Tag Archives: masks

News

Death of a Mask Maker

Last Saturday, we found out that Donato Sartori passed away. His father, Amleto Sartori, was responsible for reintroducing the art of leather mask making for Commedia dell’arte after World War II. Commedia was outlawed by Napoleon in 1797, and its craft traditions were lost until Amleto reverse-engineered them and shared them with the world. Donato continued his work; most of what we know about the use of masks in Commedia come from these two.

Here we have a video from 1955 showing Amleto at work. It is unfortunately in Italian and only a minute long, but it gives a good overview of his process for creating a mask out of leather.

Here we have a much longer video showing Donato and his workshop from just a few years ago. Again, it is in Italian, but you get to see many steps of the mask-making process, as well as a glimpse inside the studio that both Donato and Amleto worked from.

I got to visit that studio in 2012 when my wife was taking their mask-making workshop. It is difficult to convey just how influential the Sartoris were in the world of modern theatrical masks. We do not have much of a mask tradition here in the US, but it is very popular in Europe and Asia. My wife once bought a Balinese mask, and she told the mask-maker that it reminded her of Commedia masks. It turns out he had met Donato a few times and they shared techniques with each other.

RIP Donato Sartori (1939-2016)

Useful Sites

The Blog of Eternal Prop Links

Hollywood is Running Out of Tombstones, according to this article from Bloomberg, featuring the world’s worst stock photo. So much film and television is being produced these days that prop rental companies are running out of stock, studio spaces are booked to the max, and production crew is impossible to find. If you wanted to work in props, this article makes it seem like all you have to do is move to Atlanta or Los Angeles. Do any of my readers have any first-hand knowledge to back that up? I’d love to hear about it.

Food styling for photography is always interesting, and Tienlon Ho wrote an article about how it is changing. Gone are the days of mashed potatoes for ice cream. Ho talks with master food stylist Delores Custer about the tricks of the trade and how they are evolving.

Playmakers Rep’s production of Sweeney Todd features some interesting paper masks during the masquerade scene. Rachel Pollack details how the costume crafts shop brought them to life for designer Bill Brewer.

Popular Woodworking has a list of the 16 dumbest woodworking mistakes, along with a link to their magazine article where they go into more detail. Let’s see… yep, I’ve done all of these.

The House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe sounds like an amazing experience. Owned by George RR Martin and run by artist collective Meow Wolf, it’s a massive Victorian house that may have just slipped into another dimension. Reminiscent of Sleep No More, with some elements of Escape Games, the house is designed for visitors to freely roam, explore, and interact with all the props and furniture. It’s a prop builder’s paradise.

Useful Sites

March Link Madness

Well, March is almost over, but there is still time to fill in your bracket for March Musical Theatre Madness! You can also enjoy the links I’ve come up with below:

I’ve linked to some repositories of old maps before, which are always good for making paper props. But the Propnomicon website pointed me to Old Maps Online, which gives you an interactive interface to find historical maps within whatever date range you specify. It’s kind of like using Google Maps while traveling through time.

Speaking of vintage ephemera (and musical theatre), Gaytwogether is a blog which occasionally posts vintage photographs of gay couples, which you can browse through all at once at that link.

La Bricoleuse has just posted the final projects from her class on complex masks. Though little is written, the photographs give a lot of information about how the various masks were made, and it is very interesting to see the various methods of construction and the materials used.

Most of us know the Project Triangle: “fast, cheap and good—you can have any two”. For those who don’t, Jesse Gaffney has just posted a good description of it, along with examples.

If you study the technical side of some of the materials used in making props, you may know that “polymerization” is what happens when a resin changes from a liquid to a hard plastic (among other things). If you read MSDS sheets (which you should), you may also have come across the phrase “explosive polymerization”. If, like me, you are wondering what that means, you may be interested in this video; it has a long build-up, but the payoff is worth it.

Useful Sites

Friday Props Links Roundup

The Guardian has a nice little article on How to Make a Haunted House. It details how the set dresser, prop master and other members of the art department use locations, architecture and props to create the mood of the upcoming ghost film, The Woman in Black. They purchased and borrowed tons (or “tonnes”, as this is a British film) of Victorian-era objects and paraphernalia to dress the sets.

Have you heard of the new show Prop Freaks? Because it’s a TV show about people who make and collect props. Well, it’s a show in development; you can watch short clips on the website until it finds an audience. But it looks pretty cool, and I can’t wait to see more.

Here is an interview with Russell Bobbitt on how he uses 3D printing technology to create many of his props. Russell Bobbitt is the film prop master who has made some fairly recognizable props, such as the glowing chest piece from Iron Man 2, or the wristband laser gun from Cowboys and Aliens.

Here is an interesting video on using a vacuum former to make masks. There’s a few things that make this especially intriguing: his rig is portable so he is able to take it to an event where other people can vacuum form their own masks, and he uses a bicycle pump to draw out the air rather than a vacuum cleaner. Also, the music playing in the background is a Nintendo beat version of MOP’s “Ante Up” with computers rapping (done by an artist named “Danny Drive Thru”), so that alone makes this worth watching.

While not prop-related, this last link is pretty fun. Watch this time-lapse video of stagehands from IATSE local 33 set up the orchestra pit at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It’s a pretty ambitious sounding project too; over 1,000 musicians will perform.

News

Top Prop News of 2011

I will be taking the next week off for the Holidays, so it will be 2012 the next time you read this. The world of props isn’t exactly one of constant change, but news stories occasionally affect us. I’ve narrowed down four of the most notable ones of 2011. Here they are, in no particular order:

  1. E-Cigarettes are banned in Boston workplaces. I am not sure how this affects their use on stage. I’ve written about e-cigarettes before on this site as their legal status and safety issues are constantly changing and evolving. Expect e-cigarettes to continue to make the news in 2012.
  2. Guns on the set of Brad Pitt’s World War Z were seized by Hungarian authorities. This story first appeared with sensationalistic flair in the gossip and tabloid sites; they got most of the facts completely wrong, and the real story was far more interesting to props people. I did my own round-up and debunking of what really happened.
  3. Occupy Wall Street began on September 17th, and dominated the news through much of the autumn, and is still happening in various forms throughout the world. If you’ve looked at any of the photographs, you may have seen some protesters wearing a certain kind of mask. “Say,” you ask yourself, “isn’t that a prop from the film V for Vendetta?” It is, and several news articles discussed who is behind the masks and interviewed Alan Moore, creator of the original V for Vendetta comic.
  4. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is soliciting comments from the public on new proposals for table saw safety. If you are familiar with the SawStop technology, they are basically considering whether to make that technology mandatory on new table saws (You can read the actual proposal here). The Popular Woodworking blog has been keeping up to date with this story since it began, as this will have quite the effect on anyone working on the carpentry side of things.