Category Archives: Useful Sites

Useful Sites

Link-o-Rama

Make Magazine has a great slideshow on “Ten Tips for Drilling Better Holes“. It is a good reminder that even seemingly simple tasks can have a lot of considerations in achieving a good result. While I would not take anything off the list they present, I would add one: be sure the drill bit will not hit your hand as it exits the other side of the material (or if it slips off).

I saw this over at La Bricoleuse and had to share: it’s a Rit Dye color chart. Choose the color you want, and it will tell you which Rit dye or combination of dyes will give you that color. Now, a lot of other factors go into achieving certain colors on particular fabrics, and Rit is not the best dye for all types of fabrics, but it is readily available at most local stores and easy to work with in a pinch, and this chart is a good starting point for many colors.

I just stumbled on a cool blog called the “Creaturiste’s Labatory”. He has a post on oil clay vs water clay in terms of sculpting, though many of the other posts are useful and interesting as well.

This is pretty cool: The official licensed replicas of props from Doctor Who are being manufactured by the same prop maker who builds them for the show.

Finally, here is a very cool video of Tony Swatton forging one of the swords from the series Game of Thrones. He has a number of videos showing the making of other weapons as well. It’s amazing to see the mix of tools and techniques he uses for hand-forging custom weapons at the pace which the entertainment industry requires. Though he mainly does film, TV and theme parks, I’ve heard his name mentioned in theatrical circles as well.

Useful Sites

Friday’s Link List

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The DIY movement and small, creative businesses are becoming more and more important to the economy as a whole. Many props people either freelance as their own “business”, or run side businesses making things (such as selling things on Etsy). Save Us. Be Creative! takes a look at this growing trend.

On the other side of the coin, traditional theatre work is still worth fighting over. This past week saw the end of a particularly intense strike by IATSE stagehands at the Philadelphia Theatre Company. This article delves into the reasons behind it and why young theatre technicians spent two weeks outside in the cold and snow to protest their concerns. Coincidentally, the play the theatre was putting on was The Mountaintop, which imagines Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last day as he prepares to address a crowd of striking workers. The company could not find any workers to break the strike, so they tried to run it without any technical elements; this included having an actress sit in a folding chair and read the lighting and sound cues (“Thunder and lightning! Crack!”).

In sadder news, this week legendary makeup artist Stuart Freeborn passed away. Though he has worked on films since before World War II, he is most famously known as the man who created Yoda and Chewbacca. The BBC has a good roundup of his life and career, as well as a very in-depth radio interview they did a few months back. The NY Times has a nice slideshow of his Star Wars work, while The Week has a collection of five stories about Stuart that are not made up. If you have the time, here is a video of Stuart himself talking about his work:

Useful Sites

Friday Link-eteria

A fun new blog has appeared from a theatre props artisan: Meanwhile in the Prop Shop… It’s a simple stream of photographs and quotes showing the weird and often surreal scenes that play out in a props shop on a daily basis.

Conan O’Brian has a recurring segment featuring the show’s prop master, Bill Tull. With this Sunday being Super Bowl Sunday, Tull gives us some Budget Super Bowl Party Tips.

Awhile back, I pointed to a page with a few color photographs from Pre-World War I Paris. Here is its bigger cousin, a whole website full of color photography from Paris circa 1914 (give or take a few years).

Two weeks ago, I had a link to a post on Matt Munson’s blog. Munson is also working on converting a Chevy Caprice into a Batmobile, which he calls the “Mattmobile.” Check out all the posts he has, because it is quite the epic build. He has been shooting mini episodes along the way, and is up to 29 as of this writing.

Finally, I dug up this old video about the making of the Stargate from Stargate (the film). It delves into a lot more than just the construction of the Stargate itself; the scale of the sets they built were incredible. It’s not entirely about props, but whatever, I’m a big Stargate fan.

News, Useful Sites

This Week I got a Book

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So the big news this week is that I received my advance copy of The Prop Building Guidebook: For Theatre, Film, and TV.

The Prop Building Guidebook
The Prop Building Guidebook

I cannot wait for people to start reading this. It’s the culmination of several years’ work. It clocks in at around 380 pages, and has photographs, charts, and illustrations on nearly every single page.

But enough about me, let’s talk about what else you can read on the web this week:

The House of von Macramé is a new pop musical running at the Bushwick Starr. It’s about a killer who targets models during Fashion Week. Waldo Warshaw did all the blood effects, delivery systems and splatter choreography, which Erik Piepenburg at the New York Times presents to us in this great article and slideshow called “A Scream. A Splash. Send in the Mops“.

This is actually from a month ago, but the Smithsonian Institute has received production-used costumes and props from the Broadway production of Wicked for display in their National Museum of American History. I think more props belong in a museum.

Everybody knows Google Street View, right? Well they have some special galleries hidden in different places. One very cool one is the inside of Scott’s Hut in Antartica. It’s an exploration hut from 1911 which the cold has preserved perfectly. It makes for some really cool primary research. If that link doesn’t work, or if you want to see what other galleries they have, you can view all their collections.

Useful Sites

Friday Prop Notes

I just finished tech on my first show this year (with opening night tonight), so the links are a bit sparse this week. But all of them are great, so enjoy!

There is a fun article up this week about Jim Bussolati, prop master at Louisiana State University. It also has a wonderful video showing off their storage and shop.

Matt Munson has a great blog post up called Materials, Time and Creativity. He talks about why custom-made props cost so much money. It’s a worthwhile read, whether you are a freelancer or work in a shop.

2StoryProps has quite the extensive post up about building a “Deadmau5 Cheese Head” (a helmet used by a Canadian DJ). There are photographs and videos galore, so it will take some time to get through this one, but it is well worth it.

It is sad, but not too surprising: New York City Opera is liquidating their warehouses. Their collection of props, costumes, lighting and other equipment from over eighty productions are being sold through an online auction until January 30th (though the website isn’t quite ready yet).