Tag Archives: objects

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Midsummer Prop Dreams

An illustrated guide to the ‘Hamilton’ stage – David Korins takes us on a tour of the set for Hamilton and shares all the tips and secrets that make it work.

How Heisler Became TV’s Most Popular Fake Beer - Studio Graphics, the in-house graphics team at Independent Studio Services, offers a number of fake brands for sale and rent. Since the 1990s, “Heisler” has become one of their most popular brands, and has appeared in more TV shows and films than you can count.

A Janitor Preserves the Seized Belongings of Migrants – Tom Kiefer is a Customs and Border Protection janitor, and several years ago he began saving the confiscated items from migrants at the Mexico border and arranging them into a beautiful series of photos. Props is all about using objects to tell a story about people, and these objects help tell a story about a people that are often forgotten or politicized for reprehensible reasons.

Making Your Own D&D Miniatures – Make Magazine has collected a few videos showing how to make your own miniature figurines and sculptures for playing the game “Dungeons and Dragons.”

What Robert Downey Jr does before each Avengers movie – and hidden secrets behind Marvel’s props – Russell Bobbitt, the head of props for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, continues to be in the news with this latest interview. Find out more about these iconic props from the ubiquitous comic book films, such as how he had a real blacksmith craft an Infinity Gauntlet for Josh Brolin to wear during production.

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Friday Night Sites

The weekend is upon us again. It’s a holiday weekend; for those of us in the theatre, that means we have to go to work despite all the stores and banks being closed. It is also the unofficial end of summer. But don’t worry; I have some fun links below!

Curtains without Borders is a fascinating-looking project. It aims to record and restore all those hand painted theatre curtains found in town halls, grange halls, theaters and opera houses. It is mostly preserving those painted between 1890 through 1940. The site itself has some photographs (albeit of a small size) from across the country showcasing these valuable pieces of our theatrical history.

The San Francisco Gate has an article about Lori Harrison, the prop master at the San Francisco Opera. Lori gave us a tour of the opera back in 2010 when SPAM held its conference out there.

LA Weekly has a short blog asking “what do you do when your gun doesn’t go off onstage?” Most prop masters know to incorporate backup plans whenever dealing with firing blanks on stage, but if you don’t, this article is a good reminder that you should.

The National Park Service just completed a huge project. Thousands of images from their collections across the country are searchable and viewable online. These objects and specimens give a wide range of information from America’s history and are great for research.

Here are some pretty cool vintage ammo boxes. Unfortunately, none of the images are dated, but the enterprising prop master might be able to use them for further research. And while we’re at it, the whole Accidental Mysteries blog where this came from is filled with interesting vintage stuff and historic oddities.

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Sites Unseen

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I’ve cobbled together some good links this week. Before we get to that, I wanted to mention that I will be at USITT in Charlotte, NC, this year.

From now until April 25, 2011, Rose Brand is running a contest called “How did YOU do it?” Submit a photo or video along with a detailed description of some theatrical wizardry or artistry you pulled off, and if it’s good enough, they will feature it… on their blog. Also $50.

This has already been making the rounds, but if you haven’t seen it yet, NPR’s Morning Edition had a story called Objectively Speaking, It’s All About The Prop Master. It talks about what a Hollywood film prop master’s job is like; you can check out photographs at the site, or listen to the story that played on the radio.

A Collection a Day is a daily photograph of related objects grouped together.

A collection of globes
A collection of globes

The American Package Museum (via S*P*A*M) is a fantastic collection of images of packaging through history. They do not list the years the various packages were in use, but they include size and scale references.

Here’s an interesting rant over at the Full Chisel Blog: Please Do Not use modern glue to repair old furniture. It ties into one of my own rants about how chairs were built to come loose over time, because the alternative is for them to break. The author rails against all modern glues, but polyurethane glue gets the brunt of his complaints (that’s what Gorilla Glue is). I’ve never used hide glue before, though I’m tempted after reading this. If you really, really do not want to set up pots of boiling water in your shop, the article points you to some modern alternatives of “hide glue in a bottle”.

News

When Irish props are smiling

The Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, first premiered The Plough and the Stars back in 1926. They’ve been producing it fairly regularly since then, and some of the props have been along for the ride. “Ploughing history into every production” by Sara Keating in the Irish Times is a great article about the pedigree of some of these props.

The ghosts of long-dead actors sit in chairs that are still recycled between productions, while the shadow of other plays hover above an original Victorian pram that has been used at the Abbey since its very first years. Such objects accrue stories in the same way that cities or buildings or people do. They are a palimpsest of many different lives and different uses.

They carry legends that are usually lost as actors and artists pass on: nobody thinks to write them down.

In the article, Ms. Keating interviews archivist Mairéad Delaney, prop master Stephen Molloy and prop maker Eimear Murphy. They explore the histories of some of these objects, such as Uncle Peter’s Sword, the Tricolor, Mollser’s Coffin, Bessie Burgess’ Shawl, and Mrs. Gogan’s Pram. The aforementioned pram had indeed been used in every production since 1926, and is over a hundred years old by this point.

The Abbey also possesses the original prompt script for the play, filled with notes and scribblings of everyone including Seán O’Casey, the author. All of these objects are remarkable in their own right, but even more so because they survived the Abbey Theatre burning down in 1951 and being completely rebuilt.

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Friday Box of Links

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Here are some links I’m sharing with you on this glorious Friday:

  • Time Out New York has a slideshow on the set of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which just opened here at the Public Theatre. Check out all the work that Jay, Meredith and I did with Donyale Werle and her assistants to transform the theater.
  • Stolloween is a site with an impressive array of Halloween props made entirely out of papier-mâché. It also has tutorials and process photos.
  • Courtesy of Jesse Gaffney is this article about building fewer cages and dropping more keys. Basically it sums up (much more eloquently) a lot of the reasons why I started this blog; by sharing what I do, what I know, and what I learn, I hope to help everyone reach the next level of skill so we can all create better work.
  • LUNA Commons are a collection of hundreds of thousands of historical images and items from institutions and universities from around the world. If you need a reference image of an “I Like Taft” necktie or a seventeenth-century map of the world, you can find it here.