the consumer culture of the era,
especially for a '50s piece,
since consumer goods had a lot of influence
on the decade's imagery.
They need to know what people were buying and selling
and what kinds of services were offered on every block.
Rena: There was always a shoe-repair shop,
because people didn't just go buy new shoes
when their shoes wore out.
They would go and get them fixed.
So on every single street,
there's always a shoe-repair guy.
Narrator: New tech like televisions
were also often displayed in windows.
Rena: This is perfect for an electronics store.
Narrator: For the '50s, you'd want this kind of TV,
with the rabbit ears,
or any of these other boxy-looking ones.
Rena: This is definitely '50s.
This is definitely '50s.
This is early '50s.
Narrator: She used radios like this
for the '50s setting of "French Dispatch."
Even clothing stores had specific models for specific eras.
Rena: I would put those in a ladies' clothing store.
Narrator: For the 50 mannequins
that filled the front of Gimbels department store
in "West Side Story,"
Rena found vintage mannequin heads,
which, for females, were rounder and had less makeup
compared to later decades.
Rena: See the difference in the faces?
They just have different structure,
and the hair is molded.
I would use this in a movie from the '50s.
Narrator: Male mannequins in the '50s looked much skinnier
and less muscular than they do today,
so she modeled the men's bodies off teenage-boy mannequins.
Another element custom-made for "West Side Story"
was less glamorous.
Rena: So, this is a more contemporary
city street garbage can,
which we need to get rid of.
These older wire cans are what would be on the street
in the '50s and the '60s.
This one isn't that old,
but we've made it little old by spraying it down with paint.
On "West Side Story," I had about 400 of these,
because everywhere we went,
they wanted garbage everywhere.
Narrator: But some details are harder to replace,
like lampposts.
Productions could simply replace lampposts
digitally in post,
but if you want that look on set,
you have to have these wraps.
Rena: You see these back here?
Those are fake wraps
so that you can wrap a contemporary light post
to turn it into one of these
without bringing one of these 70-million-pound ones out.
Narrator: Designers might also swap out the light bulbs,
like in "Joker."
Gotham in 1981 would have had sodium-vapor streetlamps,
which gave off a sort of icky orange glow.
So the team swapped out all the modern LED bulbs
for the old sodium-vapor kind
just to get the right lighting.
It's those kinds of fine distinction
that can make or break a period scene.
And with all these details,
it can take days or even weeks of street dressing
to film just a few minutes of screen time.
That's what it takes to create a time warp
in the middle of a bustling modern city.
Rena: We'll make 200 newspapers,
and we'll give props 10
so that they have them for people to be reading.
Or if there's 100 people reading,
then props will make 100.
And on "The Post,"
it was just piles and piles of newspapers.