Raiders brim break distortion solved...possibly.

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I've been chatting with a hat maker who also works as a "hat wrangler" for film and television and he thinks the Raiders hat was blocked on set (possibly after being drenched)without removing the "innards" (sweatband). He said the idea is to pull the hat over a block with the sweat turned out or down and allow to dry. I tried this on my own hat and must say I got some really good results. The line between crown and brim is certainly distorted now plus the ribbon stretched and cinched up which produced an awesome looking bow! The only negative is that the sweat shrunk slightly so my hat fits a little tighter but it's ok since I always order a size bigger than normal to allow for shrinkage. But on a positive note, my hat gained even more "swoop" in the brim when turned due to the snug fit. I will post some pics later when I have the time.

[Mulceber]

An interesting theory, and it would account for some of the idiosyncrasies of the Raiders hat. But would they even have had a hat block with them on set, or known what a hat block was? From what we can tell, Deborah Nadoolman couldn't even put the hat on Ford's head straight (hence, the Raiders turn). Do we really think she was messing around with hat blocking?

It also just seems like a lot of effort. A $200-$300 hat is a treasured possession to us, but for a movie with a budget of $20 million, those hats are practically disposable. If it wasn't looking too good because it got wet, I'd think they'd just grab a new one from the costuming department.

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Good observations all around Mulceber but keep in mind that Ford wore two hats at the most in the film. I can look at the bow work, weathering and other nuances and see they stuck with pretty much the same hat for the entire production. When the hat got drenched is most likely when it was pulled over the block or else it would have shrunk as rabbit tends to do. You can look at the Cairo hat and tell it was soaked by the droopy brim yet it has no taper. That gives credence imo that the hat was rested on something such a block while it dried. Once you see the effect this process had on my own hat you'll see the resemblance between them. If you're on facebook, join the "Raiders Of The Lost Cosplay" group and you can see all the before and after pics there to get a better idea.

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And btw, whether DN knew how to put a hat on straight I don't know but I'm pretty certain HF turned the hat to make it tighter to keep it from falling off. Which reminds me of something else this "hat wrangler" told me when I asked about what that lump could be underneath the ribbon that some have speculated about possibly being a folded sweat etc..
He said there was a very "technical term" used for the process used to make a large fitting hat fit tighter: It's called "shimming it up by wadding a piece of toilet paper and wedging it between the sweat and the felt."

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I'm not sure if you'll be able to follow it unless you're a member of the group but here's the link anyway...
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1304680 ... 385568897/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Jeremiah]

That's pretty cool.
Love to see a pic.

[Mulceber]

Pics don't show. I too would love to see some though.

Good observations all around Mulceber but keep in mind that Ford wore two hats at the most in the film. I can look at the bow work, weathering and other nuances and see they stuck with pretty much the same hat for the entire production.

Oh I agree - he appears to have worn the same hat right up until they wrapped shooting in Tunisia. At around that point, one of the stunt men asked if he could take home a souvenir hat and accidentally walked off with the one Ford had been wearing - hence how it ended up in RelicRaider's collection. The hat worn after Cairo (pretty much just the scenes outside of the Chachapoyan temple, shot in Hawaii) was a different hat. The fact that they didn't change hats doesn't mean they didn't regard the hats as disposable: they just had no need to change hats because there's only one shot in Raiders where the hat gets wet, and that's the vine swing in Hawaii - one of the last shots in the whole film. That in turn raises another question: if, as you say, the hat got soaked somewhere along the way, how would this have happened? There weren't a whole lot of scenes involving water in Raiders.

But hey, I could be wrong. Let's see some pics!

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First let me point out that this particular technique used on movie hats as I've described is just a possible method that my hatter friend believes could be the way the Raiders hat came to be in the shape we see on screen. We all can agree the hat wasnt old by any means. In fact I'd be surprised if the main hat we see throughout the film was more than a few weeks old tops. So the hat had to get into the distressed shape artificially some how and this method seems plausible to me since it's used by professional hat handlers and also because I've used it on my own hat with very similar results. As to how the hat got wet (I suspect water as John "Leroy Mercer" Bean would agree ) or if it got wet at all i have no clue. Maybe it just got so soaked with sweat from the heat and humidity that the sweatband was turned out and left to dry and it caused the brim distortion? I can't imagine the crew having hat blocks on the Raiders set either but I'm told that it is commonplace to have blocks on set these days.

[Mulceber]

Maybe it just got so soaked with sweat from the heat and humidity that the sweatband was turned out and left to dry and it caused the brim distortion?

Now that sounds plausible to me. I think you're observing a real effect. I could very much imagine how dunking a hat and then pulling it over a hat block to let it dry would produce the kind of look we see in the Tunisia hat, and I think something happened to the Tunisia hat that gave it that effect. I'm just not sure that "something" was it literally being dunked and stretched over a hat block, if that makes sense. Harrison sweating buckets into it and exposing it to hundred degree heat makes more sense to me.

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pics as promised...
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Here's another shot of my hat which btw is a custom by Mike Miller of Northwest Hats. I love what the result of this blocking process had on the ribbon and bow! I really think there must have been either a block on the set or at least something to act as a a block because otherwise you wouldn't get the extreme stretch on the ribbon if you just turned the sweat out and allowed to dry without something inside of the hat putting pressure on it. Just my two cents.[img][IMG]http://i957.photobucket.com/albums/ae52/hunkallgood/20170531_200021-1.jpg[/img][/img]

[The Character]

thats a very interesting post .... and a great looking hat to boot!

[temple_runner]

This is what I was looking for. Thanks