Restoration of a Special Effects Puppet from The Dark Half
Restoration and custom display base of a special effects puppet from Stephen King’s The Dark Half
The Dark Half, George A. Romero’s film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel tells the story of Thad Beaumont played by Timothy Hutton. Hutton’s fictional alter ego, George Stark, decides to take over Thad’s life no matter the cost. In the finale of the movie, swarms of sparrows completely consume an already decomposing Stark and save Thad and his family. Although thousands of actual birds were actually brought in to film some scenes, many were not safe to film with the live actors. This special effects puppet allowed film makers to safely film the gory finale.
Over 25 years later this foam latex prop made it to our New York studio for restoration and a custom display. Although the prop had a center post that originally allowed it to stand up vertically, the weakening of the foam made it nearly impossible to stand the piece up safely. We were also unable to remove the jacket from the body which provided an additional challenge during the repair process.
With foam latex puppets on of the most important first steps is to lock any moveable elements. When the foam latex is first applied, its flexibility makes it the perfect material for puppet or animatronics. But as it ages, the material becomes extremely brittle, and any movement can cause severe damage. Once the piece is locked into place, our artists were able to patch any of the areas that had cracked or where the foam was missing. This not only helps with the look of the piece but it holds the original material in place and adds stability to the entire prop.
Once the foam latex puppet was stable enough to stand up they were able to began the careful process of in-painting. This means they only paint the patched areas and the original material is left as untouched as possible. Then the whole piece was generously sealed several times, to help slow the hands of time and give the prop’s foam latex skin some additional longevity.
For the display we wanted to add some theming but wanted to keep it minimal, to keep the focus on the prop. We created a distressed wood plank base, since the climax of the movie takes place in the cabin. The client also suggested adding pages from the actual novel to the base, so we chose several pages which describe this scene from the film, and couldn’t resist adding a little bit of faux blood splatter!
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