Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538452
12 PROP CULTURE I FALL 2025 It's become a common story that early on in prep, I drove up to see Dan at the Rhode Island Computer Museum who opened the vaults for me. It was a Costco-sized warehouse busting at the seams with stacks of vintage computers. It felt like entering the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark with rows of stored computer history. Dan and I spent the day rummaging through all of its treasures, pulling monitors and keyboards with interesting looking shapes. I loaded about 13 models into my minivan and drove back to our stages in New York City. After meticulously scrubbing decades of cigarette smoke and grime off them, they were ready for their lineup, and I for my first real test. Ben, Jeremy, cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagne, art directors, the set decorator, all the producers, the assistants, and people I hadn't even met came in for the big show and tell. There was a communal "geeking out" over the breadth of history that was amassed in the lineup with computers like the old Commodores, IBMs, Wangs, all triggering immediate nostalgia. Ben is a phenomenal director with a clear vision for what the story needs, and he was immediately drawn to the Data General Dasher, a model that had the ability to swivel, pivot, and tilt up and down. It also had a very low profile where the other ones were mostly boxy and tall. And the Dasher had an amazing deep-blue color. It is the blue that eventually became the iconic color of the severed floor palate. From there, we had a path forward and a direction to build around. To start, we scanned and modeled a 3D file of the computer's housing. The specialists, our prop fabrication vendor, then 3D-printed and cast the housing, including the yokes, adding texture in the finish to resemble the old IBM plastic feel. Sourcing nine matching color CRT televisions, we pulled the tubes out and laid them into the printed housing. Through trial and error, some blown transistors, rerouting power sources, and some hope and prayers, we fabricated the fully functional, interactive Macrodata Refinement (MDR) computer. That allowed for a unique opportunity for our actors in that they are actually "refining numbers" on a real computer program in all the scenes. No laying in screens in post required. We created a fully interactive Unity program, running on an infinite loop capable of being "played" for hours at a time. The actors learned how (and got quite good at) selecting, highlighting, and then binning the numbers. The agitation of the numbers was inspired by a brain Ben Stiller lines up a shot on Miss Huang's water toy and computer