All posts by Eric Hart

Useful Sites

Technical Direction Tidbits

I found a new blog on technical direction for the blogroll. Technical Direction Tidbits is written by L. Jean Burch, a project manager at Chicago Scenic Studios. She has been working on this blog for over a year and a half now, so there’s a ton of information to be found. She has a category dedicated to props, but since there’s a lot of overlap between props and scene shops, the other categories are worth exploring too. And last Tuesday’s post was about this blog.

Another post of note is on custom printed fabric. My fiance just ran across this same company, Spoonflower, which will custom print fabric for $18 a yard. She’s been trying to find the perfect tablecloth fabric for our wedding, but has had no luck even after perusing numerous stores in NYC’s Fabric District. If we test this company, I’ll be sure to post the results, as it seems it could be very useful in the right situation.

Showcases

Behind the scenes in a props shop

Today, I’m presenting several magazine articles I’ve found which are available online. These give a nice, in-depth look at working props shops around the world.

Prop Art: Theater veteran and students star behind the scenes

From the Winter 2005 edition of Ohio Today. This article takes a look at the props shop of Ohio University, where I attended graduate school for a period.

By Hand

A look at Hunter Spence, who teaches props at Yale University.

All Hail the Backstage crew

A look at the backstage crew of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, with a nice section on Paul James Martin, the props master.

Little London Prop Shop Turns Ideas Into Art

An in-depth look at MDM Props, a London-based props shop which has branched out into fabrication for art installations.

Has your prop shop been featured in a magazine or website? Do you post photographs of your prop shop online? Let me know, I’d love to feature them here.

Useful Sites

Life of a Prop Builder

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A chair I built for the opera, "Tea"
A chair I built for the opera, "Tea"

Two posts I wanted to mention from this weekend. First off:

The great Toolmonger blog has featured one of my props. I’ve been following Toolmonger for awhile; it’s updated daily with posts about tools: new tools, cheap tools, how to use tools. Pretty much anything you would want to know about tools. I’ve been meaning to add it to my blogroll on this site, so this is as good a time as any.

Second, the Houston Ballet has a blog. On Friday, they wrote about making props for Marie. It has some good photographs showing the techniques they used to make a lot of the fake food.

Features

Using Flickr for Visual Research

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Flickr, if you don’t already know, allows people to share photographs. It’s a massive website, and you can easily get lost. I’ve broken it down to help you navigate around.

  • The Commons. The Commons is a place where organizations can post their massive image libraries. Some organizations include The Library of Congress, The Smithsonian, and the New York Public Library. Most of the images are documentary, so it is a good source for primary research into historical time periods. The organizations do a fair job of organizing their images, making specific pictures easy to find. Another great thing about the Commons is that many of the photographs are in the Public Domain (check each one to make sure), allowing you to use the image itself in a show without a license.
  • Places and Map. If you need photographs of a certain place, you can use these to find (usually contemporary) pictures taken there.
  • Groups. Users on Flickr can create their own groups, where they post pictures related to whatever the theme of the group is. Some groups are devoted to specific subjects; for example, you can find a group for vintage kitchen items, medieval combat, or battlefields. It’s not just for photographs; you can find vintage illustration, vintage cigarette ads, or maps and charts.
  • Tags. Flickr users can add keywords, or “tags” to their pictures to make searching for them easier. For instance, you can see all photographs tagged with “furniture“. This gives a lot of results, but you can further revise your search by looking at “clusters“, which are common groupings of related tags. For instance, furniture is clustered with “vintage, antique, old“.
  • Search. When all else fails, there’s good old-fashioned search. You can search through tags or descriptions. This is also where you can search for multiple tags, or search for a photos where one word appears and another doesn’t.
Resources

The Properties Directors Handbook

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Anna Warren just pointed me to this incredible resource:

The Properties Directors Handbook: Props for the Theater, written by Sandra J. Strawn.

There’s a lot of information here. It’s more like a book than a website. Everything you wanted to know to get started as a properties director is here. It’s also one of the most up-to-date resources on props, and it’s extensively illustrated as well. She includes photographs from a number of professional theatres across the country, such as Actors Theatre of Louisville, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, and the Seattle Repertory Theatre.

It’s so good, I’ve added it as a permanent link on the sidebar.