If you haven’t already, be sure to enter my contest. All you have to do is say something funny and you might win a realistic foam baseball bat (made by artists right here in the USA).  There are less than a dozen entries so far, so you still have a good chance of winning. The contest ends next Thursday.

It’s been quite the week for props in the news. The first three stories all came from mainstream newspapers, and all four have been published in the last week!

Weapons Specialists are back in the news, and it looks like they have officially finished their name change to The Specialists Ltd. The New York Times just published an in-depth story on the history and future of this company, one of the premier weapons suppliers and fabricators for film, television and theatre on the East Coast.

The Guardian ran an excellent story this past week called “Time to give props to theatre props“. It talks about the vital role props play in many productions, and how most plays cannot be done without them. Of course, if you read this blog regularly, you already know all that; it’s nice to see a mainstream outlet acknowledge it, though.

The Huffington Post, meanwhile, has an interview with Ellen Freund, prop master for such shows as Mad Men. Are there a lot of props in that show?

Finally, DirecTV (?) interviews Jill Alexander, prop master on the show Damages. The interview gives a good sense of the hectic pace of working on a TV shoot.

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Foam and latex baseball bat

Specter Studios is a props, costumes and mask shop out of Pittsburgh, PA. Their theatrical props include a number of soft foam and latex weapons, such as the baseball bat above. It looks real, but you can beat people over the head with it. For theatre, of course. It’s the prize of this contest here.

Specter Studios is a bit different from those pop-up Halloween stores you see every year. They employ a number of local artists to make all of their products. You can actually see photos and bios of them at the website. Their Facebook page has even more behind-the-scenes photographs.

So what do you have to do to win? Simple, just leave a comment at this blog post saying what play, movie or TV show would be improved by the addition of this foam bat. If you follow the blog by email or through RSS, be sure to visit the website itself to leave your comment. Creativity is key, here. The contest will remain open until 11:59pm on Thursday, May 24, and I will announce the winner on the blog that Friday morning.

(The baseball bat can only be shipped to the Continental US, so the winner will have to provide a US address for the prize to be shipped to.)

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Here’s a blast from the past: an Interview with Anna Marchant, who was a prop maker on the two Matrix sequels. It’s a great interview because it really cuts to the heart of what kind of materials she works with, how the prop department interacts with other departments, and all the other day-to-day details that other interviews forego to talk about “cool props” or “what it’s like to work with movie stars”.

Dallas Poll, a prop maker on Lord of the Rings, had his house burglarized recently, with a number of props and memorabilia stolen. To make matters worse, one of the items stolen was his Stormtrooper costume—and the thieves struck on Star Wars Day!

Rich Dionne’s latest post is about working together in the theatre. This isn’t just about how a playwright works with a director; this is about collaboration within the production department itself, and how important it is for props, costumes, lighting, sound and scenery to occasionally work together on tasks and not just throw walls up around their individual departments.

Robert Lang does a nice job summing up the advantages of not measuring your work. Relying on measuring devices introduces inaccuracies into your work. Sounds counter-intuitive, right? Check the article out.

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“There is no more assiduous collector of odds and ends than the average theatrical property man,” said a well-known actor. “Everything is fish for his net, you might say, and the contents of the chest or trunk of one of these individuals after a forage through the country would easily hold its own with Dickens’s famous curiosity shop…

“If you wish to find out the thoroughness with which the average property man accumulates, just ask him for any article, I don’t care what, and see if nine times out of ten he won’t produce it.”

“By accident I was a witness once of the manner in which a property man adds a coveted object to his collection. Our show was playing at Richmond, Va., at the time. Among the ‘props’ furnished by the theatre’s property man was a handsome rifle, which he had borrowed from a local firearms firm for the week.

“On Friday I had occasion to go to the theatre to get something I had forgotten. As I made my way to the dressing rooms I noticed our company’s property man standing to one side of the darkened stage, in a ray of sunlight, examining this rifle with the air of a connoisseur. There was nobody else in the theatre at the time, and he apparently had not seen me. I would probably have passed him by unnoticed but for the fact that he was holding a conversation with himself, which ran thus:

“‘You seem to be a pretty nice gun,’ he said, holding the rifle up to his shoulder and running his eye critically along the sights.

“‘Ever been on the road?‘ he continued, carefully scrutinizing the stock of the weapon.

“‘Why, you have no idea what a lot of fun you can have out on the road,’ he kept on seductively. ‘A great deal better than being stuck in a little town like this.‘

“‘How would you like to go on the road?‘ he queried, as if he had a sudden inspiration.

“‘You would? All right. I think I can fix it for you.’

“And he made for his trunk to see if he could lay in the rifle crosswise. He was just able to get it in, and the last words I heard him say to the enraptured weapon were:

“‘I’ll sign you with this company right away.‘”

Originally published in The New York Times, July 24, 1904.

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Cooking Pots History 1642-1969

H/T to Ron DeMarco for this info-graphic of cooking pot technology throughout history.

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The Design Observer Group has a semi-regular feature called “Accidental Mysteries”. The most recent installment features photographs and scans of antique measuring and marking tools. Other Accidental Mysteries have interesting things, such as these weekly rail passes from St Louis in the 1940s, and these punk and metal flyers from the 1980s-90s.

Chris Schwartz (of Popular Woodworking and Lost Art Press) is working on an interesting-sounding book on the “furniture of necessity”. Where the furniture of the rich and powerful is well-documented and archived, the furniture of everyday life is difficult to date and keep track of, particularly before the age of photography and mail-order catalogs. He is delving deep into research to come up with the forms of furniture that have remained unchanged for 200 years or more. It sounds like it could be potentially interesting for those prop masters and set designers who need to make period furniture for characters who couldn’t afford Chippendale chairs.

Here are a few interesting snapshots taken behind-the-scenes from the original Batman TV show (1966-68). Not much information on their provenance, but still pretty fascinating.

This site has a large number of videos, such as several different “documentaries” on various matte and miniature artists who have worked on films like Superman, Dark Crystal, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Thief of Baghdad, La Fin du Monde, The Third Man, Clash of the Titans, and The Da Vinci Code. It also has video featuring interviews of people who have worked on the FX crews of the Alien movies, and a video talking about restoring the Nostromo (the giant spaceship model) from the original Alien films. The videos are rather long and kind of all over the place; some of them have original 3D animation interspersed within the interviews. I’m not sure where the videos came from, but if you are willing to fight through the odd parts, you can pick up some interesting tidbits from the creators of some of cinema’s best visual effects.

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Structure of the interior of the base

A company with a microscope as its logo wanted a giant microscope to bring to trade shows. They wanted the silhouette of the prop to match their logo (which was simply a drawing of the side view) but with some details added to make it look more like a real microscope. One of the challenges was in designing a prop that looked like a real microscope but still resembled the outline of their logo when looked at from the side.

Arm

It wanted to be light-weight, so much of the base was lauan facing over 1×4 framing. The curves were made with “wiggle wood” over plywood formers and 1×4 stretchers. This project had a quick turnaround, so I did not attempt any compound or complex curves.

Unpainted microscope near completion

The tube itself was a concrete form for columns; they are commonly called “Sonotube”, though this is simply the most popular brand name for these tubes. This tube was a different brand. The tube was also built to separate from the arm for easier transportation and storage. If the proportions and the angles look strange, it is because it matches the stylization of the logo.

Skim coat of joint compound

Once everything was constructed, the whole microscope got a skim coat of joint compound to smooth and even it all out.

Filling with Bondo

After the joint compound dried overnight, I sanded it smooth. The divots and fragile parts were refilled with Bondo auto body filler and sanded back down flush.

Stage clips

I added some stage clips on the stage to hold a “slide”. I cut these out of some scrap roofing tin that was laying around, bent them, and attached them between some MDF “screws” I cut out.

Back view of completed microscope

The whole microscope was primed and painted gray. Portions were also painted silver; I used Valspar Metallic Spray Paint, which worked really well. A few parts also received some black paint.

Six foot tall microscope

The focus knob on this side actually spins in place. It is also attached to the rod which runs through the arm and holds the tube in place. Remove the knob, and you can pull the whole tube off.

