Tag Archives: work

Jobs

Finding a Job in Film (for Prop Makers)

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If you ask ten prop makers how they began building props for film, you will get ten different answers. It usually involves some combination of luck, timing, and knowing the right person. While theatre has seasonal employment, apprenticeships and internships which you can find advertised as well as job fairs which feature employers that regularly hire prop people, the world of film has no such thing. You can’t learn about it in a book (believe me—I’ve looked). So how do you get started?

I also want to add that I am writing this as I figure it out; I am pretty much a prop maker for theatre, and my film credits are, well… I haven’t done any film. But this is similar to how I began to get work in the display and exhibition world, and that kept me fairly well employed for a few years. So if any of may readers have advice to add, I’m sure all of us, myself included, will be grateful for it.

To start, find out where the props are being built. Continue reading Finding a Job in Film (for Prop Makers) →

News

Leaving New York City

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Today is my last day as the assistant props master at the Public Theater, and on Monday, I’ll be gone from New York City as well. I’ve been planning this for some time; my wife has been teaching scene design down at Elon University for the past year and a half, and when her position became more permanent, I decided to finish up the autumn productions up and move down there with her. A year and a half is long time to be  over five hundred miles apart.

It’s been amazing working at the Public Theater. First of all, it has such a rich history. This is the theatre where Hair and Chorus Line debuted. This has been one of the focal institutions for downtown New York Theatre for half of a century. More important than its history though is its continuing contribution to New York theatre.

I’ve gotten to work with designers like John Lee Beatty, John Conklin, and Eugene Lee; these are designers I studied in college a decade ago. The same is true of writers like Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, and Christopher Durang, all of whom were required reading in at least one of my classes. I also got to work with all sorts of up and coming designers, such as Mark Wendland, Donyale Werle and Scott Pask. Of course, I’ve worked on shows with great directors as well, including Daniel Sullivan, David Esbjornson, Michael Greif, JoAnne Akalitis, Alex Timbers, Richard Foreman. The list goes on.

More importantly, my colleagues were an amazing part of my time there. Our artistic director often remarked that we were the “best staff in the American theatre”. I don’t know if I’m qualified to say whether it is the “best” or not, but I can certainly say that the production staff there is one of the great production departments in the world of theatre. It was a blessing and a challenge to be able to work with equals rather than having to be the smartest one in the room (ha ha, I’m very modest).

I also feel that being at the Public has reaffirmed by belief in the necessity of theatre. Theatre is predicated on the fact that there is a performer and there is an audience and they have to be in the same space. You cannot package it, commoditize it and distribute it; you have to be there, you have to put the time in, and you have to listen. It is an art form that acknowledges that we are our relationships with other people, and that storytelling is more than just consuming something on a screen. Much of what the Public does is exciting from the tightly-packed, creaky room where the Belarus Free Theatre performed their heartbreaking work which made them criminals by their totalitarian government, to the palpable electricity caused by 1800 people quieting down as the show begins in the open-air Delacorte Theater in the middle of Central Park.

Of course, I am excited by my new adventure. I will have my own workshop. Though tiny, it is more than I’ve ever had. I am of course, hard at work on my book. After the holidays, I already have a bit of work lined up at PlayMakers Rep building some props for their Shakespeare shows (I’m good at Shakespeare props). This blog will certainly soldier on. I actually began it before I ever worked in the Public Theater’s prop shop! Hard to believe.

Features

Working with What you Have

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Ripping a long board, circa 1443
Ripping a long board, circa 1443

It’s easy to think how hard it is to get started building props. Tools and machines are expensive, materials are hard to work with, and there are just so many to choose from. But think of this: the vast majority of materials we work with today were unavailable before World War II: all manner of plastics, all foams, all our composite materials, even our glues and paints. Nearly every kind of coating and adhesive has some form of synthetic polymer in it; before that, we had hide glue, wheat paste and rubber cement (well, after the 1900s that is). Even plywood as we know it was not something you could just go out and buy. It existed, but it was made by the carpenter himself, by laying up layer after layer of thin veneers.

For most of our theatrical history, props have been constructed with little more than papier-mâché, real wood, plaster, clay, leather, and natural fabrics. Animal glue and wheat paste were among the few adhesives available, and paints were limited to oil paints, casein, and varnishes. Think of all the theatre which was created and performed with this limited technology: everything from the Ancient Greeks, to Shakespeare and Molière, or Kabuki in Japan, up to the grand operas of the Gilded Age.

Think too of the tools we have available to us. Electricity and pneumatics have given us incredible power and speed in the palms of our hands. The industrial revolution and machine age have brought us standardized parts and precision unimaginable in previous times. Even our simple hand tools have benefited; a hand saw blade today is produced more quickly, cheaply, and precisely than before the industrial age. The steel it is made from is stronger and more consistent (and far less expensive).

From the weapons used by Alexander the Great to conquer the world, to the furniture found in Versailles, our museums are filled with amazing items created with nearly none of what our props artisans have available today. We can purchase a sheet of metal from a hobby shop which is superior in properties than the metal used by Genghis Khan to create his weapons which conquered the world. We can buy a Dremel tool for a pittance; imagine how envious the people who built the first railroads would be to see such a tool.

So if you are just starting out with prop making, or want to practice doing more of it, don’t wait until you can afford the fancy tools or can master the most modern materials. Think about what you can do with what you have, rather than what you can’t with what you don’t.

Reviews

Review: The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery

The Complete Illustrated Guide to JoineryI got The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery a few years ago, but it’s such a great book I thought I’d give it a review here. Written by Gary Rogowski and published by Taunton Press, this is a beautiful book just to look at and hold. Page after page is filled with crisp color photography alongside clean and clear text. But look deeper and you’ll also find a wealth of information.

This book attempts to break down and categorize many common types of joinery. First, into the two basic systems of box joinery and frame joinery, and then into a number of subcategories, such as mortises, miter joints, lap joints, and dovetails. Each chapter defines and describes a number of related joints, along with numerous variations and deviations. It then steps through a number of methods to create each one. For many joints, this means it gives a method to build it out of either hand tools or power tools depending on which you prefer or what the situation calls for.

In addition to the photographs generously peppered throughout, Rogowski also intersperses a number of diagrams and illustrations to give further clarity to how these joints come together.

Though some of these joints may look fancy and complicated, the joints in this book are really the more common workhouse joints used to solve the majority of carpentry problems. You won’t find the extremely complex and decorated types of joints used in previous centuries, or any of the exotic joinery solutions of Japanese and Chinese carpenters. This book deals almost entirely with joints where two pieces of wood meet; it’s when three pieces of wood come together that joinery starts getting really interesting (this book does have a few such joints toward the back, so it is not completely devoid of them).

Still, I love this book. It’s the kind of book you can buy and learn a lot from, then let sit on your bookshelf looking pretty for a few years, then pick up again and realize you still have a lot to learn.

Reviews

Review: The Business of Theatrical Design

The Business of Theatrical Design by James L. Moody
The Business of Theatrical Design

This is the story of The Business of Theatrical Design, by James L. Moody.

Does this book have anything to do with props people? Sure. Though it is geared towards the theatrical designers, both prop masters and artisans working in the freelance world need the advice and information presented within. Further, the job title of “properties designer” is becoming more prevalent in today’s theatrical world.

The first six chapters are on the technical aspects of running a business: accounting, staffing, offices, etc. A lot of this seems out of the realm of the average freelance props person. On the other hand, you will probably need some of the information at least once in your career. Even if you never have a full-time staff (very few freelance prop masters do), you will on occasion have an assistant or need to hire some outside help for some jobs. You may think you do not need an office, but if you have a shop, it might serve the same purpose. The information presented in these chapters is dense, and not meant to be read all at once in one sitting. Rather, it is a great reference to keep close by and refer to as needed.

Perhaps the only main deviation between the business of a theatrical designer and a props artisan is that theatrical design is mostly a service industry (according to Moody) while a props artisan mixes elements of manufacturing and service.

The next few chapters feel more directly applicable to the props freelancer. It deals with marketing yourself, networking, job interviews and dressing for success. Sure, you can find this kind of information elsewhere, but most of it seems geared towards bankers and mid-level managers applying for cattle calls at large corporations. This book deals with all the quirks and idiosyncrasies of getting jobs in the world of theatre and entertainment design. It also devotes some time to dealing with the aspects of the job not typically covered in other books about theatre work, such as conflict resolution and group dynamics.

This book does have a few flaws. It is fairly US-centric when dealing with specifics about legal topics, business culture, contracts and unions. Though only written in 2002, it is a touch outdated when it comes to technology and the internet; I don’t think I would suggest to anyone to carry around a CD of your work, especially when thumb drives and jump drives can hold so much more information in a much smaller space and work on nearly every computer (some newer laptops and tablets don’t even come with a CD drive). I also think an internet presence is more of a necessity these days. Employers are incredibly likely to run an internet search on you when you are applying for a job or a gig; even if you do not have a website, you should run an internet search on yourself to see what they would see.

This book fills the gaps in theatre education for the all important considerations of the business side of show business. Maybe your education did not give you the chance to take business classes while enrolled, or maybe you did not find yourself working as a professional freelancer until well after your formal education ended. In any case, The Business of Theatrical Design covers such a broad range of information not found elsewhere that makes this a must-have for anyone wanting to make a living in theatre.