Tag Archives: Roger Christian

First Links After the Eclipse

Star Wars set decorator who ‘cobbled together’ props reflects on film 40 years later – Roger Christian, one of the prop makers and set decorators on the original Star Wars film, takes a look back at how he made some of the most iconic props of the franchise.

Stage Properties student lives the dream behind the scenes – The University of North Carolina School of the Arts blog highlights one of their props students and where she worked over the summer.

The Death Of Local Craftsmanship Is Causing Problems For Costume Designers – Though this article is about costume design, you can see a similar thing happening with props. As more manufacturing moves overseas, we are left with less local craftspeople and shops who can fulfill our needs under the crazy time constraints of our jobs.

Genesis of the Cybermen – Part Six: Designing the new series Cybermen – WhoSFX takes a look at the team who designed the current Cybermen for Doctor Who.  They show how the design went from sketch to model to final product.

Turning Your Garage Into an Intergalactic Weapons Factory, with Prop & Model Maker Bill Doran – The “Busy Creator” podcast interviews Bill Doran, aka Punished Props, who has turned his cosplay and prop-making hobby into a full-fledged business in Seattle.

Proper Reading for Today

George Barris, creator of the 1966 TV version of the Batmobile, passed away this past week. He also built The Munster’s car and worked on the cars of many other shows and films. The LA Times had a great profile on his career a few years back that is worth revisiting today.

Roger Christian talks with Cinefex about his work on Star Wars and Alien. Christian created a lot of the props for Star Wars, such as the first R2-D2 prototype, Han Solo’s blaster, and Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber. On Alien, he built most of the interior of the Nostromo space ship.

Eimer Murphy, prop maker at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, has an article at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s blog on Dublin Protest Graphics. It’s not so much prop-related, but it is about objects used in a performance-type aspect. Plus, I’ve seen so much theatre/film/TV where the protest signs are just way off the mark, so this is good research too.

The League of Professional Theatre Women recently released their newest study of gender breakdown in theatre roles at Off and Off-off Broadway shows over the past five years. The New York Times has a great summary of that study. Men still dominate set, light and sound design positions, as well as directing and writing. They don’t look at props; props (in theatre) have always seemed to have a bit more gender equality than other departments, but it’s hard to say without actually coming up with some numbers.