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Recycled metal sculptures by Riley Foster

Visitors coming through the main entrance were greeted by a number of sculptures created from recycled metal parts. The ant above has a propane tank body and rebar legs; other sculptures used parts scrounged from items such as gas tanks, fire extinguishers and suspension springs.

Steampunk weapons by Stephen Chapman

Stephen Chapman had his steampunk weapon collection on full display. He had brought a few of these to one of our monthly meetings, but it was great to see them all out on full display. Chapman was, naturally, in costume.

Learning to solder

The Maker Faire NC booth was teaching soldering (for free) to interested passers by. Soldering is one of those skills every prop master and prop maker should know, and every Maker Faire I’ve ever gone to has had at least one booth teaching it either for free or for some ridiculous price, like one dollar. You usually get to keep what you make, too; at our Faire, everyone was making blinking robot pins, so by the end of the day, nearly everyone’s shirt had a blinking pin on it.

Meltonia Young making Underground Railroad quilts

Meltonia Young is a local quilt-maker who was working on quilts made from patterns used on the Underground Railroad. These quilts actually had secret messages encoded in the quilt patterns to help the escaping slaves on their journey to freedom up north.

Playing video on the CoCo computer

The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer, or “CoCo”, was a series of low-cost computers which came out in the early 1980s. Those of a younger age may not realize how amazing or crazy it is to get these to play videos from YouTube, but John Linville of our group has done just that. In the photograph above, I believe it is playing the music video from Green Day’s “American Idiot”.

Thinker Linkers

Thinker Linkers are a product made by North Carolina furniture maker Murrah Woodcraft. The variously-shaped pieces all fit together allowing you to construct any number of structures and shapes.

Wood turning

Nim Batchelor and Jim Barbour, both professors at Elon University, were demonstrating wood turning all day at the Faire.

Showing 3D printed parts at Fablocker

Fablocker is the hackerspace out of Winston-Salem. They had a number of 3D Printers in operation that day, and they were showing off the little plastic pieces they make with them.

Handmade instruments by Steve Wishnevsky

Steve Wishnevsky makes handmade musical instruments such as guitars out of recycled and repurposed wood.

I didn’t get photographs of all the makers and exhibitors, and I did not mean to leave anything out. Luckily, Dino Segovis, one of the other exhibitors, took a video of the whole faire which shows off nearly everything that was there. The Burlington Times-News also wrote up an article about the day’s events.

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“A career in theatre props” is a well written article about Antony Barnett, Head of Props at the Royal Opera House. It discusses what he does as the lead prop maker at a very busy shop. It is also interesting in telling how British prop makers learn their craft and get started in the business.

Sad news out of Brazil; Tiago Klimeck, an actor playing Judas in an Easter Passion play, died from an accidental hanging during a performance. The article, while light on details, does mention that authorities think “the knot may have been wrongly tied.” The only safe way to do a live hanging is with the rope attached in the back to a harness under the actor’s costume. The loop of rope in the front should be incapable of holding any weight, and should be able to break away when the slightest bit of weight is applied. In other words, there should not be a knot that can accidentally be “wrongly tied”; there should not be any knot. Though this story may remind you of the accidental hanging of an actress in a Halloween haunted house last year (the girl lived), in that case, the noose was never intended for live hangings. It was simply a prop “used for visual affect” (I am not sure why articles on accidental hangings all need grammatical errors).

I just came across this, though it is from 1996. Patrick Tatopoulos is the maker of monsters from Stargate (the film), Independence Day, the John Cusack Godzilla film, and many others. Visual Effects Headquarters has an interview with him and a look at how he got started and what he has accomplished.

I missed this on the first go-around, but in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, Popular Woodworking Magazine has posted free plans and instructions to build the deck chairs used on that infamous ship. It’s a complicated and involved chair, but it looks like a fun project if you want to own a piece of history (or if you are doing the musical Titanic).

Christopher Schwartz has posted the first chapter from Bernard Jones’ “The Practical Woodworker” on building crates and packing boxes. Crates and boxes seem like an easy item to construct, but the endless varieties and methods to construct them make them a good first project for a budding carpenter. Besides that, we build a lot of boxes in props, and even complicated forms have elements of box construction somewhere in them. This chapter does a great job of showing some of the more popular standards for box and crate construction.

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