{"id":62619,"date":"2023-12-15T10:24:30","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T02:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xometry.asia\/?p=62619"},"modified":"2025-05-20T16:00:26","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T08:00:26","slug":"meet-the-guy-who-builds-amazing-props-for-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging-wp.xometry.hk\/en\/meet-the-guy-who-builds-amazing-props-for-hollywood\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Guy Who Builds Amazing Props for Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tom Bostic didn\u2019t purposefully embark on a career path that would lead to him building props for Hollywood studios and superstar musicians. He stumbled into it after his stepdad issued him an ultimatum when he was a teenager. \u201cHe bought this old beat up Jeep and sold it to me,\u201d Bostic recalled in an interview. \u201cWhen I first got it he handed me an $80 service manual and a car note. Since I was a 17 year old kid an $80 book seemed like a lot but I also knew this old jeep was going to need some work so chances are I\u2019m going to need this book. He told me his tools were in the basement and to put them back when I\u2019m done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure enough, the Jeep broke down a short time later, and so he grudgingly got to work learning how to repair it. But then something curious happened: Bostic realized he enjoyed the work, and it began snowballing beyond simple repairs. He and his friends became obsessed with installing bigger and better sound systems into the Jeep, and other kids at his high school began to take notice. \u201cThey were bringing me their cars and paying me to work on them, and I just started getting more and more cars,\u201d he said. \u201cI was doing all this work out of my parents\u2019 garage, and then it got to the point where I realized that if I just rented a shop I could do this full time.\u201d And this is how Bostic ended up running his own shop by the age of 21. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bostic was soon known all around as the go-to guy if you wanted a high-end sound system installed in your car, and in the early 90s he became heavily involved in the audio competition scene, a then-thriving subculture where enthusiasts would compete for who could install the loudest and most impressive stereo systems. \u201cIt was like a sound version of drag racing,\u201d said Bostic. \u201cYou put two cars next to each other and basically you see whose is the loudest.\u201d Most other participants merely propped their speakers on cheap plywood, but Bostic, ever the perfectionist, used fiberglass and a custom paint job to make it look professional. \u201cThe first event we took it to was the spring break nationals in Daytona, and they literally stopped the event and said, OK, I will give everybody 10 minutes to take pictures of this car. These are what these cars should look like. They shouldn\u2019t look like these over here with just raw plywood and a bunch of woofers screwed to a box.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Tom developed custom car audio systems<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within the world of car audiophiles, Bostic was a celebrity. After he sold his shop, he went on to work for\u00a0MTX Audio, a manufacturer for high performance car audio systems. \u201cI built show cars for them and then traveled to the events where the cars were being shown,\u201d he said. This is when he first got involved in the entertainment industry. In 2004, MTV debuted a show called\u00a0Pimp My Ride. MTX Audio would provide the equipment and labor for said ride pimping. \u201cWe weren\u2019t characters on the show, but you would see the backs of our heads a lot as we worked on the cars,\u201d he explained. \u00a0\u201cFor the last season, I think they did 15 episodes and we were in 9 or 10. We were out there as much as we were able to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, however, the custom audio scene died down after vehicle manufacturers began offering better sound systems. It was around this time that Bostic reconnected with an old friend, Andy Cohen, who had been one of his original auto shop customers. Cohen began pestering him to come take on some projects in his own garage. \u201cI went over there and started doing a project for him, and that snowballed into another project, and then before I knew it he had all these other ones lined up.\u201d Bostic suddenly found himself taking on odd jobs like refurbishing former military helicopters and reconstructing a B-52 drop tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Tom developed a Landspeeder replica for Junkyard Empire<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is how Bostic\u2019s second plunge into the entertainment industry came about. A network had shown interest in working with his friend Cohen, and after some back-and-forth deliberation, it settled on a show called\u00a0Junkyard Empire\u00a0in which Cohen, Bostic, and their team\u2014took on custom repair auto work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rights for the show were then scooped up by the car channel Velocity. For one episode Bostic came up with the idea to build a scale replica of the Star Wars Landspeeder. To recreate many of the original parts for the speeder, Bostic relied heavily on\u00a03D printing. He was doing a lot of in-house 3D printing; however, as with many smaller 3D printers, his printer had limitations. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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