So, in looking at these parts, it seems most of the detail stuff had some “real world” applications. I’ve never seen, nor heard of, anyone finding a “real” HGA or Bumper. Were they made for the prop, or taken from a real device? Anyone know?
The only way to know would be if those parts had a P/No or data plate on them. A couple of people here have managed to get a close look at the props but none have mentioned seeing part numbers for those items, so they were probably fabricated by the prop builders.
The HGA was probably something fabricated. It’s just a tube with one end welded up and a sticker.
I can’t help but look at the bumper though and think that’s not something they ever would have thought to fabricate in that form. It’s just shaped so weird.
As for what it could be though, one can only guess. Aircraft part? Part of a machine used in manufacturing? It looks pretty heavy duty, so whatever it was, if it was something, was probably under a lot of stress.
I agree… The bumpers looked very heavy duty. The HGA had to be fabricated..
yeah but then again, we don’t know what it’s made out of and it’s funny how it fits around the pack pretty well.
I’ve always though the bumper looks like a professional lighting mount like for a spotlight or stage lighting. Never could find the right one though.
The HGA could be from the end of a printing roller.
I happened to be in a machine shop where the machinist was making parts that were almost identical to the HGA. Upon inquiry, he said that they are end plugs for printing press rollers.
I see where you would think that, however the HGA is generally a pressty uniform shape aside from the weld. The end does not come out as much as seen in the pic above. Although this is obviously not the EXACT thing you saw beeing made, all end caps have a smaller bottom then end so that the inner piece can be inserted in to said paper roll for printing and the larger end to cap it off. Good guess though for sure.
I’m willing to bet that particular piece is fabricated. Same with the bumper in all honesty simply because, as mentioned above, they fit too well around the existing cyclotron in order to be a found piece. Just as well I seriously doubt they based the dynamics and siz of their packs around the bumper in order to make it fit.
I suspect the entier bottom of the pack is fabricated and possibly built to look like scaled down cyclotron’s in real life.
A cyclotron is infact an existing piece of nuclear related equipment, generally consisting of a stoud cyclentrical body with what is very similar to a bumper frame around and through the center of the device.
wow, that is true. might be. maybe during pre-production, when the original packs where still in construction, they took to make it more realistic by incorporating that.
…That’s a big bumper.
It wasn’t a guess, Ray. I go into machine shop, see part that is almost exactly like the HGA, except for small dimensional differences, and am told it’s for a roller. There’s nothing to say that there are rollers out there without a step in them on the outer diameter.
There’s no evidence to show that anything on the pack was a found item (other than fittings and the like), and since we know the main shell was fabricated, it adds to the notion that they everything was fabbed.
You can easily find a million things that are cylindrical, roughly the same dimensions, and say they may be what the HGA was made from. The HGA on the hero packs were aluminum though so that rules out a lot of things, and the weld does not look like anything found on a production piece, the welds look the same as the welds on the other fabricated parts (ion arm, filler tubes, injector tubes, proton gun).
The bumper isn’t uniform/symmetrical, and none of the roads anyone in the past have ever searched down (lighting mounts etc.) have ever been anything other than uniform/symmetrical. Also there are marks on it that match a likely construction method (one which many have used to make scratch built ones). So I would say it’s also a fabbed item.
All that said, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t inspired by real world items, and it’s most likely they were. I’m not saying people shouldn’t think about or search around for things that inspired them. Sometimes things are found to be real world items certainly. I can say though that in my own research, these two items aren’t found objects.
Because, you know, movie-makers just aren’t that creative. :sigh:
THIS.
think about it. its got a place in the middle for mounting it to lighting grids, and a place for the wire to hang over. im sure you’ve looked for lights like that that may have been used in the early 80s. maybe looking from early 70’s to a couple years before the movie?
It has nothing to do with creativity. Look at most movie props. Hell, look at almost all the other Ghostbusters props.
The PKE is made from a shoe polisher. The giga meter is made form a buffer. The ecto goggles are made from night vision goggles. The belt circuit is made from a calculator.
I’m not saying they’re not creative, but clearly they like to cut corners. Maybe they did fabricate the bumper. But why would they put so much effort into making it a funny shape instead of simply bending some aluminum C channel into a U shape and welding a square bit in the middle? It’s not like it would have made much of a difference, visually.
A lot of it has to do with the producers as well as the prop department. A prop maker has to throw something together for approval, generally from the director, and will have to change things until the director is satisfied. It’s easier for the props dept if they have detailed sketches to work from, but otherwise they are left to their own devices (that’s when the crazier props get produced).
Remember it’s easier to take an existing product and change that then to completely fabricate something from scratch, especially given the usual time and budget restraints… another reason why props can and will get recycled 
It’s a lot like if you have ever taken a computer apart. Once you get inside, your imagination can be used for a lot of things of which these pieces could be. Imagine being back when this movie was being produced, you have an old calculator, a shoe polisher, and some random flight suits. You say “This is our stuff and we gotta make it look science like. Let’s get to work!” I think once you start taking things apart, you realize their full potential. So it wouldn’t be a surprise me if half the stuff on the packs was random junk copied, glued, and painted onto the packs for effect.
Point of fact, the Gigameter and PKE meter weren’t built by the same people that made the packs. A lot of the individual props used were from a prop-shop, so the analogy between the packs and other miscellaneous props doesn’t stick.
As mentioned, you can see the layers of (probably would, but could be foam or something else) still visible on the bumper (as well as the mold line down the centre).
Isn’t that a GB2 pack though? They were cast in fiberglass to reduce weight, makes sense that they would cast up some bumpers at the same time.