Creating truly convincing fake IDs for film and TV requires an obsessive attention to detail — and things can get thorny with the law.

We visited Ross MacDonald, a graphic prop artist in Connecticut, and The Hand Prop Room, a prop house in Los Angeles, to find out what it takes to forge realistic ID cards and documents for fictional characters. They break down the ins and outs of creating authentic-looking IDs for movies and TV shows set in every era. Plus, they walk us through some of the legal issues that this work brings up and explain how they avoid running into trouble with the law.