Props That Set A Time Period
Steve K
Posts: 3,241
Interesting article from the NYTimes:
"That Dusty Apple Macintosh Plus From the ’80s? It Could End Up on TV"
I'm nearly to the end of the forty episodes of "Halt and Catch Fire", an AMC series about the early days of personal computing and the companies hustling to get ahead (remember Compaq Computer?). They used a LOT of old electronics, from the original idea of "PC Compatible" with dual floppies (requiring reverse engineering the IBM PC bios) up through flat screen monitors with "search engines" (a cut throat competiton to win the market).
Its probably easier in animation, since you can find stuff to download rather than find a real whatever. One of my favorite props is a CRT type TV, in large part because it came with a black and white "Test Pattern" screen. Not sure how many people will recognize that ...
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sure I recognise Robby the Robot (?) as well :)
I'm think a large part of the audience would not recognize a pay phone ...
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to – The Outer Limits.
vacuum tubes. nixie tubes,
just glue some gears on it call it steampunk.
is this a modelling challenge?
Yes, some pretty good stories in those old TV series. I've been watching some for story
plagiarisminspiration: The Twilight Zone, The Later Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, ... Rod Serling could write some good ones and also attract other good writers.I had to look up "nixie tubes", but yeah, that's a good way. Up until about five years ago, I had a Dyna Kit receiver built by an Electrical Engineer in my college who sold it to me (a chemical engineer). It had glowing parts in it, which I always thought could not be right. It finally died, the replacement has no glowing parts (other than the screen). I still suspect the EE pulled a fast one on the Chem.E.
Maybe the best way to establish a time period in the last century or so is automobiles. I was at a meeting of film makers for the 48 Hour Contest when a man handed me a card for his business, renting vehicles to movie makers. His specialty was Ford Crown Victorias, most of which were retired police cars. In Grand Theft Auto I've probable wrecked several thousand of those.
I still have my old Commodore 64 sitting in the cupboard gathering dust, was a recent retro package of various computer models.
Record player / turntable? Gramophone? Dotted paper rolling through music machine?
Big blocky cell phones... I watched an episode of Friends the other night, and the phones they were using looked positively prehistoric! Few things date as quickly as computers and mobile phones!
The Commodore 64 was a key plot element in "Halt & Catch Fire". "The Commodore 64 ... (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, January 7–10, 1982) ... It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-selling single computer model of all time ... " I never had one, but I do have a 3DO game console ... NOT the highest-selling ...
Commodore 64 was the first computer I owned. Awesome beast
(wasn't the first computer I used though, that was an ICL 2904 mainframe)
I also first worked on a "mainframe" (I guess ... about the size of a big freezer laying on its side, an IBM sumpin' or other) that they let the students actually feed their Fortran card decks to. On the night before the assignment was due, there was a long line in the room to use it. It apparently had a high temperature interlock that shut it down if the room got too hot. With a bunch of people in the room (hot & humid Houston, BTW), it did and it did. So ... what to do? Obvious, ice on the room thermostat. Chemical engineers to the rescue.
How about a Jerrold cable box? Lol
I had to look it up, not sure how many folks would recognize it, but yeah, it does look ... primitive ...
I remember it as the "remote" that required an electrical cord stretched across the room that everyone tripped on, lol