I built a Sci-Fi movie set!

hello now normally I like to start my videos by saying something funny but I am freaking exhausted because I just spent the last two months designing and fabricating an entire science fiction movie set with the help of some amazing people so instead I think I'm just going to cut to the chase and show you what I did how I did it and I hope that you enjoy welcome to Joel creates [Music] first let me give you some quick information on how I got involved with this project so basically one day on Facebook I saw a post in a small filmmaker group by a dude named cameryn he wanted to make a sci-fi movie called infinitum eded a guy to bring his set to life he had a script a tight budget and an even tighter timeframe but he said that his inspiration was the movie alien so I just had to do it Cameron brought so many amazing and passionate people together to make this happen and we all worked tirelessly to bring his vision to life I built a bunch of really cool things the coolest being the airlock doors or as I like to call them but since they were the last thing I built we'll come back to them later we built the sets in an old repair garage the first of the two sets was meant to look like an old bunker deep underground on a desolate and lifeless planet complete with an antiquated computer console and a geothermal heat and life-support system the computer console started out as two wooden frames with built-in shelves for supporting individual components these frames were built by my friend Stefano who's quite a guy all of the components were random old electronics that I had in my basement and once Cameron and I had arranged them on the shelves in a way that we thought looked best I wired them all to light up and look functional then measured their locations and began designing a faceplate to be cut out of formular board foam their board is this pink polystyrene stuff that is easy to machine and can be made to look like just about any material you want like cement or steel it also makes this wonderful squeaking noise whenever it rubs anything even with all of these devices wired to light up and give some kind of a reading without a convincing faceplate to tie them all together they would always just look like a bunch of stuff on a shelf I designed the faceplate to look like something that you would actually find in an old military bunker complete with random technical looking embellishments and I even designed an acre iseven logo to represent the fictional company or organization who built this bunker once I had test-fit the faceplates I removed them for painting while they were being painted I got to work on some chairs for the console computer I found some awesome looking metal chairs at a thrift store and cut off their legs these chairs needed to mount to a single aluminum shaft sticking out of the bottom of each chair these shafts were stuck into holes in the arms of an old hydraulic vehicle left on the floor making them look much more permanent after the console faceplates got their base coat of industrial green my wife Kirsten hand-painted the details and made them look weathered and old having a biochemistry degree she also added convincing looking formulas and equations to the ship blueprint that would be used as a film prop we lined the bottoms of the console with mesh added amber pulsating lights and filled them with old tube radio parts from my basement to add depth the primary monitor is an old security camera system the first camera was pointed at an animated graphic that said airlock breached and the second camera was pointed at a miniature of the airlock because it had not been built yet the actress Chelsea would run up and see the airlock warning than switch the screen to the shot of the airlock the console turned out fantastic and with all the different components it was made of it just goes to show that hoarding random broken electronic crap can sometimes pay off next up let's look at the life-support system this was cut out a formula board as well and was made to look like a large advanced ventilation system Stephan Owen Cameron put it on a stand with a bunch of tubes coming out of it and attached lights and wires to make it look complicated and technical the wires and conduit were unused components from a pile of parts that actually came with my unfinished CNC machine back when I bought it now let's look at the smallest prop the voice recorder in the opening shot of the film Chelsea wakes up to the sound of air lock alarms and the blinking red light of a voice message waiting for her on this little retro futuristic box she later comes back inside and listens to the tragic message while still wearing her spacesuit I started my design around the red light itself I used a couple of lenses from a broken projector and lines the inside edge with LED strips the lens is placed over a relay timer the same one that I used in my hot glue gun video there is a second relay timer inside the case set to switch the red light on and off at a dramatic interval this relay timer was literally for my hot glue gun because this was a last-minute design the casing is from a mid-century Philco bakelite radio turned upside down it's powered by three 18 650 lithium cells run in series to achieve a little over 12 volts there are two automotive pull switches the right one turns a device on and the left one switches a relay between the blinking light and the front relay timer hitting the left switch makes it look like you're playing the message which is why the blinking light stops and the timer begins counting down the length of the message this was the first set the bunker itself which we then had to tear down to make room for the second set which would be the surface airlock and the spaceship interior the spaceship isn't really meant to be a ship but an unmanned probe it's called the Lucrecia and it was designed by alex lange over at the youtube channel single space films and i'll post a link to his build video below Lucrecia is a spherical craft and Chelsey ends up crawling inside the craft to control it manually in order to try and build a set that would represent the inside of this ship I first needed a spherical shape I cut a jig out of wood and then used it to bend 10 metal conduit pipes into semi circles I also cut end pieces out of wood to insert the pipes into kind of like giant Tinkertoys we assemble the sphere and then it was covered with mesh and gold like foil survival blankets to give it that outerspace look cameron oversaw filling the inside with