SUPERNATURAL: Props, Wardrobe & the Production Offices Through the Years

In 2011, I took my first ever trip to the set of SUPERNATURAL in Vancouver. It was during the filming of season 7 and we toured the studios, interviewed various members of the production crew, and then headed out on location to speak to stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Many years before that, the original TV Addict, Daniel, visited the set of SUPERNATURAL while they were filming the season 2 finale in 2007.

I was lucky enough to go back to Vancouver seven more times after 2011, often visiting the SUPERNATURAL set (along with other Warner Bros. shows filming in the city), speaking to the crew, touring the sets, visiting the props room, and even doing red carpet interviews before the show’s 200th and then 300th episodes.

To celebrate the final three episodes of the show, we’re taking a look back through our archive of set visits. First up is a look at props, wardrobe, the production offices and the show’s most famous object: the Chevy Impala. What follows are behind the scenes photos and tidbits about some of SUPERNATURAL’s most recognizable objects and clothes. We also have a look at the show’s iconic sets and then (the week of the finale) a look at outtakes from our interviews with the show’s stars over the years.

SUPERNATURAL airs on Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

2011 (Season 7). Hand-made puppets of Sam and Dean.

2011 (Season 7). We get a peak at some photos of John and Mary Winchester.

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12). A photo of Mary and young Dean.

2011 (Season 7). The props room is full of wild and wacky items, including a blow-up doll. Stacked floor to ceiling, the boxes contain all sorts of items from throughout the years.

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12).

2015 (Season 11). A box full of fake IDs for the Winchesters, along with earlier season cell phones.

2015 (Season 11). The bullets for the Colt are all numbered and have the name “Winchester” on them.

2016 (Season 12). Angel blades.

2016 (Season 12). The props department created clean and “bloody” versions of the First Blade, as well as a version that allows them to “stab” someone.

2015 (Season 11). Multiple versions of the weapon that Dean used in Purgatory.

2007 (Season 2). A props department’s person is painting Dean’s gun.

2015 (Season 11). 

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12). The tightest timeline they’ve had for a prop was the angel killing sword in terms of reading the script, coming up with the design and having it built by their sword maker. Prop master Christopher Cooper basically hand created it from scratch.

2016 (Season 12). This flogger was used by Magda in the season 12 episode “American Nightmare”.

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12).

2015 (Season 11). 

2015 (Season 11). 

2016 (Season 12). You can never have too may bibles on SUPERNATURAL.

2015 (Season 11). You can also never have too much salt when you’re hunting ghosts.

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12).

2015 (Season 11). In the season 5 finale “Swan Song”, SUPERNATURAL shared the history of the show’s beloved Impala and we saw a glimpse of the younger Winchesters playing with army figurines in the car.

2015 (Season 11). A glowing angel grace necklace.

2015 (Season 11). According to SUPERNATURAL’s prop master Chris Cooper, John’s journal was created for the pilot and then brought to the Vancouver props department as it was. Throughout the years they have simply maintained it, added more pages as called for by the scripts and updated it. But otherwise, it’s exactly as it was in the pilot.

2015 (Season 11).

2015 (Season 11).

2016 (Season 12). Creepy dolls are the worst. This one was used in the season 12 episode “The Foundry”.

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12).

2015 (Season 11). Back in season 5 in the episode “I Believe the Children Are Our Future”, SUPERNATURAL introduced Jesse, a child that Castiel called the Antichrist. At one point during the episode he had briefly turned Castiel into a doll.

2015 (Season 11).

2015 (Season 11). There are variations of Ruby’s knife, including a version that retracts so that people can be “stabbed” with it.

2007 (Season 2). The dollhouse from the season 2 episode “Playthings”.

2011 (Season 7). The first time I saw the Impala in person. There have always been multiple versions of the Impalas throughout the years . By 2017 they had three “hero” cars (two of which went to stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles once filming on the show was wrapped), three stunt cars, a few versions that are wrecked, a cut-up car, and one car that was used for parks.

