Zip Ties

Low cost and low weight are two of my goals, but I hate building a costume which has a chance of breaking unexpectedly. Styrofoam is cheap and light, but it resists attachment. You can't glue stuff to it, and you can't screw stuff to it. Pretty much my only option was to sandwich it between two other, more substantial materials.

Nylon zip ties were my solution to securely attach the lens to the camera body and support tube.
I'd also need to attach the soft heads behind the cameras, but I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.

Styrofoam also resists paint, so I planned to wrap the bodies with black electrical tape. This ended up looking kind of crappy.

At Party Time, I tried to figure out how I would attach faces to the cameras. Plastic masks like this one were my fall-back option.

My lens tubes were too thin and too smooth, so I fitted them out with some grip liner from the dollar store.

Painted black, it looked exactly like the grip from a telephoto lens. Painted silver, it became the lightest softest chainmail you've ever seen.

I also used this opportunity to buy some Metal FX contact paper (shelf liner). Meaghan introduced me to this stuff on her Daft Punk costume. It looks exactly like brushed steel, but its as light as waxed paper.

Cutting thin plastic sheet for my lenses.

The lenses stacking up. I was happy with the variety. I felt like I was missing the stereotypical gigantic white telephoto lens, but I think those are used more for the long-distance secret beach type paparazzi.

Let me know if you need a fake photographer at your wedding.

I thought these toy magnifying glasses would add to the look of the cameras, but they were probably a bad idea.

The flash units from disposable cameras are the heart of the paparazzi costume. Back in the early 00s, people used to buy and use the film in these cameras to take photographs.

When the film is developed, the empty shells hold all the electronics needed to make an unlimited flash machine. There is a little circuit board, a battery holder, a big capacitor, and a switch. I don't know exactly how it works.