wires and random electronic components in order to control this probe chelsea needed to bring in some kind of handheld computer system that she could manually wire into the probe to gain control i built this out of the old projector i put a flashing headlamp shining in the projector where the mainland's used to be and attached an old slide viewer to the pivoting mount on the headlamp the flashing light gets dispersed and color separated by the existing internal projector optics creating a really cool effect I also had to replace the light that was inside of the old slide viewer to make it look like it was some kind of a monitor and finished off the whole device with a keypad for her to enter manual commands this almost brings us to the airlock doors but first let's talk about the airlock itself the airlock set is made almost entirely out of formula board and is comprised of two rooms with the first being where the spacesuits are stored while the bunker is deep underground the airlock is on the surface and they are connected by an elevator that we don't see there is an opening on the left and this is where Chelsea first enters the airlock from the elevator one spacesuit was already taken by Chelsea's missing partner so she begins to put on the other spacesuit which is stored in a cubby in the wall the spacesuit was designed and made by a guy named Robert Wagner real quick I just got to mention that there's a lot of other truly amazing people that I'm just not mentioning in this video so you can find more information about all of them and this awesome project over at infinite space and if you want to make sure that these people get paid for their incredible time and effort that head on over to the IndieGoGo page that I've linked below the suit wall has a painted fluorescent lighting fixture with red LED strip inside of it and the cubbies are made of the two halves of a car top carrier with their insides painted black and some hidden internal LED illumination the second room has a wall with two more of the same light fixture all of which I found at a thrift store this is the final room before exiting to the surface of the planet when Chelsea first enters she sees that the outer doors are open and interacts with the control panel calling on the intercom for her partner first before closing the outer doors so that the inner ones can open this control panel is an old TTY device from the 80s these were originally used by the hearing-impaired for communicating text over a phone line every character that you press produces a unique series of high-pitched beeps that can be reinterpreted as text on the other end of the line by recording these tones I was able to playback messages on screen through a microfiber this way it looks like Chelsea is interacting with an old computer system that controls the airlock I designed and cut this awesome looking bezel out of green acrylic it mounted perfectly around low device and onto the phone I use the same shape of the logo and the life-support system to create corner flashers on the door frame I cut these out of Fresnel lens material from the projection screen TV that I took apart in one of my earlier videos you probably recognized it in my console computer as sort of a little growing chamber the flashers are just some standard automotive amber flashers the windows for the doors were cut out of acrylic and I dragged them around on the floor to make them look aged there is actually only one set of working doors and another set of fake doors by moving the set pieces around we were able to make it look like they were 2 full sets of working doors here's how the doors worked I started with a 32 foot ladder and took apart the two halves I built a frame separating the two halves of the ladder on the top and the bottom I mounted some aluminum channel on the top and the bottom to create rails for the doors to ride on on the bottom of each door is a PVC pipe which gently sits in the groove of the rail and with some wd-40 sprayed on the rails these move quite slickly along the tops of the doors have large bolts sticking out with their heads rounded off these sit inside the top rails to keep them from falling out the doors are opened by a long threaded shaft powered by a drill the shaft is made up of two shafts one with regular threading and one that is reverse threaded and they are joined at the middle there's a threaded stand off on each side attached to each door when the shafts turn the standoffs move down the shafts and because one shaft is the reverse of the other they move in opposite directions the drill that is attached to the shafts is powered by a second drill handle that's connected by some wires when you pull the trigger of the drill handle it turns the other drill and opens or closes the doors the doors open rather slowly and actually worked perfectly for building suspense in the shots remember this is an old bunker just barely still working not a fancy spaceship I was able to produce the Jets of fake steam that shoot out of the doors with two cans of office duster turned upside down it's obviously dangerous to get hit with this freezing cold blast so it's a good thing that Chelsea was wearing the suit if you like the look of those doors close up it's because Kirsten hand detailed the entire airlock set all while wearing a trash bag now in order to give you a more full sensory experience here's what the set sounded like on the day of filming Easter anywhere relaxes and so as you can tell the movie was a complete success I really enjoyed working with Cameron and Stefano Stefano is just a phenomenal outstanding super cool dude I'm Joel with Joel creates and I want to thank you for watching I also hope you got something out of it have a great day I also just launched a patreon so if you'd like to directly support my ability to make things music and stuff then please check that out thank you so much for watching be sure and check out infinite space an IndieGoGo page I will see you next time [Music]

Channel: Joel Creates

Views: 114,102

Keywords: Michael Reeves, William Osman, science fiction, movie set, movie, science fiction film, movies, sci-fi, cinefix movie list, action, scifi movies, cinefix movie channel, sci fi movies explain, 1950s scifi movie, sci-fi set, retro scifi movies, movie sets, sci fi, film, top sci movies, fiction, science, new movie, lighting a miniature set, best movie ever, Airlock Doors, Airlock, bunker, steampunk, star wars, Props, Prop making

Id: FitxuWNgnJM

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2019