Chip Bags in TV and Movies

What’s wrong with this scene?

What do you notice that’s off? Ignore the fact that it’s an obvious homage to Lay’s because that’s part of the joke.

It’s the sounds that the bag is making as the character touches and moves the back around. It sounds damp, paper-y, and soft rather than the harsh, bright, and loud crinkling sound you usually expect from a plastic bag of chips.

This tiny detail always bothered me when I first saw it, enough to distract me from the joke of the scene (old guy makes online food review video of the most mundane thing possible).

Prop chip bags

The reason the bag is weird because it’s not an actual chip bag, nor is it made of the material of actual chip bags. It’s not an extremely thin plastic, it’s some kind of vinyl material.

To summarize: actual chip bags (or prop chip bags that would be made out of the same material) are far too noisy and they make it almost impossible to cleanly record dialogue. So movies use this prop bag made out of vinyl that is much quieter.

Also, the brand “Let’s” that Scott shows just so happens to be the exact same brand used in the Community scene.

Internet comedy group Dropout (f.k.a. CollegeHumor) has another recurring fake brand called Chompsky’s show up in their videoes.

This prop bag sounds much more realistic to me.

A call to action

I know this is an incredibly small detail but I notice the sound of bags a lot when I watch TV even though I don’t work in moviemaking.

I do have one burning question though:

Is this a prop bag?

At 0:05-0:10 of this TikTok video the character is ruffling through a paper bag from a fast food restaurant.

Personally, the bag sounds a bit too damp and quiet compared to my experience with fast food paper bags.

It could be that the bag is a prop, or that the sounds of the bag crinkling were mixed out of the scene in post, or the bag could just be really damp and oily (I know from experience that a crisp McDonald’s paper bag is much louder than a greasy Five Guys paper bag).

What do you think? Do you work in the movie industry? Do you work in sound design or set design? Did you choose the prop bag for the set of that 9-1-1 episode? If yes to any of these, and you just so happen to be reading this blog post, please let me know what was up. I would really like to know what’s up with that bag.