PROPS Props Master JESSE WALKER
LIU JUNJIE'S WHEELCHAIR
"The wheelchair was a challenge more in upkeep than in design. Many of the elements in the wheelchair were irreplaceable, so the chair needed repairs every night and sometimes during the shoot. We started with an old wheelchair, and added layers of grime and corrosion. Then, a storage rack was added to the back, under the handles. Next, the blood purification machinery was wired into place. It was made from a mix of pool filters, questionably medical tools, and rubber tubing. The idea was to make it as sturdy as possible without making it look like it was meant to be carried that way. While Liu Junjie may be a technical genius, he is not a great mechanic." (Jesse Walker, Props Master)
LIU JUNJIE'S POD
"Liu Junjie's pod had always in my mind been a screen with buttons on the side. I remember having a picture of a test where the screen was made from a half-melted plastic bottle. For the version seen in the movie, the base was made from a six-button remote and part of a computer's casing. The screen was safety glass of the same sort as car windshields. This was chosen because we could crack an identical piece for when the pod was broken without risk of large jagged shads hurting actors. When the pod was in use, a green card was placed over the screen so that the map could be inserted digitally." (Jesse Walker, Props Master)
ECATERINA'S JARS
"The organ jars in Ecaterina's lab were another thing we needed in bulk. We bought jars and beakers from pawn shops and junk shops. We asked craft service to buy food from jars and serve us pickles and olives. Some of them were filled with prop organs but many of the non-descript ones were quick-curing expanding foam painted and packed into jars. My favorite, though, was the rainbow of jellyfish in beakers. I like to think that they were there because Ecaterina was at one time studying their apparent immortality." (Jesse Walker, Props Master)
MOUSE SOUP
"I remember being told one night that "We need a mouse for the children to be cooking." We had some mice in the production house, but we had been using no-kill traps and no one really wanted to be the one to kill and skewer mice for kids to use as props. The quick solution for that was for me to shape a mouse out of aluminum foil and hot glue. I'd painted the face, hands, and tail light brown and rolled the body in dryer lint and voila - a safe, sanitary dead mangy mouse to be skewered and handled by children." (Jesse Walker, Props Master)
WEAPONS AND MASKS
"The various prostitute weapons were fun. I'd used as much foam as possible in their construction for safety reasons. One of my favorites is also one of my regrets from the production. It was a piece that was assembled shortly before the scene was shot. It was a ramming device constructed around the mechanism for a kitchen drawer. On one end were handles for the operator to hold, and the ramming end was a coiled rope of purple foam with a condom wrapped around it. I wish that I had thought of it sooner, so that I could have replaced the foam with a brightly covered, spiked dildo. Of course, I'm not sure the ratings people would have liked that.
There were a couple helmets/masks that I'd made that I was also proud of. In one scene, there are guards with respirators that are modified to hold a lit cigaret in a side port. I believe it was line producer Chris McChane wearing the mask in the closeup." (Jesse Walker, Props Master)
TELESCREEN
"Lebrac's TV, like so much of the technology in Caihong City, is cobbled together from scraps. To my mind, neither Lebrac nor Zeghe built it, they traded for it. Should it break, they could not repair it. Like most electronics outside Furui City, it's largely caseless. I reasoned that in a scavenger society, finding the proper sized casing for a makeshift electronic would be rare. Everything could be cased in sheet metal or cardboard, but that would be visually uninteresting. Lebrac's TV was built off of what was once a screen printing silkscreen mounted on a small stand. Control knobs were mounted on the bottom, and a circuit board containing more buttons was mounted on the side. It was wired in a chaotic tangle just waiting to get caught on something and pulled free." (Jesse Walker, Props Master)