At a Brooklyn High School, Plenty of Drama Before the Curtain Goes Up – The New York Times takes a backstage look at the Edward R. Murrow High School in Midwood, Brooklyn. They have an absurd amount of students in technical theatre classes working to put on shows with production values that rival many smaller regional theatres. I think my high school had one kid who did tech.
Jay Duckworth: Proptologist, Bear, Philosopher of the Hand – Stage Directions interviews Jay Duckworth, prop master at the Public Theater. While his prop creds are truly remarkable (including the pre-Broadway Hamilton), this interview focuses on what it means for Jay to be an out gay man working in technical theatre.
Peter Jackson’s Movie Prop Collection – It turns out that Peter Jackson, maker of both awesome and horrible movies, has an overwhelmingly extensive collection of props, puppets, and practical effects from films throughout history. Tested and Adam Savage take a look at it in this large photo essay. There’s a video, too, if that’s more your speed.
Happy Halloween – The Home & Family Yard 2016 – Every year, Dave Lowe goes all out to decorate a house for Halloween as part of his job as props master for the Hallmark Channel. Check out pictures of the final result, then browse the earlier entries in his blog where he photographs the process of building all the various elements.
Today’s post is guest written by Jay Duckworth. Last Saturday was the yearly New York City Props Summit, which Jay has been hosting at the Public Theater for the last seven years.
Musings from the Prop Summit
by Jay Duckworth
That very familiar “buzz, buzz” hits my phone: “I’m leaving. Don’t abandon Rebecca, okay?” It’s Sara, the prop shop manager.
“I’ll be down shortly. Thank you for all your help.” The Props Summit started 20 minutes ago but I ran away to the upstairs bathroom because I was getting panicky with social anxiety. I love talking to students; students actually want to hear what you have to say, and they listen to each word. But downstairs were my peers: Broadway prop masters, The Metropolitan Opera, SUNY Purchase, Yale, Emerson, the theater where I first prop mastered, crafts people, Julliard, Rosco, Spaeth, Costume Armor… it was a lot of people. I finally came downstairs, grabbed a juice box and snuck in.
2015 NYC Props Summit
After an hour of wine, beer, and way too much cheese, we went into the Newman theater and took over the first couple rows of seats. I welcomed everyone to the 7th annual Props Summit, and we went around and said who we were and what we did. We usually have speakers, but this was the first year in seven that I was able to take a two week vacation; I apologized that I was so lax this year and asked for volunteers to help with next year’s Summit.
I opened the doors to questions or concerns that the group had. Some of the younger people were worried about getting work once they graduated and Buist Bickley immediately said that if you are good and pleasant to be around, you can get work. Scott Laule, the props master at MTC, interjected with, “You also have to be on time for God’s sake, and at least be a little normal.”
Other people spoke about internships and getting work outside of regular theater. Emily Morrisey, who works at the event company Imagination, said they are looking for crafts people all the time.  It was the same with Spaeth.
Listening to Carrie Mossman
Chad Tiller from Rosco spoke about fire retardants and how to approach situations where people don’t have a great concept of what it means to make something fire-retardant vs fire-proof.
Jen McClure spoke about how encouraging it was to see so many young women out and asked them to push themselves out of their comfort zone and go for jobs that seem well out of their reach, because in the end they may not be. That lead into a brain storming session about resumes and what to include and to be as honest as possible. No one is going to be everything, but be honest about your skills. If you are a good portrait painter, don’t say you are great; you will waste time and give yourself a bad rep. We hit on a few more topics and then adjourned back into the props shop for more wine, beer, and cheese.
Every year it just gets better and better. We meet more people and the prop world becomes a little smaller. Ron DeMarco gathered up his students and former students to take a picture; I wish I had done the same with my former interns. It seems that sometimes I only get to see some of these good folk at the Summit, and the rest of the year we communicate with phone calls and emails. I hope that if you haven’t come out to the Summit, you do next year. I’ll most likely be late to it, but now you know why.
The Creators Project takes a look at Paul Rice and the stunning raven mask he made for True Detective season 2. They show the whole process from concept art to the final piece, which had 15-20 raven feathers per square inch, all individually attached. The article says the mask was made from “silastic”, which is a real material, but I wonder if they meant “Celastic”, which is what it looks like it was constructed from.
About a month ago, I shared a video of the UNC Chapel Hill costume shop and their enviable project of recreating sci-fi costumes for the Museum of Science Fiction. Now, La Bricoleuse has a behind-the-scenes photo-essay of the first project, a flight attendant uniform from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Happy Saturday, everyone. Unforeseen emergencies kept me from posting this yesterday, but have no fear, your props reading list is here:
If you somehow missed this article, Maria Bustillos had a great piece in Bloomberg Business called “How High Def is Changing Your Brain – and Driving the Prop Master Crazy.” It delves into how the increased resolution and clarity of film makes amazing props look like cheap plastic knock-offs. It has a fair bit of prop-making history in it, and some wonderful anecdotes as well (the bit about attaching the leaves from small carrots onto the bodies of larger carrots for a perfect carrot was something every prop master could recognize).
User Ratchet built a Recharger Rifle from Fallout: New Vegas and posted pictures over at the Replica Prop Forum. The process photos do a wonderful job showing how a few simple materials layered up on top of each other can quickly become a complex and interesting prop. The fantastic paint job helps a lot as well.
Finally, I saw this Giant PVC Centipede over at Instructables. It’s the stuff of nightmares, but it’s also interesting some basic hardware store supplies can transform into a fully articulated monstrosity.
Happy first day of May, everyone! I’m going into tech today, so the links will be short but sweet:
Jay Duckworth made 160 candlesticks for Hamilton, the most popular show in the world right now. Read his article in Stage Directions to find out how he did it. Hint: he used his drill press like a lathe. Okay, that’s a bit more than a hint.
Behold! The quickest tutorial on Wonderflex! Demented Cosplay has a video briefly going over the properties of Wonderflex, a plastic sheet that becomes pliable with very little heat, and hardens into place at room temperature.
Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies
