5th June London Film Museum

On the 5th of June I went up to London to The London Museum of Film and Moving Image. Based in the old council building on the southbank it houses many important relics from various major productions throughout the last century. This included many costumes, props, set pieces, prosthetics, cameras, scripts and photos. I was able to view many of the costumes from older films and some from films not yet released like 'Conan'.

Below are some examples of costumes exhibited from 'Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone', 'Conan' and the 'Borrowers'.

The close up observations of these costumes revealed the simpicity of some of the constructions. The Conan armour to enable the actor ease of movement and more comfort was made of a very lightweight layered moulding material, built up and moulded to the correct shape and then painted for the appropriate affect. The Borrowers exhibit was fasinating as there were many normal houshold items such as plug sockets, batteries and cotton reels that had to be replicated to a vastly large size (as a Borrower is very small) all of these were either carved from polystyrene to make them lightweight or mostly hollow constructions made from fibreglass that made them light and strong (doesnt dent like the polystyrene). One piece that was particularly interesting was the large cotton reel. This again was a fibreglass piece painted to look like the cream plastic but long lengths of industrial cord were used in place of the cotton to add the scale. The labels on the side of the reel wheels were all hand painted and the edges were curled and ripped with aging and use.

Other props included small models from films like Star Wars, and in their limited time Ray Harryhausen exhibit of all his small armetured models of dinosaurs, and the iconic skeletons from 'Voyages of Sinbad' even his sculpture of madusa that had over 150 working joints in it for full fluidity of movement during the animation process.

Other items viewed were various artifacts from their Chaplin exhibit (including one of his original hats and canes) as a huge Chaplin Fan I almost fainted. A huge anamatronic T Rex skeleton from 'Night at the Museum' and various grusome examples of prosthetics from generations of horror movies.

After our recent set build project I was interested to see the reconstruction of Baker Street from a medley of Sherlock Holmes productions over the years. Many of the pieces of furniture resembled ones we had made in the last project including the bookcase especially. I took many pictures of this as one day it will be a brilliant reference source.