Tag Archives: magazine

Useful Sites

Friday’s Rehearsal Report

Through some bizarre set of circumstances, we find ourselves here at the Public Theater in technical rehearsals for three different productions within the same week. I sometimes wish all the theatre that is made from September to November could be spread out over the entire year. Until then, we keep on moving and keep on working. And we keep on reading this blog, because I have some excellent links for you!

Yours truly has an article in this month’s issue of Stage Directions magazine, in which I detail our shop’s process for creating a break-away wall for The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. So head on over and read it, and maybe leave a comment.

This has to be seen to be believed. Gabriel Suranyi spent 19 years creating a scratch built model of the USS Enterprise naval aircraft carrier. The site has dozens of photographs showing off the astounding level of detail.

Thanks to Seán McArdle for pointing me to this fantastic arrangement of nearly a hundred vintage spraypaint cans.

Paint-Sculpt has a nice little tutorial on sculpting realistic skin texture. They have a few other helpful tutorials as well.

Useful Sites

I did not Desert you

I am currently in the desert of Arizona. It’s time for another S*P*A*M conference, and this year, our hosts are Childsplay Theatre. I will report on all things of interest sometime later next week. For now, enjoy these sites of interest from the comfort of your own home.

Rich Dionne tackles the many methods for making a budget estimate in theatre. I discovered I use a mix of these methods when I deal with the fuzzy world of estimating the costs of props for a show.

In an earlier issue of their magazine, Make published a primer on working with carbon fiber (aka graphite fiber). They have now posted the entire article for free on their website.

This is interesting: why are there no guns in MoMA? It’s a podcast looking at the role of design in guns. What I found fascinating is how the manufacturing of guns is what really began the standardization of parts and machines in the industrial age. Despite their role and importance in modern life, museums of design like MoMA do not display any guns.

The Monster Mummies of Japan is a strange diversion into the history of imaginary taxidermy in Japanese temples.

Finally, who can resist color photographs of Manhattan in the 1940s?

 

Useful Sites

Valentines Day Links

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I just finished up tech this past weekend for Timon of Athens at the Public Theatre; it’s the first show at the Public where I’m officially the “prop master”, so let the crowd go wild. But Eric, you say, didn’t you say you had tech just the other week? Yes, but that was a different show. What, you don’t tech a show every other week? Don’t you care about theatre? Anyways, while I do have some new articles I’ve been working on, there are also some links I’ve been collecting that I’ve been dying to share. Also, Happy Valentines Day to my wonderful wife!

First, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my latest magazine article in this month’s Stage Directions magazine, called “From Agave to Zeus.” It’s about the head I made for The Bacchae in 2009; I’ve certainly written a lot about it on this blog, but the article covers the whole shebang in one compact story, and features some new photographs as well.

Here is a list of “Huntorials“; tutorials on sculpting, casting, armor-making, weapon-making and painting, focused on making replicas from the Predator canon. By that, I mean the movies with the monsters versus future US governors, not the remote-control drones.

On the “Definitive Costume and Propmaking Tutorials” page is a small selection of technique guides, like vacuumforming and weathering; useful, but far from definitive.

The Replica Prop Forum had an interesting and insightful thread discussing more general prop making methods. How do you work, what materials do you use, and why?

On the other side of the pond, The Association of British Theatre Technicians has a FAQ pertaining to props.

And finally, “How to Solve It,” a step-by-step guide on how to solve problems, easily pertainable to all those tricky prop conundrums (you want this to do what?).

Showcases

BAM! Creative Art

Society of Prop Artisan Managers
SPAM logo designed by BAM! Creative

Ah, paper props. They can be fun to do… if you have time. And if you know how to use the software. And you’re able to print them correctly. My friend and colleague Will Griffith recently began a company to do all that. BAM! Creative Art is a one-stop shop for designing and printing any manner of paper props, whether posters, magazines, book jackets, etc. Will is one of the few artisans I’ve seen actually design and print a full-sized newspaper. It looks very promising, especially since he works in theatre and understands the parameters and challenges that other prop people deal with.

Now that I’ve totally pimped his new business on my blog, I think I’ve made up for the fact that I mistakenly cut up his template for Adirondack chairs back in Louisville.

News

It’s Props Month at Stage Directions

This month’s issue of Stage Directions has a special section on props. One of the articles, “Prop Shop Confidential” by Lisa Mulcahy, is about maintaining a props stock. This is a good companion to my own post on which props to keep and which to trash; it features a lot more thoughts on how to organize a prop storage space from a variety of prop masters around the country. It also touches a bit on keeping track of your inventory, as well as how to provide the props for a show.

Looking at that somehow led me to the homepage for the Dramatics magazine. If you’re not familiar with it, it is a magazine aimed toward high school theatre students. They have published a number of technical theatre articles over the years, including a few useful for props people. They have the full text of these articles on their website, but it’s a real bear to use; I hope they won’t mind that I link directly to the PDFs.