Useful Sites

Friday Props Notes

It’s Friday; enjoy it while you can. For many of us, things are starting to gear back up. School is upon us, new seasons of theatre are beginning as summer stock draws to a close. It’s just a busier time of year all around. So enjoy the following bits from around the web if you get a break:

Here is a newspaper article on Zoe Morsette, who builds specialty props for Broadway (such as Les Miserables and Shrek) and television (including 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live).

This Diablo sculpture is a pretty intense piece made by Jason Babler, the creative director of Make Magazine. He does a tremendous job documenting the various materials and methods he uses to build the various shapes and textures which make up this creature.

“What Tools Do I Need to Start Woodworking” takes a good look at that question, and the answer is useful for any craft, not just woodworking. As the author says:

“The problem is that without experience, a beginner really isn’t able to tell the often-subtle difference between specialized tools. If you get one chisel, one saw, or one plane and put it to work, you’ll begin to understand the relationship between your eyes, brain, hands, sharp steel and wood. When you develop that understanding, the next tool to get becomes obvious.”

To celebrate the release of the first season of Grimm on DVD, NBC has released a short video with prop master Drew Pinniger detailing many of the fantastical props made for the show. Grimm is a fairly imaginative show, and the custom props it features every week are always fun to watch.

How-to

Deer from Shakespeare in the Park

I spent the early part of the summer back in New York City working on the first show for Shakespeare in the Park. As You Like It, directed by Daniel Sullivan and designed by John Lee Beatty, required a dead deer corpse that could be carried around the stage.

Fabric hinges
Attaching the pieces with fabric hinges.

Jay and Sara had already purchased a urethane taxidermy deer form, which was waiting for me when I arrived. I proceeded to chop it apart at the joints and reattach them with fabric hinges (using left-over canvas from the tents we made for last year’s All’s Well That Ends Well).

Creating the spine
Creating the spine with rope and foam.

The spine needed a bit more flexibility. The deer was going to appear on stage as if it had just been shot, and then one actor was going to hoist it over his shoulders and carry it around fireman’s style. I used several pieces of rope to give a semi-flexible span between the front and back half of the deer, while a big piece of upholstery foam was added to help it maintain some shape and volume.

Eric Hart sewing
I am sew good at this.

I also carved the neck out of upholstery foam. I wrapped the foam in fabric, sewed it shut and glued it to the rest of the body.

Attaching the pieces
Attaching and articulating the pieces.

The photograph above shows the deer all jointed and floppy and ready to be covered in fabric. Yes, that is pantyhose on the legs; I added them to give further support to the legs while maintaining full flexibility.

Gluing on the hide
Gluing on the hide.

It took three separate deer hides to completely cover the whole body. I arranged them as best I could around the deer so the fur coloring, direction and length would match the hide of a real deer. Real fur has so many variations throughout, whereas fake fur would just make the whole thing look like a giant stuffed toy. Jay bought me a bottle of “Tear Mender”, which is a latex-based adhesive designed for fabric and leather. As the back of the hide is essentially leather and the body was covered in fabric, the glue made a really strong but flexible connection.

The hooves were also purchased from the taxidermy supplier. I had to drill out the bone a bit on top so I could slide them onto the threaded rod which ran through the urethane foam cast legs.

Head and face
The head and face.

We also had some glass eyes for the head as well as plastic ears from the taxidermy supplier. I patterned some fur over these ears, but they were deemed “too stiff” after the deer’s first rehearsal. Luckily, I just had to reopen the seams and pull the plastic parts out; the fur maintained the shape pretty well on its own.

The deer also got a nice open head wound. We had a separate set of antlers that the actors danced around with, and the scene opened with the antlers already removed. I mixed various colors of acrylic mixed with epoxy to give it a permanent “wet” look.

Raphael and the Deer
Raphael and the Deer.

I had Raphael, one of the other prop artisans, pose while holding the deer. He moved fairly decently, though the joints between the legs and the body were a bit stiff-looking. Some of the transitions between the different hides I pieced together were a bit rough when viewed up close, but on stage under the lights, he looked amazing.

News

I am back

It was quite a busy summer, between Shakespeare in the Park in New York City, the Santa Fe Opera and editing the final manuscript for my book (as well as a brief trip to Italy thrown in there). I will be posting photographs  in the coming weeks of some of the more interesting projects I have completed.

You may have noticed a slight redesign to this blog. I’ve been meaning to update it for awhile, and then the whole thing sort of crashed, so I had to rebuild it from scratch. I hope it’s a little cleaner and more straightforward than previously. I’ll probably be tweaking it as time goes on, but nothing major.

