Prepping the Barbed Wire

A year ago, we were in the last phase of pre-production for our feature film Under Jakob's Ladder.

By this time, the week leading up to principal photography, the crew was on the main set daily, prepping our prison. Both inside and out.

How do you create the atmosphere of a prison?


A little barbed wire... Or rather, a lot of barbed wire. After all, what says "prison" more than barbed wire?

We had to create fence posts and string the barbed wire around the location of our prison yard. We even created a portable barbed wire "fence" -- something we could easily hold in front of the camera when we needed some barbed wire in the foreground of a shot. (Also helpful when we were at a different location filming prison exteriors.)

Now all we needed to add to the barbed wire were... some prison guards!