Monthly Archives: December 2012

Useful Sites

Last Links before the End of the World

Happy Winter Solstice, everybody! I will be taking off the next week or so for the holidays. Once the new year rolls around though, I’ll be having some pretty exciting stuff to post in the lead-up to my new book (coming February 26th). Until then, enjoy these links:

Here’s a great story and video about how a prop maker and a woodworker are collaborating on affordable prosthetic hands. Richard Van As, a South African woodworker, lost his fingers in a woodworking accident. He couldn’t afford commercial prosthetics, so he worked with Washington-state prop maker Ivan Owen to build his own prosthetic.

This is a nice little article about the Fulton Theatre scene shop (including the props shop), located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

I recently came across a forum called The Effects Lab. It is meant for special makeup effects, mask making and creature design, and has a fairly active community of people discussing sculpture, animatronics, casting and other skills useful to many types of prop makers.

Wired has an article and first in a series of videos on DIY mold-making; making molds with silicon rubber and casting in plastic resin is commonly used in props shops, and these videos are a pretty straight-forward guide to getting started. Of course, the whole “doing it in your house where you and your kids eat and sleep” is questionable in safety terms.

Here’s a fun and whimsical tale of the tools in a toolbox having an argument. Warning: do not read if you cannot stand puns.

 

Reprints

What Becomes of Stage Scenery, 1903

The following is a portion of an article which first appeared in The New York Times on June 7, 1903.

In the Spring of the year the scenery of plays that have failed in New York in the course of the Winter and the season which draws to a close may be found accumulated in a large storage warehouse far over on the west side of the city, in the locality of Twenty-eighth Street. This has served during many years as the chief mausoleum of the remains of these failures. The expenses of the interment include cartage at $5 a load, handling by the warehouse employes at $2 a load, and storage at $4 a load monthly. The acceptance states that settlement must be made quarterly, and that all goods held in arrears in payment twelve months will be seized and sold at auction. There is also the little bill for insurance which many an owner contracts with the fond hope that something may happen in the fire line before the year’s end.

In addition to this large place of storage there are a couple of rambling old stables on Thirteenth Street, east of First Avenue where much scenery that in the last half dozen years cost a snug fortune reposes in solid stacks awaiting the last judgement. In a small room of a neighboring scene painter are the models on view of the handsome interiors and exteriors piled away. Now and then somebody, harboring the notion of producing a play for trial at a nominal expense, drops in to examine this second-hand stock. Nothing results, however, satisfactory to any one concerned. The scenery representing picturesque mountain retreats and grottoes, on view once in a great spectacle, is a misfit for a domestic drama or a comedy. The nine scenes of a melodrama that sunk $6,500 are also of no use in the play, which requires new features up to date.

Mention should be made of the fact, though, that since the stock companies became more or less prosperous in and around New York, some small opportunity has come in sight to unload the scenery in storage. But such interest as there can be for the general reader in this statement must be stimulated by calling attention to the absurd difference between the cost of the scenery and its selling price. The manager, for instance, of two stock theatres in Brooklyn purchased not very long ago from a well-known player, who has given up being his own manager, five loads of scenery, nearly all new, and representing a cash outlay of almost $4,000, for $75. The cost of transportation across the bridge was $25 additional. There were seven wall-drops included in these loads, any one of which cost more originally than the whole purchase at second hand.

Originally published in The New York Times, June 7, 1903.

Useful Sites

Friday Prop Notes

Tested has quite the in-depth interview with Harrison Krix, one of the top videogame replica prop makers on the Internet these days. They delve into his process for building a prop, his workshop setup, and how he got started. Harrison has also contributed some photographs to my book, if you are interested. By the way, Tested is a website run by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman (of Mythbusters fame), and it has a lot of other cool stuff inside, such as this video showing some models Adam Savage has made for films.

Just look at these color photographs of Paris in 1914. I love the signs and lettering on all the shops.

I love the show Parks and Recreation, not least because Nick Offerman is an honest-to-goodness woodworker. The show also regularly features some fun and memorable props. Entertainment Weekly has talked with prop master Gay Perello about her five favorite props from this year’s episodes. You not only get to see some imaginative props, you also get to hear the challenges involved and the process in arriving at a solution for all of them.

An interesting page came through the Prop Masters list this week. The Museum of American Packaging is a photographic collection of thousands of product packages, mostly from the mid-twentieth century. You can call it “doing research” if you want, but I would look at these pictures even if I didn’t have a show set in this time period.

So you’re doing a show about physicists or mathematicians, and you need a blackboard filled with equations. Do you start making things up? Or do you head over to Alejandro Guijarro’s photographic series of physicist’s blackboards?

How-to

Into the Woods Puppets

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In my last post, I detailed the build of a “Milky-White” puppet for Into the Woods. I made some smaller puppets for that production as well, including two birds and the hen that lays golden eggs.

For the birds, I began experimenting with various ways with how they could be carried and flap their wings. The production team liked one where the bird was held aloft on a pole, and their wings flapped by moving a piece of PVC pipe up and down over the pole. Bamboo lashed with twine created the mechanism, and more twine was used as the “hinge” to connect the wings to the body.

Bird puppet
Bird puppet

I covered the wings with leaves to continue with the concept of using “natural” materials to create the puppets. If you remember from the last post, the goal was not to make realistic animals, but to make items that appeared distinctly hand made from materials one might find in a forest.

Covered in feathers
Covered in feathers

I brainstormed awhile on the hen, trying to come up with a look that was interesting and distinct from the other puppets. The designers had provided me with some research of horse sculptures constructed of driftwood, so I decided to have a go at a driftwood hen.

I began with a full-scale reference sketch of a hen, and began mixing and matching pieces of driftwood until I got an assemblage that looked like a hen. I drilled tiny holes in the pieces so I could wire them together (later reinforcing some of the joints with hot glue).

Driftwood hen
Driftwood hen

The director wanted the hen to be on “wheels” and pushed out with a stick. The stick is later removed and the hen is carried around. I built some rustic-looking wheels, and drilled a hole in the back so a stick could be added and removed. He also got some small eyes glued on.

Hen on wheels
Hen on wheels

After a few rehearsals, the team wanted a hen with some more presence on stage. I added some bright orange raffia along the top, some brown moss along the bottom, and a bright orange leaf for a wattle. I also painted the eye black and the beak yellow to help distinguish the parts a bit better.

The hen that lays the golden egg
The hen that lays the golden egg

Overall, it was a fun challenge to build “puppets”, since I’ve worked with them a lot in the past, but never had the chance to build my own. It was also interesting to work with various materials I’ve never worked with before.