Dream Tropes Wiki/Off-the-Shelf FX

An act of desperation by a cash- or time-strapped effects team in the days before digital imaging became affordable and subsequently took over Special Effects. Instead of incurring the time or expense of building their own miniatures, they instead take a shortcut by purchasing off-the-shelf toys or model kits. Depending on the quality of their manufacture (and, in the case of models, assembly), the results can range from surprisingly effective, to sub-par, to obvious Special Effects Failure. Alternately, the effects team might modify ordinary household items into whatever props they need.

Do note that the use of off-the-shelf models are very common for miniature work. Most model kits are often already of very high quality and can be pulled off convincingly, particularly in the use of "greebling" (the details themselves are "greebles", as coined by George Lucas in the production of Film/Star Wars). This is when one takes parts from a model kit, already being of great quality and put it on as detail for bigger models. A great example are the star destroyers in Star Wars, which were essentially plywood models dressed with loads of parts from mixed and matched kits to create what looked like extremely realistic and detailed ships.

Occasionally if the story allows for it, it might end up playing what it really is. For example, commercially available model vehicles being used to portray their real-life counterparts, or licensed merchandising items being used as props or for model shots on the actual show they came from.

This trope comes in two flavors:

* Straight Out of the Box: Unmodified items being used as props. Here the item has literally just been ripped out of its packaging, and at most it is given a new coat of paint. These may require assembly, but still remain largely unmodified. Note, however, this doesn't always equate with the results looking bad or being a Special Effect Failure; if the models are convincing enough, or used as background item, it might be sheer pragmatism - why spend $500 and two days of work to make something that will appear in only a few frames, when the hobby store across the street sells good replicas for $20 (or even less) and they come pre-assembled (or can be assembled with speed and ease, particularly in the case of "snap-tite" kits)? And the creative use of paint, lighting and camera angles can further gloss over the finer details - even making the item appear to be something different than what it really is. This can even be done digitally - either by purchasing pre-rendered CGI models (typically of real world objects) or by reusing ones already rendered for the show - often resized to help hide its previous identity.
* Kit-Bashing: The item is a model, toy or some other off-the-shelf product, but it is modified, altered into something else. In Hollywood and among hobbyists this is often known as "kit-bashing", where parts from several commercial model kits are combined to create a new model. A similar technique is used for CGI models as well. Kit-bashing is sometimes used just for experimental purposes, to get a general appearance and design for a prop. Other times bits of model kits are attached to custom built models just to give it texture and save time ("greebling"). Or perhaps only pieces of it are used into the making of something else entirely. This again is pragmatism: building a new model by gluing bits from other existing items together is both cheaper and easier than molding new parts from scratch. And the results can be equally good. The downside doesn't have to result solely from shoddy workmanship - over-greebling (especially if done with apparent randomness and without any purposeful pattern, or if done simply by cut-and-paste repetition of the same pattern, especially on CGI models) often results in a details getting lost amongst themselves, an overload of visual "noise" and only drives home the sense that the viewer is looking at a plastic or CGI model.

See also Special Effect Failure and No Budget. Compare with GIS Syndrome where cut-and-paste stock photos and backgrounds are used with little or no modification. See Practical Effects for when the budget is a little better.

## Examples of Straight Out Of The Box props

### Film

* Some of the model effects in the *Technic Heroes* franchise involved this.

## Examples of Kit-Bashing

### Theatre

* On the 2005 *PBS Kids Live!*, Sheegwa from *Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat* "plays" a off-the-shelf Spin Master The Wiggles Wiggling Dancing Guitar with the Wiggles logo painted over with yellow spraypaint and the Wiggles buttons covered up with a Sovtek Big Muff pedal and a 2002 Boss Turbo Distortion DS-2 pedal. Oh, and a guitar strip was obviously duct-taped on.

### Western Animation

* The Maddox Show's Toy Story parody was made with Toy Story dolls with changes to avoid copyright instead of CGI.