Tag Archives: blood

Videos: Seán McArdle and Faye Armon

Here are some videos from some folks I’ve worked with.

First up is Seán McArdle. Former prop master at the Public Theater, he has since moved to Minneapolis. Here, he is showing off a blood rig which he has used in, among other things, Broadway Baby in the Tiger Zoo. Sorry, I got that title wrong; it’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, on Broadway.

How to Make Safe Halloween Blood: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com

Next is Faye Armon, whom I worked with on both The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide… and Merchant of Venice/Winters Tale. She walks us around the set of 4000 miles at the Duke on 42nd Street this past summer.

Link-o-Rama

This is great: Michael Fichtenmayer experimented with a number of available art products to create copper finishes and showed off his results. It’s incredibly helpful to see them all together so you can do a quick comparison.

Here is a tutorial to build a homemade plastic bender. Now, remember to do this only with adequate ventilation; heating plastics can release all sorts of chemicals. No one really knows what we’re breathing. The MSDS for the plastic won’t tell you either, because they only have to disclose what the plastic is made of, not what it turns into with the application of heat.

Haunt Forum has a great thread on making a rusty and crusty texture with sand and oatmeal.

Prop Phone is an app that allows you to trigger an iPhone or iPod Touch to ring over WiFi or Bluetooth. They have a video up showing how to make sure the phone can’t receive calls during a performance; I didn’t realize you could out an iPhone in Airplane mode and then turn WiFi back on; I know, I’m practically Amish.

Check out this documentary about the company that made Scar Stuff, Vampire Blood, and Evil Teeth. Yeah, props people rarely use those drug store blood kits, but it’s a fascinating story nonetheless. I love the part where they discover a store has discounted their product as a loss leader, so they buy it all up and resell it to the stores.

Odds and Ends

For all of you hip people, I am on Twitter, @ericbhart. I share links about props and theatre, and sometimes say funny things.

In case you missed it, About.com had an article about the lack of recognition for theatrical props people, featuring some quotes from me, Eric. In a similar vein, BroadwayGirlNYC wrote this heartfelt appreciation for those who work behind the scenes of theatre after a stagehand died backstage of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Here is an (unfortunately, very brief) look at how the California Shakespeare Theater releases all the blood in Titus Andronicus.

Speaking of bloody, here’s a newspaper article on Autonomous F/X, a California company that makes realistic body parts and corpses for medical dramas and police procedural on television.

This site is pretty self-explanatory: Table Saw Accidents. It takes a comprehensive look at the statistics of all reported saw injuries and explains why table saws can be dangerous. Not surprisingly, most table saw injuries occur making common cuts rather than attempting things out of the ordinary.

Review: Grande Illusions 1 and 2

Grande Illusions by Tom SaviniHappy Friday the Thirteenth! If you are a horror film fan, you must surely recognize the work of Tom Savini if not the name; he created the horror effects for the film, Friday the 13th. He has a book called Grande Illusions: A Learn-By-Example Guide to the Art and Technique of Special Make-Up Effects from the Films of Tom Savini. His resume of films is quite impressive for this kind of work; besides the aforementioned Friday the 13th, he has also done makeup and horror effects for Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Day of the Dead, Monkey Shines, Creepshow, and many more. In addition to influencing many horror effects artists working today, he also runs the Special Effects Make-Up and Digital Film Programs at the Douglas Education Center in Pennsylvania.

It is beyond beneficial to us in having a book written by a man who has not only practiced these techniques for years, but has also pioneered many of these effects. It is even more fortunate that he has taken so many photographs and detailed notes of his process and working methods over the years that he can share with us. It would be like discovering a diary written by Shakespeare in which he discussed how he wrote his plays and how the productions evolved into what we know them as today.

In addition to the descriptions of his work on specific films, he has a number of step-by-step tutorials scattered throughout. Casting a head, casting teeth and fangs, working with foam latex and dealing with undercuts are some of the techniques Savini describes in this book.

What is great about these books is not only that Savini presents the materials and methods he uses, but he goes through so many examples in which he has used them. Rather than being repetitive, he shows how a repertoire of skills can be used and adapted for problems which seem similar at the outset but actually present new and unique challenges. A props artisan is always learning something new, even in fields they’ve already mastered.

Grande Illusions 2 by Tom SaviniIn the same vein, Grande Illusions: Book II presents another batch of films which Savini has worked on. This book also features tutorials on creating a breakdown of makeup appliances from a sculpted head, punching hair, and making a case mold from a bust. Though either book is good on its own, together they present a fairly complete picture of Tom Savini’s work and the techniques he uses to achieve it.

This book does contain copious photographs of movie gore and injury, so if the sight of severed heads and impaled bodies, even fake ones, are not your cup of tea, steer clear. It’s also a good idea to screen it first before presenting it to younger makers (though I should add that unsupervised usage of the materials and techniques presented is far more dangerous than the possible psychological damage in seeing these images).

USITT 2011 Wrap-Up

Props at the Ohio University booth
Props at the Ohio University booth

This will be my last post about this year’s USITT conference. I would have done a more extensive wrap-up, but I had to jump straight into tech for “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide…” immediately upon returning to New York City. Instead, I’ll highlight some summaries from around the web. Much of USITT is very lighting/audio/automation oriented. Since the coverage of props is so under-served, I promise to do a more in-depth post next year.

One of the sessions I attended was “Everything is a Weapon”. Tom Fiocchi, one of my first prop teachers, was joined on stage with Wayne Smith, Brian Ruggaber, and a giant marlin fish with a sword for a nose. The session dealt with what factors make a weapon “stage combat–worthy”, and how to apply those factors to objects that were never intended to be weapons. Jacob Coakley has a great summary of the workshop on TheatreFace if you want to learn more.

Tech Expo is a display of interesting and innovative technical solutions to theatrical problems. The best ones are selected to be published in a catalog after the exhibition. La Bricoleuse has more information and photos of this year’s Tech Expo, including a spontaneous combustion parasol she helped create.

You may have noticed in her photos a blood sample chart in this year’s Expo. The chart was showing off a new type of stage blood which washes out of nearly everything. Developed by Meghan O’Brien-Blanford and Peter W. Brakhage at the University of Delaware, the chart featured a swatch of the most common fabrics used on stage. Each was soaked in the blood, then washed after either one hour or two hours. As fas as I could tell, only one fabric showed any signs of staining; the rest were completely clean, even after sitting two hours before being washed. They were giving away samples which they named “Fugitive Blood”; the labels invited us to check out FugitiveBlood.com, but at the moment, the website is still in its “coming soon” phase.

I love blogging
I love blogging