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Remember when we had to make fake books from scratch?
We were doing a low budget period piece set in a 1920s library and needed hundreds of books. Buying real old ones was way too much money, like maybe $5,000. My friend who works at a print shop in Akron suggested we just get blank book blocks from a bindery, about 500 of them for under $300. We aged the covers with tea and shoe polish, and from three feet away they looked perfect on the shelves. Anyone else have a cheap prop trick that saved a shoot?
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grant_palmer1d ago
That tea staining trick is a classic. Did something similar for a bar scene needing old ledgers. Just grabbed a bunch of cheap composition books from a dollar store and rubbed the pages with wet coffee grounds. Let them dry all crinkled and stained. Looked a hundred years old on camera for maybe twenty bucks total.
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james_clark1d ago
Oh man, the coffee grounds are a great call... that grittiness must add some real texture. It makes me wonder if the type of paper changes the effect a lot, like those super smooth pages might just repel it. I tried tea once on some printer paper and it just went translucent and sad... maybe the cheap, absorbent stuff is the real secret.
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