A particular kind of Hollywood magic happens when audiences become obsessed with a prop.
This brand of magic, however, renders the person behind the prop invisible, leaving only the work behind. As props are first immortalized, then fetishized, and ultimately merchandised, the artisans behind them sink into oblivion.
Not anymore, though. That’s something the Property Masters Guild and its president, Jeffrey Johnson, are starting to change.
The guild, which has about 320 international members and has been around for roughly five years, has had a particularly big year. The PMG is now included in the Television Academy, has established its own category on IMDb, and continues to push for greater recognition from the major industry organizations. Not to mention the MacGuffins, the guild’s own awards, which celebrate the people responsible for the objects that help make movies and television work. (Full disclosure: Crafty is a proud sponsor of the 2026 MacGuffin Awards.)
The timing of the MacGuffins can be, as Johnson delicately puts it, complicated.
“The awards calendar is based around the Emmys,” he says. “We have to find a venue when people are available. It’s a complicated matrix that we go through every year.” That’s why projects like Weapons and Frankenstein (what, them again?!) are in the running when the MacGuffin is handed out at the Paramount Theater on September 12.
But aligning with awards season has a larger purpose: getting studios and productions to recognize prop masters as part of their awards campaigns. The guild’s inclusion in the Television Academy is an even bigger step towards that, one that a team of volunteers spent two years working for. For Johnson, the fight for recognition goes back even further.
While working on Pushing Daisies, he was interviewed for Emmy Magazine. Thrilled to be featured, he couldn’t ignore the obvious irony: “I can’t even go to the ceremony,” he says. “That’s kind of when I thought something needs to happen, because so much of the work on screen that’s celebrated and toys are made of? That comes from property persons.”
There is also a generational shift happening within the profession. Johnson says prop masters have traditionally been comfortable working behind the scenes and letting the work speak for itself. But a younger generation is increasingly willing to speak out for their credit. (Or to deny credit, as was the case with Luke Cull, who spoke out about that bedside clock on Obsession and why it wasn’t props’ fault.)
“We’re the last person standing next to an actor when we film,” Johnson says. “If you watch dailies, it’s usually the prop person standing there and steps out.” And then, somehow, they disappear.
Johnson describes the job as “the connective tissue between the script, the actors, the directors, the producers.” Everything an actor carries, holds, eats, or interacts with falls into the world of props. That means researching, renting, purchasing, creating, and maintaining objects—and, frequently, teaching actors how to use them.
“I’ve taught actors how to be architects,” he says. “I’ve taught them how to be doctors, I’ve taught them how to be carpenters, I’ve taught them how to be plumbers.”
He once taught Kim Kardashian how to get underneath a sink and use a plumbing tool to disassemble a drain.
“If we can’t do it, we find someone who does,” Johnson says. “It’s our goal to make them look proficient on screen, and it’s our goal to make the story resonate without obstacles for an audience.”
The job itself encompasses far more than most people realize. Sunglasses are props. Wedding rings and engagement rings? Props. Even the directors’ chairs on set fall under the prop team's purview.
“I have 40 of them, I think,” Johnson says of the chairs, in varying heights and configurations. “Everybody gets their name, and that’s a thing every day: ‘Who’s working, who’s at Video Village?’”
License plates can fall into the department’s orbit, too. Picture cars are another area where responsibilities can overlap with transportation. The precise boundaries can be as peculiar as the objects themselves.
“There’s a lot of weird things we deal with on a daily basis,” Johnson says. And one of the things that makes the day-to-day doable is running the risk of extinction: the prop houses. Their decline across Los Angeles is something the guild is watching closely. Places like History for Hire, ISS Props, Hand Prop Room, and Target Props aren’t just vendors but essential partners.
“I would not have a career, I would not have this house, I probably wouldn’t have children if there weren’t prop houses,” Johnson says.
But even as the guild advocates for itself and its vendors, it also seeks to support its members through various initiatives and programs, including Credit Roll, which provides funding to help people in the industry access mental health support. There are education and safety initiatives, too, including firearms training developed with Contract Services and IATSE Local 44, aimed at creating more unified safety practices around firearms on set.
And then there’s the continuing fight for something that sounds incredibly basic: getting prop masters properly credited.
Johnson says the guild spent a year and a half working with IMDb to establish a Property Masters category. (All those executive producer vanity credits have been there for years, of course.) All of this matters because the history of film is full of objects that became more famous than the people who put them on screen. That lightsaber at Comic-Con? It’s a prop. The Maltese Falcon is a prop. Rosebud, Wilson the Volleyball, the Burn Book, the Christmas Story leg lamp… all props.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But even so, for film and TV, someone had to research it and put it in the actor’s hand. And they deserve the credit.