SUPERNATURAL’s picture car coordinator Jeff Budnick said that the cut-up car was used in the episode “Baby”and  had a roof that comes off so they could film down and into the car. “Exact same car [as the other Impalas], but the roof comes off, the front comes off, the back comes off and all of the doors come off. It’s a cutaway car so we can get different camera angles. The floor comes out so we can get a shot up the leg.”

2015 (Season 11). Three of the cars have the rearview mirrors on magnets so they can easily come off for shooting. Some of the windshields are also clear, while others have a blue-tinted band to them. They try to use the clear windshields for the “PMP shots” (more on that later). Some cars also have tinted glass and those are primarily used when they have a double driving the car at night so that the identity of the driver is less noticeable.

2015 (Season 11). Budnick said that all of the cars have air conditioning vents in them, but this car is the only one that actually has running A/C, so the vents are all fake in the other cars.

A behind the scenes tidbit: apparently “Jared [Padalecki]’s hit a few things over the years” when driving the car.

2015 (Season 11). Budnick said that as the years passed, it became more expensive to get parts for the cars they had on hand because the show had made this car so popular. At one point you could get a whole car for $500, but in 2015 people wanted wanted $5,000 or more for it (even if it was in rough shape) because they know about the car’s popularity. By the time 2017 rolled around, people were asking for $10,000 for a rusted out version of the car. He’s spoken with fans who have been restoring their own Impalas and given them tips.

2015 (Season 11). The trunk of the Impala, with the sigil painted on. The weapons aren’t kept in the trunk unless needed as they’re usually stored in the props room.

Another reason they picked the Impala (other than creator Eric Kripke’s oft-quoted desire for a cool car with a big trunk), is the fact that the cameras in the earlier years used to be very big. And so production wanted a big “four-door sedan to get in and out of.” Now they have smaller HD cameras and don’t need such a large car, and yet the car has become iconic.

2015 (Season 11). “Hero #1” Impala has a 502 big block engine with 550 horsepower, while the rest of them have “small block” motors. For example, Hero #3 is not a high-performance car, but it runs fine.

2016 (Season 12). This is the Impala inside the studio where they typically film many “drive and talk” scenes with the brothers (more on that in the next slide). They bought this main car in season 4 with 12,000 miles and now it only has about 17,000 miles. It used to be blue with blue interior, but they painted it all black.

2017 (Season 13). “When you see our guys driving down the road at night, they’re right here. Every single time. This is called the ‘Poor Man’s Process’,” Wanek said. “Our director of photograph Serge [Ladouceur] has developed this system along with our grips and our lighting [crew] to make these lights flash and pass [the car]. They rock the car and spray a little mist on the wind-screen depending on what the weather was like outside when they shot. This is called the PMP and we use it all the time. I think we do it better than anybody, because I watch the show [and] I know it’s right here and I still buy into it that we’re on the road.”

While the PMP technique works well for night-shoots, the show doesn’t really utilize it for daytime scenes. Some shows do a rear-screen projection technique, where they go out with a van that has cameras all around it, and it shoots a 360 degree view going down a highway, for example. Then they put up screens all around the car and then all the scenes are pieced together on the screen. But Wanek claims that the technique isn’t as effective and doesn’t look as real, so they tend to stay away from doing that. Instead, SUPERNATURAL uses a car with an arm and a camera on it that follows or drives around the Impala, which allows the crew to shoot close-ups and distance shots.

SUPERNATURAL films very few scenes of the car driving down the road for each episode. Wanek said “we had a unit that went out and shot a bunch of [scenes] for like a week. And Phil Sgriccia, one of our producers/directors, took a separate unit and went on all these back roads and did a bunch of stuff with the car passing, at night [and] day, pulling into seedy motels, all this other stuff. So now that is our stock footage. So we implement that every time we can. Because it takes a lot to set up a car driving shot. So by building up this library, we use it until people get sick of it and [then] we do another unit [of shooting].”

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12). Even Baby has to hit her mark.

