You've probably never thought twice about what kind of wristwatch an onscreen character is sporting, but it's the job of people like Brad Elliott to think about little else. As a property master whose credits include “Avatar: Fire & Ash,” "Rebel Moon,” “Abbott Elementary,” and the upcoming Anthony Bourdain biopic, “Tony,” Elliott spends his career on the invisible side of storytelling—choosing the objects actors touch, hold, and carry to help audiences understand who a character is before a single line of dialogue is spoken. Sitting down with The Set Set at Independent Studio Services (ISS) Props, a place where most Hollywood prop masters know well, Elliott talks us through how something as small as a watch, a suitcase, or even a sword can become a tool for character design. 

ISS Props, the world’s largest film and television prop rental house (it’s headquartered in California, but has satellite branches in six other states), is home to a sizable array of watches and other worn accessories. “Among the many things a property master curates and chooses for their characters is their watches,” Elliott tells us. “We're always in conjunction with the costumers, but watches come to us and watches say a lot about a person.” Surrounded by walls lined with rows and rows of watches of varying sizes, materials, and price points, Elliott breaks down the prop master’s approach to choosing wristwear for a character: every accessory a character wears is a choice, and every choice sends a signal. An “ostentatious” diamond-covered Rolex says one thing about a character's relationship to wealth and status, while a more sedate choice—even if still a Rolex— can say something else entirely, suggesting a character who already has power and doesn't feel the need to broadcast it.

He notes that timepiece choices are usually dictated by what archetype a character falls into. For a tech-industry titan, “odds are they've got a smartwatch because they want to be dialed into everything,” Elliott says. Meanwhile, someone with a military background will gravitate toward a more rugged and tactical watch, and fashion-forward women are likely to choose pieces that match or blend in with their other accessories, maybe from a brand known for their jewelry offerings, such as Cartier. And even inexpensive watches from decades past, such as Casio, are having a moment, Elliott explains, as younger or anti-establishment characters—and their real-world counterparts—reach for pieces that help reject the traditional idea of wealth signifiers.

The way people project identity can be applied to luggage just as much as it can to wearable accessories. Two bags that are nearly identical in size and shape can tell very different stories depending on the brand and finish: a designer suitcase signals status in a way a generic one never will. A colorful bag might be an easy choice for a child character, but putting that same bag in an adult's hands becomes a much more interesting character decision. “And of course, if you get into the world of steamer trunks, that tells a whole different story about how people travel, bringing everything they have,” Elliott explains. It instantly implies wealth, since, as he points out, anyone traveling with that much luggage clearly has porters to carry it for them.

Like many property masters, Elliott credits his desire to work in film to an early exposure to the celluloid world. The film that got him hooked? “Star Wars.” “From the opening frame, it just blew me away,” he recalls. “And of course, the prop that I was most interested in as a kid was the lightsaber.” Things came full circle for him when he was hired as the property master on the “Obi-Wan Kenobi” miniseries, in which he got to work with the lightsabers up close (looking just a little different from those from the 1977 movie) but also “got to design all kinds of new ‘Star Wars’ stuff”. 

In a full-circle moment for Elliott, he even ended up using a prop he had made before he even became a property master, proving that deep down he always had a knack for props. As he tells it, “Years before I was even considering a film industry career, I went to a costume party and I decided to dress up as Luke Skywalker and I made a lightsaber from parts I found in a hardware store in maybe half a day.” When the 2022 series required the props team to build a convincingly bad fake lightsaber for a character who poses as a Jedi, it ended up being exactly what they needed. Elliott pulled his own decades-old Halloween party prop out of storage and put it on the table alongside the newly built options. The director chose Elliott's homemade lightsaber, becoming part of official “Star Wars” canon.

Elliott also worked on Taylor Swift and Post Malone's "Fortnight" music video, which featured a collection of vintage typewriters. Swift's fanbase, known for combing through every social media post, outfit, and music release for hidden meaning, was quick to pick up on the fact that the typewriter she uses is missing a "1" key and quickly built a theory: that this symbolized Swift moving on from the person she thought was “the 1” (also the name of one of Swift’s breakup songs) and into a new chapter of her life. The real explanation, Elliott explains, is actually a lot more straightforward. Vintage typewriters simply never included a dedicated number-one key. Typists used a lowercase "L" instead and created an exclamation point by backspacing and adding a period beneath it. 

Elliott did, however, plant a real Easter egg for Swiftie sleuths. The set of numbers on a prop pill bottle presented to an asylum-bound Swift makes up the singer’s birthdate and the video's release date. He also ended up creating, almost by chance, a prop that Swift later incorporated into her “Tortured Poets Department” segment of her sell-out Eras tour. “In one scene she's strapped to a chair, and there's this really cool Edison volt meter that I found from 1910, and I sort of cobbled together this wand that I tied to it, and it was just a prop that wasn't really asked for,” Elliott explains. “It's Terry Gilliam meets Frankenstein, and when Ms. Swift came by, she said, ‘Oh, that’s sick! We’ve got to use that.’ So we did.” Swift ended up requesting a second one to be built so the prop could travel with her on the worldwide Tour.

It's a strange job, being the person whose best work is never meant to be noticed but simply accepted as part of the world of a film. A well-chosen watch, a lived-in suitcase, or something made in answer to a question no one thought to ask do so much work to make a film visually rich, believable, and enjoyable. As Elliott puts it, "We try to avoid things that call out too much attention to themselves, because the last thing as a property master we want to do is distract the audience with something that might just be a little too much."