Tag Archives: rental

Useful Sites

Five Fun Friday Features

First up, California Sunday Magazine has a fantastic tour of one of Hollywood’s largest prop houses, ISS. Gregg Bilson Jr., the owner, talks about the million or so items in all the different departments of this massive rental and manufacturing facility.

Also in California Sunday Magazine is this great article on Phil Tippett, one of the masters of creature effects, who is currently working on an old-school monster movie by hand. Tippett has worked on creatures in Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers, Robocop, and many more. He hand-crafts his own film as a way to escape the monotony of digital effects and return to his roots.

AboutFace Magazine has an article on Portland’s prop master, Tim Oakley. Oakley has worked on projects such as Grimm, The Dark Knight Rises, Jurassic World, and many more.

Propnomicon points us to this video by Super Sculpey, showing how to use Sculpey to sculpt monster men. In this twelve minute video, Jake Corrick shows his technique for building an armature, roughing out the form, adding details and finishing.

Finally, Make has another round of six “now why didn’t I think of that” shop tips. Some of them I use regularly and find useful. Others, like the plastic friction welding, I’ve never heard of and can’t wait to try.

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Links for the Weekend

How do you cut open a deer carcass and pull out a bleeding heart every night on stage? Wall Street Journal has a short but interesting article on how Eric Stewart, the head of props  for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, does just that. Remember to keep your fake hearts wrapped in wax paper in between performances.

I used to watch the show Haven, but was unaware it was still running. But “Revisiting Haven” has a new interview with props master Jason Shurko up. If you can get the plug-in to work, it’s a fascinating look at what it takes to get all the weird and wonderful props featured on the show.

Gizmodo has a great article and video taking us inside the fiery workshop of a 21st century swordmaker. He’s not making stage combat weapons, but it is still really cool seeing an intricate weapon take shape from just a few lumps of nondescript steel.

Tested takes their video camera into the jAdis prop rental shop. This Santa Monica business specializes in weird science and medical props and forgotten technology. If you’re making a movie that needs a Hemodimagnometer, this is where you go. Be sure to check out their website as well for some great pictures and more news stories about their history.

Famed monster maker Rick Baker is putting his stuff for auction later in May. Check out the catalog at Prop Store’s website for the full range of all the items they have. You may not be interested in buying and collecting these items, but these auction catalogs always have great photographs and descriptions of the items, which serve almost like a history of how props and animatronics were constructed. This one has molds, mechanisms, masks and more from shows like An American Werewolf in London, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Harry and the Hendersons, and Gremlins 2.

Showcases

History for Hire’s Prop Making Workshop

Here is a look at History for Hire, a large prop rental and fabrication shop in LA. The video below takes us through part of their fabrication shop, with the added bonus of showing some of the pieces they were working on for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

They have a number of other episodes showing more of History for Hire’s warehouse; I’ve arranged them into a playlist so you can watch them all in order if you like.

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Friday Night Links

Tomorrow, August 17th, I will be exhibiting some props at the Burlington Mini Maker Faire in North Carolina. I wrote up some more details about it a few days ago. There’s going to be Stormtroopers, robots and even a space launch. That’s right, they are going to launch a balloon into (near) space from the mall parking lot. I never thought I would live to see the day I could type the previous sentence.

The Library of Congress has a massive collection of digital images and photographs from throughout US history. It is an incredible resource for finding or creating specific paper props or for general research. I use their newspaper collection quite a bit.

I’ve linked to a few of blacksmith Tony Swatton’s videos in the past; he has a new one up where he creates Link’s Master Sword from the Legend of Zelda series. The result is an amazingly accurate replica of a sword which exists only in a video game, built out of the materials which a real life sword would be made from. It is far more intense than the Master Sword I created a few months ago, but then again, I don’t have a whole team of specialized metal artisans working in my shop.

Here is an article on Patrick Drone, the props master at the University of Michigan. In recent years, he has begun working at Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village, where he maintains a fleet of early Model T and Model A vehicles. He says the work is not unlike that of a props shop.

The guys at Tested recently visited The Hand Prop Room in Los Angeles to tour through their 1,000,000+ props. I often wish I lived close by to a props rental house that contained everything; then again, I probably don’t have the budget for that. I guess I’ll have to make my own.

Showcases

Props for Hollywood Props

Here is a short piece from CBS about History for Hire, the famous North Hollywood prop rental house. It deals specifically with their work on the film The Artist. It’s a bit dumbed down for a non-props person audience, but it’s still a nice look into History for Hire’s stock.

Props to Hollywood Props

Update: Sorry, I didn’t realize the video wouldn’t appear in this post; you have to follow the link to watch it. The horror!