We recently completed taping three reenactments last week: a gold rush reenactment staged in a woody area of the DuPage River, a reenactment with Coors in a historical house in Lisle, and of course, the quintessential tavern scene at the most perfect of locations, the Pre-Emption Tavern at the Naper Settlement.

One might think that taping a reenactment is nothing more than pointing a camera at some actors and hitting the record button. What most people don’t realize is that hours of preparation and planning go into not only finding a suitable location for the reenactment but also finding actors, costumes, and props.

Kandiss Hernandez of Kids Kabaret is instrumental in helping us find actors; they are either actual members of Kids Kabaret or they are the parents of the members of Kids Kabaret. Or in the case of the Coors reenactment, the elder John Stenger was played by the husband of the piano player for Kids Kabaret.

Kandi is also an expert at finding costumes for our reenactments at local thrift stores. The total cost of the costumes for the beer tunnel reenactment? Less than $30. And when she can’t find what she’s looking for at a thrift store, she sends us over to All Dressed Up in Batavia. We just picked up a nice lawyer costume from the mid 1800s complete with an ascot (that time period’s version of the bowtie), vest, and suit coat from that actual time period.

Bryan Ogg, the Research Associate at the Naper Settlement, also helps us tremendously by helping us keep our reenactments historically accurate. While we are perfectly willing to throw in an IKEA table with a piece of fabric over it for a parlor scene from the 1870’s, Bryan insists on showing us drawings of what an actual table from that time period looks like. Even if that means that the only table we can find that is anywhere near close to this drawing at the prop house is missing its top and part of a leg. Bryan also had his mother FedEx an actual gold pan for our gold rush scene so that we could be as accurate as possible, even if our reenactor, Colton, was standing calf-deep in the DuPage River and only finding bottles and old watch bands in his panning efforts.

The prop house I mentioned earlier is a huge treasure that we recently discovered online called Zap Props. It is an old industrial building stuff full of props and antiques. You can find anything from a wooden beer tap from the 1800s (which we wanted) to an exact replica of a turtle that doubles as a lamp with bulbs sticking out of its hands and feet. Not to mention on the top floor is a giant 5ft tall can of Redi-Whip. Shanna, who helped us immensely, assured me it was empty.

Zap Props is located in an industrial area on the South Side of Chicago near an interesting dive called Huck Finn Donuts. (We have yet to taste one of Huck Finn’s donuts. Bill wasn’t brave enough to venture in. And the time before when we picked up the props, on the way back to NCTV17 we stopped at a sandwich place and witnessed a man in a bright blue velour sweat suit jumping up and down on a police car while the officers stared at him. What we won’t do at NCTV17 to get documentaries made.)

And last but not least, we tend to get an extra hand from some NCTV17 interns. Ricky and Peter got to work the jib camera and do grip work at the tavern reenactment and were a huge help.