Tutorial: Screen grabs when you need them!

Screen grab from DVD of "Something's Gotta Give"
Production Design Jon Hutman; Set Decorating Beth Rubino. c. 2003 Columbia Pictures.

(By the way, if you click the above image, you'll get a larger version and can see the amazing detail. Just look through the windows, past the umbrellas to the beach fence beyond!)

Since I started doing posts on movie set decorating, it's become obvious that many, many people take their personal decorating inspirations from the big and small screen. I receive a lot of emails asking me if I have images of particular items in the various movies I've profiled - from the tile floor or staircase in The Holiday to the artwork in Something's Gotta Give to the stucco walls in Under the Tuscan Sun. The truth is, I mostly rent the movies I've profiled and don't have access to images once I've done my posts. But, I am happy to share how you can capture an image that you're looking for.

The first place I search is the good old internet. I check out what other bloggers have come up with, the Set Decorators Society and Google images. I also pull "screen grabs" from the movie DVD. There are several technologies available to do this. First, let me say that I have a Mac, so I am most familiar with Mac software, but I will include PC information as well.


SnapzPro for Macintosh. Take still images or copy whole scenes from movies playing on your computer's DVD player. Due to copyright issues, many movies are protected and can actually put up walls against taking a screen grab. I've found that if I reduce the DVD window so that my background is visable behind the movie window. Stop the DVD player at your image of choice and click on the desktop so that the DVD player is not selected, but the image still appears on your screen. You can then take a snapshot of the screen. This usually works.

SnagIt and Camtasia for Windows.

Here is a whole page of Google results for "Screen Capture".

Of course, if you have a DVR, grabbing screen shots from the television is pretty easy as well. Well, I think it is - I don't actually have a DVR!

I've also recently found that there is a download add-on for the Firefox browser called Screengrab that let's you create an image from a webpage, or a selected portion of a page. I find this very handy!

A note about copyright - all images from dvd's or websites are copyrighted material. The Fair Use clause (or whatever it's called) allows for personal use of images. If you use an image for public use (such as I do on my blogs) then do your best to attribute the source, the copyright holder and the photographer if there is one. It's only fair to those whose work we admire!