I now have a site up for my book at propbuildingguidebook.com. Don’t get too excited, as there is not too much there at the moment, but it does have the table of contents and the cover. Over the next few months, the team at Focal Press will be proofreading and editing the text as well as laying out all the photos and illustrations in the interior. I should be receiving a mock-up of all that in a few months, and once I check over and approve everything, it will be sent off to the printing presses, which will take another few weeks. If everything stays on schedule, it will be available to purchase next February. I will be filming some companion videos for the book, which may begin to appear on the site in the weeks leading up to the book’s release.

In case you missed it, I also had an article in the August issue of Stage Directions magazine. “Make Your Props Pop” looks at three different props built by the shops at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Trinity Repertory Company and Paper Mâché Monkey. The last one was built for the current Broadway production of Peter and the Starcatcher. Interestingly, this article was originally supposed to run earlier in the Spring, but it was bumped to a later issue because of space restraints. In that time, Peter and the Starcatcher won Tony Awards in all its design categories, so I reworked some of the article to include that.

Useful Sites

Last Post of the Summer

I just wanted to let everyone know that this blog will be going on hiatus until August. I am working on editing my book right now, as well as driving to Santa Fe to work for a few weeks, followed by a quick trip to Italy. I figured this blog could take a break for a few weeks so I can spend as much time on my book as possible; you’ll thank me when it comes out.

So enjoy the following links until then:

The New York Times has an interesting article on prop maker Doug Wright. Wright just finished working on Tom Cruise’s codpiece for Rock of Ages. He works on the weird and completely unique props that pop up in TV and film every now and then.

The Washington Post ran an article about the fake vomit in Signature Theatre’s production of God of Carnage. If you are working on that show, prop master Aly Geisler gives away all her secrets.

Jesse Gaffney adds her two cents to the ongoing debate of whether to call yourself a props designer or a props master.

If you have ever wondered how to prep your wood joints for gluing, here is a pretty definitive answer on the subject. Short answer: the joints should be sanded smooth, but not polished.

Have a good summer, everyone!

Showcases

Costume Armour

This past weekend I made a trip up to Cornwall, NY, to visit Costume Armour. Brian Wolfe, the general manager, happily showed me around the shop, storage areas and all the pieces they have on display. Costume Armour was founded over 50 years ago by Peter and Katherine Feller, and later purchased by theatrical sculptor Nino Novellino in 1976, and has produced pieces for nearly every Broadway show since then.

Knight of the Mirrors from "Man of La Mancha"
Knight of the Mirrors from "Man of La Mancha"

The piece that kind of began Costume Armour is the armor from the original Broadway production of The Man of La Mancha. Before then, armor was either leather, felt or heavy metal. They solved many problems by vacuum forming a suit of armor from newly sculpted molds based off of historical research. Though the suit itself predates the company, Novellino made it while working with Peter Feller on the vacuum forming machines built by Feller to construct the Vatican pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair. Costume Armour still has those machines, and they are part of what makes their company extraordinary. The vacuum tank is over 1000 gallons, and they can produce pieces from sheets of plastic as large as 52″ by 12′-0″.

Helmets
Helmets

The shop was in the midst of a big order for the Disney Jedi Training Academy, Star Wars Weekends and Celebration, which they have been doing since 2004.

Celastic
Celastic

I was interested to learn that the shop still uses Celastic quite a bit for many of their sculptures. The original brand-named Celastic has long ceased being manufactured, though they did have a few rolls stock-piled for those extra-special projects (pictured above). The modern equivalents are a bit thicker, but act the same; the cloth is saturated with acetone, than draped or molded over a form or sculpture, and when the acetone evaporates, you are left with a rigid and rock hard surface. Brian explained that it is unrivaled for making realistically-sculpted drapes and clothes on statues.

So I stand corrected on my earlier article on Celastic, in which I claimed that it is rarely used and that there are less toxic alternatives that can do the same thing. Of course, using it requires the proper safeguards for dealing with large buckets of acetone, but working with most materials in the props shop requires understanding and protecting yourself against any potential hazards and toxins.

Jesus and C-3PO
Jesus and C-3PO

While I saw something cool around every corner, I thought I would point out the above picture. They cast a head based off of a scan and model of the Shroud of Turin, so what you have here is what many believe to be the real head of Jesus. He is, of course, on a shelf next to a C-3PO mask.

See you later!
See you later!

The statue pictured above was produced was was sculpted in foam, molded in silicone and cast in fiberglass . Though larger than me, I could easily pick it up off the ground; most of the weight, in fact, came from the plywood base, and not the statue itself.

Novellino was featured in the American Theatre Wing’s In the Wings series; watch the video to learn more about the company and to see the vacuum forming machines in action.

Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies