Tag Archives: Star Wars

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Everybody’s Propping for the Weekend

First up is my latest article in Stage Directions magazine. I talked with a number of props masters about creative ways to stretch your props budget. The result is “Creating Relationships to Create Props.”

If you can find twenty minutes today, I definitely recommend this video. TechBuilder, a 17-year old from the Philippines, builds a life-size working BB-8 droid from materials he found at the hardware store. It’s all paper-mache, Styrofoam and wood cut by hand. If he needs a tool but can’t afford it, he makes one. He uses roll-on deodorant for ball bearings. The results are absolutely stunning.

Dave Lowe has this fantastically easy but incredibly effective technique for painting faux chipped paint rusted metal. Apocalyptic props, here I come!

Ugh, another actor dead from props. This time, it’s a Japanese actor who was stabbed with a samurai sword during rehearsal. So far, they have not said whether the sword was real or a prop, and whether they think it was an accident or murder, so I don’t really have much to say about the incident. Depending on what we find out, my advice would either be A) Don’t give actors real swords without a fight choreographer present, or B) Don’t hire murderers.

Finally, take a look at some of the props Alton Brown has used over at the Food Network. Somewhere, there’s a prop maker having the time of their life.

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End of the Week Links

American Theatre has this week’s “must read” article on jobs in technical theatre. They look at where new technicians get their training and interview a number of people working in theatre to see how they got their start. The interviewees come from a range of different departments, like lighting, sound and costumes. No props people appear in the article; probably because we were all too busy to give an interview.

The Abbey Theatre has a video up where Eimer Murphy talks about the vintage working dentist’s chair that appears in their current production of You Never Can Tell.

Propnomicon found this great video on aging glass bottles. It’s a lot better than giving your actors actual antique bottles that they have to drink out of.

Take a tour through the prop warehouse of the Food Network. In the basement of NYC’s Chelsea Market, Wendy Waxman stores thousands of vintage items which appear on the various shows and specials of this TV station. I bet a lot of my readers wish they could spend every day finding and buying quirky kitchen items.

Finally, this is short but interesting. The actor who originally played Darth Vader (David Prowse, not James Earl Jones) posted a photo of the original Vader mask that burned at the end of Return of the Jedi and compared it to the prop that Kylo Ren holds in The Force Awakens. Since the original was made of fiberglass, it turned a little “hairy”, while the prop in the new film looks more “melty”.

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Snow Day Links

Did you see my AMA this week on Reddit? A lot of good questions were asked, and I hope I gave decent answers to all of them.

I’m not the only one starting to use fun foam for everything. Propnomicon has this great video from Evil Ted on heat forming foam for various effects. He shows you not only how to shape and bend it, but also how to add indented details.

This is from a year ago, but the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art has a video showing the inside of their prop department where Deryk Cropper teaches the next generation of UK prop builders.

How many Millennium Falcons have there been? Cinefex looks at the history of Star Wars and talks about all the various physical models of this iconic spaceship, from tiny coin-sized miniatures up to full-size set pieces. It’s a little sad to hear that the full-size version created for the original trilogy was burned at the end of filming.

Ed Lebetkin’s antique tool shop in Pittsboro supplied all the period-appropriate tools for the new film The Revenant. The shop is right above Roy Underhill’s Woodwright’s Shop and is just down the road from me. I got to visit the place a few years ago and wrote about it on this very blog. The last photograph and paragraph talk about Lebetkin’s shop.

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Props a’Plenty

Hi everyone. I am doing a Reddit AMA this Monday on the Tech Theatre subreddit. So head on over and ask me anything you want about working in props or writing books and such. You’ll be able to post questions all day, and then from 7-9pm (EST) I’ll actually be answering them.

The BBC shows us how the Old Vic used to make thunder back in the eighteenth century. It’s very good, isn’t it?

NY1 heads north of New York City to see how Hudson Scenic Studio builds sets for Broadway. I went up there a few years back, and it really is an impressive facility.

Everybody’s talking about that bread in Star Wars: The Force Awakens; it turns out, it wasn’t CGI. In a new video, Neal Scanlan reveals how they made the trick work. They don’t have any behind-the-scenes video of the setup, but he gives a good enough description that you may be able to make one yourself.

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Props is Tops

American Theatre has highlighted 6 Theatre Workers You Should Know, and one of them is props designer Noah Mease. Yay Props!

Brandon Alinger at Prop Store has a fantastic history on the making of the Dewback creatures from the original Star Wars film. Some of the photographs detailing their fabrication are being shown here for the first time.

This link is almost ten years old, but I just found it, and it’s a good one. The forums at RC Groups have a ton of information on working with foam in terms of sculpting, gluing and coating. This thread has collected dozens of the most useful sites in one place.

The Stan Winston School had a Halloween Costume Contest. Check out the photographs of the winner and several runner ups. They will convince you that your homemade Halloween costume is shameful and you should just give up forever.

Make Magazine has a quick tutorial on making molds for jewelry. It shows how to make molds out of vulcanized rubber, which is not a process you see much in prop shops.