Tag Archives: photographs

Useful Sites

TGI Links

This is from a few years ago, but it should provide a lengthy diversion: The New York Stagehand Glossary. It has a lot of terms which should be familiar to many of us, along with many I have heard for the first time (which is understandable, because I only did a bit of work as a stagehand while living in New York City).

Back in the old days, inventors who applied for a patent also had to submit a model of their invention. These models ranged from simple craft attempts to miniature marvels of engineering. The Rothschild Petersen Patent Model Museum houses one of the largest collections of these models, most dating from the 18th and 19th century. You can also view this set of photographs showing more of the models and exhibits.

Prosthesis
Prosthesis by bjepson, on Flickr

Most props people are familiar with Mortite and floral putty for temporarily securing props to shelves, trays and tables. Sometimes, though, you want something a little stronger; you may even need something clear, such as when you need to secure crystal to a glass surface. Quakehold! has a whole bunch of products intended for securing your collectibles and valuables to shelves at home in case of earthquakes. Materials such as Museum Wax, Museum Putty and Museum Gel should keep your props from tipping or falling, and can be cleanly removed when the show is finished.

I like this tutorial for repairing broken plastic items with solvent welding with one caveat: you need to wear the proper gloves and skin protection as well as provide adequate ventilation and respiratory protection.

At the Props Summit a few weeks ago, they mentioned InFlow, an inventory management software program which can be used to catalog and track inventory. It was suggested that it might be useful for maintaining a photographic database of your stock. I haven’t used it, but the website offers a free download (you are limited to 100 items in your database) in case anyone was interested in trying it out.

Useful Sites

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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Monday Morning Link-O-Rama

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“Making the Props Pop” is a nice news article about Bonnie Durben, a props master out in San Diego.

Over on the Stage Manager’s Forum is an interesting game called “Hell in a Handbag“. You take a simple note from a rehearsal report (such as “Maria is holding a book in I, 3.”). The first person comes up with five questions that arise from that seemingly innocuous note (“What color should Maria’s book be? What size? Any particular title or author? Will the audience see the inside? Hardcover or softcover? Used or new? Should it have a pricetag on it? Does it need a bookmark? Ribbon? Tie closure? Does it get thrown? Dropped? Destroyed? Burned?”). After asking those questions, that person adds a new note for the next person to ask questions about. It’s a great look at how even ordinary props can have many considerations which need to be answered for every production.

In case you missed it, hear is a video of Adam Savage (from Mythbusters) talking about why we make at this year’s Makers Faire.

Joseph O. Holmes has taken these interesting photographs of workspaces over a four year period.

News

The Prop Building Guidebook: Full Draft Complete!

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I just reached a major milestone today with the submission of the last of my chapters for The Prop Building Guidebook: For Theatre, Film and TV. I now have the next two months to edit the whole thing and try to turn it into a usable book. Luckily, I’ve been receiving a lot of help from my technical editor, Sandy Strawn. She’s the author of the very-helpful Properties Directors Handbook, which is listed over on the side of this website. After August, the whole thing gets proofread and designed (I’ve seen some mock-ups of the interior so far, and it’s going to look great). When everything looks good, my publisher (Focal Press) will send it to the printers, and it should hit bookstores next February, right on schedule.

I know that still feels like a long way off (though for me, it feels like it’s all happening very quickly). As a prelude to what you will find in the book, here is a small sampling of some of the photographs that belong with the chapters I just handed in.

A brush-on mold inside of a mother mold.
A brush-on mold inside of a mother mold.
A dragon on a bookcase
A dragon on a bookcase
MIG welding
MIG welding
Molding a leather mask
Molding a leather mask
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May the Fourth be With You

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This came through the prop managers group this past week (which got it from the stagecraft mailing list). Canadian mail-order catalogs from 1880 to 1975; like historical Sears catalogs, these are useful to see what the average Jane and Joe were buying throughout the last century and a half, making it great for period research.

The Design Observer Group has a semi-regular feature called “Accidental Mysteries”. The most recent installment features photographs and scans of antique measuring and marking tools. Other Accidental Mysteries have interesting things, such as these weekly rail passes from St Louis in the 1940s, and these punk and metal flyers from the 1980s-90s.

Chris Schwartz (of Popular Woodworking and Lost Art Press) is working on an interesting-sounding book on the “furniture of necessity”. Where the furniture of the rich and powerful is well-documented and archived, the furniture of everyday life is difficult to date and keep track of, particularly before the age of photography and mail-order catalogs. He is delving deep into research to come up with the forms of furniture that have remained unchanged for 200 years or more. It sounds like it could be potentially interesting for those prop masters and set designers who need to make period furniture for characters who couldn’t afford Chippendale chairs.

Here are a few interesting snapshots taken behind-the-scenes from the original Batman TV show (1966-68). Not much information on their provenance, but still pretty fascinating.

This site has a large number of videos, such as several different “documentaries” on various matte and miniature artists who have worked on films like Superman, Dark Crystal, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Thief of Baghdad, La Fin du Monde, The Third Man, Clash of the Titans, and The Da Vinci Code. It also has video featuring interviews of people who have worked on the FX crews of the Alien movies, and a video talking about restoring the Nostromo (the giant spaceship model) from the original Alien films. The videos are rather long and kind of all over the place; some of them have original 3D animation interspersed within the interviews. I’m not sure where the videos came from, but if you are willing to fight through the odd parts, you can pick up some interesting tidbits from the creators of some of cinema’s best visual effects.