Tag Archives: Predator

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All Props Day

My latest magazine article is out. In “Printing a Set“, I talked with several set designers who are using 3D printing technology as part of their process.

3D Printed Furniture
3D Printed Furniture

Here’s an interesting story. Some soldiers in Afghanistan were having trouble carrying and reloading ammo for the new guns they were issued. To improvise a solution, they were inspired by a prop which Jesse Ventura used in the film Predator, and set out to recreate it. It worked.

The title of this article says it all: Dexter’s Prop Master Tells How He Made the Show’s Most Gruesome Set Pieces. It is fairly gruesome, so I caution clicking through if you do not want to read about severed body parts and other macabre details.

Here is a local news article on Karl Luthin, the owner of KEL Equine Productions, an Illinois-based company which has provided historically-accurate equine props, horse wranglers and set dressing to the film industry for years. His latest work will be seen in the upcoming Lincoln film by Steven Spielberg. You have probably seen his props in films such as “Glory,” “The Patriot” or “The Last of the Mohicans“. Check out his webpage too, for photographs of many of the items he has.

You can find pictures of early variations of the game Monopoly (known as “Landlord’s Game”) as well as rules and other historical facts here. There are over a dozen variations spanning from 1903 to 1939.

Finally, I like this set of behind-the-scenes photographs from the original Alien film. It’s just a guy chilling in a monster costume, whatever.

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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?).