Tag Archives: Star Wars

Useful Sites

Four Fun Friday Links

The Force Awakens Blog has posted photographs of 50 weapons and helmets from Star Wars: The Force Awakens in stunning high-resolution. It would be fun to make some of these in anticipation of the movie’s release (though most theatre chains have banned replica guns from their screenings).

I wrote a review of The Theatrical Firearms Handbook for the latest issue of Theatre Design and Technology. It’s an invaluable book for everything gun-related in theatre and film. If you are ever involved with a firearm on stage, you should own this book.

The New York Times has restored designer’s names to reviews of shows in their paper. This is very good news to anyone who has been following this story. Meanwhile, props people consider it a victory to be listed in the back of the program next to the brand of carpeting used in the lobby.

Eyeballs Studio makes a pretty stunning Dwarven Axe using mostly closed-cell foam and PVC pipe. It is amazing what you can accomplish with such cheap and readily-available materials.

Useful Sites

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.

Useful Sites

End of the Week Link-o-Rama

StarWars.com has a great interview with Bill Hargreaves, one of the prop makers on the original Star Wars trilogy. He talks about how he got the job, how he built many of the props, and what it was like working on the set. His most famous creation was the bounty hunter droid, IG-88, and he has gone on to build props for the Indiana Jones films and many others.

Speaking of interviews with cool people, the Greensboro News & Record talked with me about my work on Deathtrap, which begins performances this Sunday at Triad Stage. “Eric Hart won’t be on stage when “Deathtrap” opens Sunday, but his talents will be seen in every thrill delivered and every goosebump raised.” Aw, shucks.

CineFX has a cool (though very gross) look at the creatures and special effects in The Strain, a TV series based on the novels by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. Don’t read this right after you’ve eaten.

So, this is something I really want to try someday: hydro-dipping. I first started coming across videos of it a few months ago. Now, Make Magazine has collected 12 tutorials on how to hydro-dip. I can try to explain it, but once you see the videos, you’ll know what it’s all about.

Useful Sites

Friday Week in Review

This week, famed illustrator and designer HR Giger passed away. Perhaps best known for his work designing the creatures in Alien, his aesthetic has found its way into numerous sci-fi and horror films, and even theatrical productions. BFI has a great post showing behind-the-scenes photos of Giger working on Alien,  while Creative Review has a good round-up of his conceptual and illustration work.

BBC Culture shares a viewpoint that filmmakers are returning to old-school special effects and real miniatures. While CGI can accomplish things that are impossible in reality, real sets, props and models still give more authenticity to a film, and in some cases, can be cheaper and easier to incorporate. So keep on proppin’!

The previous article stems from the announcement that Disney will be incorporating more practical effects and less CGI in their upcoming round of Star Wars films. Esquire also had an interview with Roger Christian, the set decorator on the original trilogy. He talks about how he took scrap metal from airplanes to make the halls of the Millennium Falcon, and other interesting tidbits.

Sticking with the Star Wars theme of today, Tested has the tale of how obsessive fans built a better Han Solo blaster. Several fans spent countless hours reverse-engineering the prop weapon used in the original film to come up with a replica that was as screen-accurate as possible. It’s like a detective story and a prop-making story all wrapped into one.

Useful Sites

Another Friday, Another Links

The Guildhall School of Music & Drama has a great-looking blog going for their technical theatre departments. This post has a lot of photographs of their work in progress for their current round of shows, but check out the whole thing for some inspiration.

The production designer for BBC’s What Remains has a behind-the-scenes look at the design, construction and dressing of many of the sets. It is a bit more focused on the scenery rather than the props, but it has a ton of photographs; I mean, if you printed out all the photos, they would actually weigh one ton. She gives a look at not just the construction and final product, but also the design inspiration that went into it.

An interesting story has come out of the filming for the new Star Wars film. The producers have reached out to the R2-D2 fan building community, and are using a fan-built R2-D2 in the film. Why have your prop shop build a new one when you have fans who have already constructed several?

Hey, try some super-fast and super-cheap casting by using hot-melt guns. This blog post steps through the whole process, from sculpting, to plaster molding, to casting and painting.