Remember when we had to make fake books from scratch?

We were doing a low budget period piece set in a 1920s library and needed hundreds of books. Buying real old ones was way too much money, like maybe $5,000. My friend who works at a print shop in Akron suggested we just get blank book blocks from a bindery, about 500 of them for under $300. We aged the covers with tea and shoe polish, and from three feet away they looked perfect on the shelves. Anyone else have a cheap prop trick that saved a shoot?

3 comments

3 Comments

grant_palmer2mo ago

That tea staining trick is a classic. Did something similar for a bar scene needing old ledgers. Just grabbed a bunch of cheap composition books from a dollar store and rubbed the pages with wet coffee grounds. Let them dry all crinkled and stained. Looked a hundred years old on camera for maybe twenty bucks total.

james_clark2mo ago

Oh man, the coffee grounds are a great call... that grittiness must add some real texture. It makes me wonder if the type of paper changes the effect a lot, like those super smooth pages might just repel it. I tried tea once on some printer paper and it just went translucent and sad... maybe the cheap, absorbent stuff is the real secret.

wells.morgan1mo ago

Disagree about the cheap paper being the secret. That tea result sounds like you brewed it way too weak. Steep a few bags strong, almost like ink, and even decent paper takes the color well. The real trick is controlling how wet the page gets so it buckles just right without falling apart.