LOS ANGELES — No, it's not a scene from the latest Star Wars film, even though it features men dressed in welding masks with reflective suits pouring 2,000 degree molten bronze. What are they doing? Prepping for a different kind of 'star wars': the 2020 SAG Awards. 

“Pretty excited to see it goes through our hands into the hands of for instance Sophia Vergara,” American Fine Arts Foundry manager Angel Mesa said.

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Mesa is talking about the making of “The Actor” Screen Actors Guild statuettes. He's been at the foundry for 20 years. It’s his job to make sure all goes well so there’s perfect statuettes come SAG Awards Sunday.

His team was first told to make 45 – but Mesa said that number always goes up closer to show time. It varies every year depending on the size of the nominates ensembles. 

“It takes about eight weeks to produce one statue," said Mesa. "We start with molds, then we create a positive copy, a wax that comes from the mold, then this wax gets treated with ceramic material that’s actually going to hold the molten bronze." 

All in all, there’s about 10 steps and 12 pairs of hands involved…a modern version of what Mesa calls "the lost wax process," that happened thousands of years ago. 

Outside the foundry, it’s time to fill the actors with bronze. It’s a sight to behold. 

The only thing more fascinating perhaps is to think whose hands and which mantel they’ll end up on. 

We'll just have to wait until Sunday to find out . . .