Wesley's Weekly HOW TO: Grappling Hook
We've all at one time or another looked at something tall, and dreamed about scaling up it with easy using our trusty Ninja Grappling hook we have hooked to our utility belt. Only to collapse into a pile of blubbering tears when we realize that not only is our utility belt missing, but we might just be going crazy because we believed for just a moment that we did indeed have the skills and equipment to scale a building. Well I can't help you find your missing utility belt/sanity, but I can indeed help you make a prop gadget that can make you look like you're scaling a building on film.
First start out with a wooden dowel, this one is less than the width of my pinkie, you might want to go with a thicker or thinner one depending on what style of hook you're aiming for, but the same basic construction method applies. I started by marking off brackets, the pattern goes straight line, diagonal line, straight line, repeat.
I like using a branch pruner to cut the stick, because it's a bit quicker than a saw, if you don't have one of these you can try to cut into it a little, and break it, then sand the tips to make them look a bit smoother, once again, if you aren't sure of your cutting abilities, get an adults assistance in cutting this, and make sure to watch your fingers and be careful regardless.
You see the straight cuts at the end, and the diagonal cut in the center, what you do is once you make the diagonal cut, flip the wood piece so the angles are aimed at one another like this.
Do this three more times (or as many 'arms' as you want on your hook.)
Next, take a foam tube like this (the same kind I used for my FAKE BONE tutorial.) and cut it for the appropriate length of the core of your hook. You could use pretty much any tube shaped object for this, but you NEED to be able to poke holes in it, so I like foam for it since it's light, easy to set things in, and not super expensive.
Stick your first wooden dowels into it, pretty evenly around the circle.
Also, doing forget to poke a hole all the way through on the bottom end.
Now glue the dowel pieces into the tube, I put a little on the end of each stick before I put them in, then a drop more on top of each hole.
Next, add a glue onto the end of each stick, and get it's diagonal counterpart and glue it on too.
Thred your twine or rope through the bottom, you might want to find some black nylon rope to put through the bottom here, if you can't find any, you will most likely just have to paint the rope or twine black (or whatever color you want it to be) as well.
To bind it, I wrapped the twine ends in electrical tape, after I tied them together in a knot.
Then I mixed some black and silver acrylic paint together, and brushed it on. Once you seal the foam with an acrylic based paint, you can hit it with spray paint. I like layering silver and black to give it a more sealed metal look.
Now, to actually "use' this, you can spin it, and throw it up on something, you can film yourself spinning it, throwing it, and you could do a close-up of the hook catching on a pole or a edge of something, then show your guy acting like they are about to climb up the rope. (But don't put any weight on the rope or it will most likely break just about immediately, you want to LOOK like you're climbing up, not climb up really.)
You can have your actor pretend to climb up the rope, by having them walk up a step ladder (out of the frame), as they "pull" themselves up. Then you could easily cut to them stepping into frame at the top of the "climb", like they just jumped over the wall or the rail, or whatever you're trying to climb up.
You don't want to be dangling off a wall or rail that is really high up, so try to do what they did in Steve's great "Falling Effect", and try to find a railing or ledge that is not really high up, but looks similar to where you threw your grappling hook in your establishing shot, only instead of coming off of it, you're going ONTO it.
I know way it doesn't work
there are 2 wesley's on the homepage so I can't see theme only the comments
cooooooooooooooooooooooooool
This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen.
its minature