Tag Archives: Rocketeer

Rockin the Prop Links

Dedicated to the Craft with Mary Creede – Thrillist has this great video peeking into the shop of Jerard Studio and talking with its co-founder, Mary Creede. This Red Hook shop has been building and maintaining specialty theatrical props for over 25 years. Most recently, they provided a number of items for Hamilton.

Want The Best Iron Man Cosplay For Comic-con? Call This Guy – Wired has an article about Shawn Thorsson, who makes foam armor suits like Iron Man or Robocop. He also writes a great deal about it and shares his techniques, and has recently written a book published by Make.

Disabled Artisans Seek Equality in Behind-the-Camera Jobs – Variety looks at some of the disabled craftspeople and technicians working in film, including a visual effects supervisor, a director of photography, and a film composer. We talk a lot about serving audiences with disabilities, and occasionally deal with performers with disabilities, but very few conversations happen around backstage and behind-the-scenes people with disabilities. It’s a conversation worth having. Monona Rossol published a datasheet about Americans with Disabilities in the Scenic Arts back in 1997, but I haven’t come across anything more recent in those twenty years.

DIY Rocketeer Jetpack - David Guyton built a rocket pack from The Rocketeer out of sheet metal. He also made a video showing how it was done, and posted the template patterns for free on his store. Be sure to browse his store for a ton of other patterns offered for sale.

Prop Making 101, with Sarah Kaiser – Part 1 – Sarah shows us how to build some props from Warhammer 40,000, notorious for its giant, over-the-top sci-fi guns. These guns also contain a ton of light and sound effects controlled by an Arduino, so it’s a good project to try if you’ve been wanting to practice that aspect of prop building.

Final Four Links of March

One of my favorite movies as a kid was The Rocketeer. Valor Design has constructed a stunning replica of the film’s rocket pack completely from scratch. Check out the progress photos from the build, as well as pictures of the completed prop.

From Make Magazine, here are six things you need to know to start welding. It’s a bit more of a guide on how to buy your own welder and choose which process you want to work with; it’s much more helpful to learn on a variety of machines before plunking down cash on your own setup.

Propnomicon points us to this great UK website called Bob’s Bits, which sells and rents all manner of sci-fi props and set dressing. Their stuff ranges from futuristic alien to military to Victorian medical.

Finally, BBC Travel visits the abandoned mill town from the first Hunger Games film, just two hours from where I live. Of course, filming moved to Atlanta for the subsequent films, because North Carolina mucked around with their film incentives program. The photographs are pretty haunting, and the whole thing is for sale too, for the die hard movie memorabilia collector.