2012 (Season 8). The wardrobe department is constantly shopping. Most of the clothes that characters wear can be found in stores and need a few modifications. Sometimes costumes are built from the ground up. A lot of the costumes in the warehouse are used on background and day players and those can get reused. Sometimes the background actors will wear their own clothes, but other times they will pull clothes to put on them.

Shows like SUPERNATURAL that have been on for a long time will have a large collection of clothing that it stores, both at the studio and in off-site warehouses. In the warehouse off-site, they store a lot of the uniforms or children’s clothes or the types of clothes they don’t use on a continual basis — like any period costumes.

2015 (Season 11). The clothes buyers got a lot of the flannel shirts at Levi’s or Mark’s Work Warehouse. They dressed Dean in more solid colors and strive not to have the brothers wear the same types of patterns. Sam, meanwhile, wore more cowboy type shirts. The buyers would purchase about 7-9 of the same shirt in a few different sizes when they went shopping. They often found the perfect shirt but couldn’t buy multiple pieces as they may not be available. There are a few shirts where they had only 1-2 copies, so they would appear in quick little scenes where they were less likely to be damaged in some way.

2015 (Season 11).

2015 (Season 11).

2015 (Season 11). This is one of my favourite photos from the wardrobe department – a box of nun’s shoes up top of hooker’s shoes. Only in SUPERNATURAL.

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12).

2016 (Season 12). The wardrobe department kept all of Sam’s and Dean’s clothes up in the front by their offices because they accessed them the most. A few of the brothers’ clothes from past episodes/seasons are considered outdated or retired after a suitable period of time. Every year they “tended to try and get the brothers a new batch of jackets and shirts and things like that. And updated jeans just because they start off with 8 or 9 of one thing and then there’s only 3 left”, costume designer Kerry Weinrauch  said. They had to retire those clothes in the future as well if they run through them because they needed multiples of each piece of clothing for all of the stunts.

2007 (Season 2). Costume sketches in the wardrobe department offices.

2007 (Season 2). Multiples of Sam’s jackets hanging in the wardrobe department.

2007 (Season 2). Jared Padalecki was on set for the filming of the two part season 2 finale “All Hell Breaks Loose”. You can see the “stab wound” in his shirt where Jake stabbed him in the back and killed him.

2012 (Season 8). Castiel’s coat in season 8. While you may think that this character has worn the same outfit since his inception on the show, there’s been subtle differences between his coat over the years.

2012 (Season 8). Sam’s flower shirt has appearances in several episodes, including season 2’s “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things” and “Croatoan”, season 3’s “A Very Supernatural Christmas”, and even several years later in season 7’s “Death’s Door”. All told, it appeared in about 15 episodes of the show.

2012 (Season 8).  Bobby’s weathered jacket and hat.

2007 (Season 2). The script for the season 2 finale, which was being filmed while TheTVAddict was on set.

2007 (Season 2). The crew put “mood boards” on the walls for each episode, giving a sense of the overall aesthetic of the episode.

2007 (Season 2). More mood boards.

2012 (Season 8). Back in the earlier years of the show, SUPERNATURAL had a lot of motel sets. To give the rooms personality, the crew would design a lot of elaborate room dividers. Production designer Jerry Wanek also said that he screens are also “a great way to introduce something because you can shoot through them. So it’s a great way to establish what the room looks like.”

Once they used them for filming, a lot of the dividers found their way into the art department’s production office.

2012 (Season 8). A room divider in the production office featuring beer bottles.

2007 (Season 2). Some “paper dolls” of Sam and Dean behind the scenes in the production offices.

2012 (Season 8). An old poster of Jared and Jensen decorating the walls of the SUPERNATURAL production offices.

2012 (Season 8). The SUPERNATURAL crew had received thousands of postcards from fans over the years and they hung them on the wall of the production offices.

2007 (Season 2). A fan had sent in a series of postcards called “PlasticWinchester Theater”.

2012 (Season 8). A fan designed an absolutely gorgeous chess set for the SUPERNATURAL cast and crew and it was placed in a conference room in the production offices.