Tag Archives: Adam Savage

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Stories to End the Week

This Saturday (April 23rd) is the Burlington Mini Maker Faire. I’ll have a booth there, so if you live in the area, come say hi. There will also be real moon rocks on display, which are slightly smaller than theatrical moon rocks.

Hollywood Reporter takes a peek inside Newel Antiques, one of NYC’s largest prop rental houses for antique furniture and dressing. They have an exquisite collection, and have been outfitting TV, film, and theater with valuable pieces since 1939. Incidentally, this is the second article this month talking about how props is enjoying a boom because of all the content being created by Netflix, Hulu, and the like.

Sculptural Arts Coating celebrates 25 years in the business. John and Lisa Saari have been making Sculpt-or-Coat, Artist’s Choice paints, and Plastic Varnish right here in Greensboro since the early 90s.

Caroline Framke spends five months on the set of The Americans to see how a TV episode is made. She sees everything from the first table read, to dressing the set, to editing the final cut. This article is very in-depth and fascinating to read.

StarWars.com talks with Adam Savage about Star Wars. Though we know him from Mythbusters and Tested, Savage was also a model maker on Star Wars Episodes I and II. He talks about his time at ILM building models as well as his love of these movies in general.

Finally, Make has four cheap tricks for drilling straight holes. Nobody likes a crooked screw.

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More Prop Links for Your Friday

The folks over at Center Theatre Group had to make a whole lot of fake salad for their production of Women Laughing Alone With Salad. Find out how Jon Ward and his props team honed in on the perfect recipe for a pretend salad.

Here we have 9 Real Job Skills You Lean From Being a Cosplayer, which is remarkably similar to the job skills you learn from being a prop maker. Of course, that assumes that they ever let you out of the props shop to look for another job. Back to work!

Whatever happened to Tony Montana’s “Little Friend”? Not that I was wondering, but this Hollywood Reporter article is a fascinating look at an iconic movie prop. Watch as it meanders its way around LA over the next few decades, popping up in other films here and there.

If you’ve never seen Adam Savage’s One Day Builds, you’re missing out! In his latest, he builds a sword from Hellboy. What makes these great is that they do not really skip over anything; it’s just a cameraman in the shop, showing every step he takes, and every mistake he makes. I also like how he doesn’t really use anything that’s out of the realm of the average props shop. His materials come from typical hardware stores and auto body shops, and his tools are pretty standard issue (well, that disc sander is kind of a beast).

You wouldn’t be a props person if you didn’t use hot glue. Make Magazine has 7 cool tips for working with hot glue.

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Be My Prop Valentine

Whale, whale, whale, what do we have here? Stephen Kesler shares step-by-step photos of a life-sized humpback whale he carved out of foam. And you thought your prop was big? Even if you never have to sculpt something this large, it is still a great primer on sculpting foam in general.

Every time I watch Adam Savage organize his workshop, I think, “hey, that’s what I do.” And then I learn some new trick and realize my shop can be organized much better. In this video, he builds these mobile carts for glue and paint supplies. Now I need to build mobile carts for supplies.

Dj3r0m Cosplay Props has this awesome war hammer from the Skyrim video game.  From the process pictures, it looks like the whole thing was carved and assembled from MDF. Impressive. The paint job is pretty stunning, too.

Village Theatre put together this great infographic showing the amounts of consumables that go into a run of Crimes of the Heart.  Anyone who has done the show can attest to the large amount of shopping that needs to happen for that production. Of course, they missed the apples, sugar, bourbon and the paper that gets torn up.

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Lucky Links for a Lucky Day

Happy Friday the 13th, everybody. Here are some great prop-related stories from around the internet.

The production team at the Clarice in Maryland recently recreated Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne statue using a mix of CNC routing, 3D printing, and theatre ingenuity. Watch this video to see how they did it.

Caleb Kraft and Platinumfungi decided they needed to recreate the flaming sword from the new Fallout 4 video game. Check out videos and photos showing their day-to-day process.

Duo Fiberworks has a nice tutorial on creating a rustic leather sketchbook from scratch. It’s a must for every Shakespeare play (h/t to Propnomicon for the link).

For your third video of the day, you can learn about Shawn Thorsson, the superhero of cosplay. You’ve seen some of his work before on this blog; now you can watch him at work in his shop and check out more of the pieces he has constructed.

Mythbusters is ending its fourteen-season run this January. This week was the final day of filming for them, and Adam Savage live-tweeted the entire day. It’s a sad day for television, since it was one of the few shows that got close to showing what we do in props. Thankfully, Adam is still busy as ever building props over at Tested.

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Props Links for the Week

This week’s must-read comes from The A/V Club, who interviewed props master Chris Call. This very in-depth conversation takes a look at his career, propping everything from Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Alias, to The Closer. The article takes the time to really dig into the nuts and bolts of a TV prop master’s job and Call’s career path, going far beyond the standard “what’s the craziest prop you’ve ever had to make?!?” kind of questions.

Wired takes a look at Adam Savage’s replica prop-making hobby, and asks the burning question of why he does it. Spolier alert: it’s because props can tell a story.

What did Kermit the Frog look like before the Muppets? Collector’s Weekly takes a look at the history of the Muppets, including photographs of a pre-Sesame Street Kermit, and delves into Jim Henson’s journey from five-minute sketches on a local TV station to a worldwide empire of puppet and creature manufacturing.

Fast Company has an article on five dream jobs that will make your inner child extremely jealous, and “prop master” is one of them. Yes, being a prop master is on-par with running a cat-café or being a chocolate scientist. I’ll have to remember I’m living the dream the next time I’m cleaning a mouse nest out of the bottom of a stove or lugging a sofa up three flights of stairs.