Thursday, December 5, 2013

Newspaper with inserted articles

Period newspaper props are getting more and more difficult passing year. As color ink gets cheaper and more common, it is harder and harder to find generic newspapers without large color photos or ads. At one point I could just remove the cover pages as interior pages rarely had color, then the color spread to those pages too. Just recently, my go-to generic newspaper, the Wall Street Journal started printing with color ads and photos on all the pages.
It is also difficult to print your own newspaper. You need a large format printer, and many print shops will refuse the hastle of printing onto newsprint, even if you bring the paper in yourself. It gets tangled and jammed in the printers easily because the paper is so thin.
For newspaper props that don't take a lot of wear and tear, this is my solution.
 I start with a small drawing pad of newsprint. I bought this one several years ago and it has lasted me through multiple projects.
 The pad is 9x12, so each sheet needs to be cut to 8.5 x11 to fit into my home printer.
 I pull images offline and type out a few headlines,
 Then glue the articles and headlines into my purchased newspaper to cover up the color photos.On this one I added the photo of the Titanic, the headline about war, and the small section of a period newspaper under the photo (to cover the larger photo on the page).
Since newsprint is so thin, the extra layer of print tends to blend seamlessly into the base paper and not cause too much stiffness. 
This is easier to do if you buy the paper you are going to be gluing into first, then you can measure the areas you are going to need to cover and format your images and text columns to fit. 

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