All posts by Eric Hart

Reprints

A Clap of Thunder, 1902

The following first appeared in The Salt Lake Herald, on July 27, 1902.

Many stories are told of Dion Boucicault as occurring during the active life of that playwright actor. One relates to the time he was playing a piece called “The Vampire” at the Princess theatre, London. The opening scene represented the highest regions of the Alps by moonlight, while a thunderstorm raged in the distance. The Vampire (Mr. Boucicault) was seen lying dead on the mountain peak, to all appearances, but as a ray of moon touched his body he came to life.

Of course, the thunder was produced in the usual manner by the property man with a “thunder sheet.”

One night in the height of the season a tremendous clap of thunder startled the audience and interrupted Mr. Boucicault in the middle of a speech. Lowering his voice so that it could be heard only by the property man, he said:

“Very well, Mr. Davis, you are making more mistakes. That clap of thunder came in the wrong place.”

Mr. Davis replied in stentorian tones, which could be plainly heard all over the auditorium:

“No fault of mine, sir; it wasn’t my thunder. Thunder’s real out of doors, perhaps you can stop it there.”

Originally published in The Salt Lake Herald, July 27, 1902, page 11.

Useful Sites

A Friday of Links Gone By

Have you entered the Prop Building Guidebook contest and voted on your favorite prop yet? This is the last time I’ll remind you, because the contest ends next Tuesday.

The BBC has a lengthy story on the history of the tin can. It is far more thrilling and complex than you may have imagined.

Jesse Gaffney has a great post on how to make running water on stage. It’s a common trick amongst props masters, but it is great to see all the steps photographed and explained in detail.

Tested has an interesting post on the low budget special effects from yesteryear, particularly those employed by Ed Wood.

Chris Schwartz points us to a paper written by Matt Pelto on the difference between an artist, artisan and craftsperson (follow the link at the site to see the actual paper). It’s an appropriate question for props people, who may refer to themselves as artisans, builders, designers, artists, or many other descriptors. It is interesting to read the actual historical origin of some of these terms.

Janet Sellery runs a website dedicated to health and safety in the arts. She is based in Canada, so the workplace laws are specific to there, but the list of resources she provides is useful to everyone. I like her slogan, too: “Creative Risks without Safety Risks.”

How-to

Rupees from Legend of Zelda

For the last few weeks before I came out to Santa Fe, I was building some props for a local theatre group known as The League of Extraordinary Thespians. They are doing a musical of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The first props I finished were the rupees, which are a type of jewel used in the game to buy items (some of you may have already seen these in an Instructable I posted last week. Sorry).

I figured the best way to make a translucent gem was to vacuum form the shape. You remember my ultra-cheap vacuum former, correct? Before I could use that, I would need a form. I decided to do the front and back of each rupee separately, and then glue them together. So first, I would need to cut a piece of wood into a rupee shape.

Wood form
Wood form

You can see I’m using the (oddly-named) GRR-Ripper from Micro-Jig; it makes accurate cuts on tiny pieces in a safe and straight-forward manner. I did all the cuts with my table saw, giving me a pretty clean-looking rupee half.

Vacuum formed half
Vacuum formed half

I got a sheet of clear acrylic from Hobby Lobby. They only had it in one thickness; I’m not sure what it is exactly, but it’s less than 1/16″. I started vacuum forming the halves and trimming them out, leaving exactly what you see above.

Painted green
Painted green

Before gluing the halves together, I painted the insides. This way, the paint would never wear off, no matter how much the actors handled them.

For the green ones, I tried watering down acrylic paint. It was pretty tricky, since the paint kept wanting to bead up. Normally, you would lightly sand the surface of the plastic to help the paint adhere better, but that would kind of kill the “translucency” effect. So I bit the bullet and bought some blue and red spray paint so I could just lightly dust the other rupees.

Rupees
Rupees

I used a solvent-based glue (Amazing Goop) to glue the halves together. The glue was a bit thick and dried flexible, which helped make a stronger bond since the edges didn’t quite match up exactly.

And that is how you make a rupee!

News

Voting Begins!

Hi, everybody. I start my summer job at the Santa Fe Opera today; I was traveling and settling in this weekend, so I did not have much time to write.

But I did want to take this chance to remind you to enter the Prop Building Guidebook contest. You still have until April 30th to enter. But more importantly, today is the day you can start voting on entries. You get one vote per day. You can vote on your own entry every day until the contest ends, or you can vote on a different entry every day.

Either way, the entry with the most votes when the contest closes will win their own prize of $100 worth of Focal Press books.

So vote early, and vote often!

The Prop Building Guidebook contest

Useful Sites

Friday Links

Only 11 more days to enter the world’s greatest Prop Building Guidebook Contest! Don’t wait until the last minute! More importantly, starting this Monday (April 22), your friends, family and colleagues can vote for your entry. The prop with the most votes on April 30th will win $100 worth of Focal Press books. You can vote once a day, so be sure your friends know to vote early, and vote often. Now, onto the links:

Harrison Krix (of Volpin Props fame) has an article up at Tested.Com detailing the making of a mask from the video game Bioshock. It’s a great example of using “slices” to help make a precise carving, and the cracked paint treatment is an interesting technique as well.

Another replica prop maker, Bill Doran (of Punished Props fame) is doing a live Google Hangout tomorrow (Saturday, April 23rd, at 3:00pm EST) where he answers your prop-making questions. With a Google Hangout, you can watch live from your computer as it happens. You can also participate if you have a webcam and questions (Bill gives you the details in the post I linked to). Finally, the whole thing is recorded, so you can watch the whole thing on YouTube after it finishes (I’ll post the link in the comments once it goes up).

Here is a blog of random medieval imagery, mostly taken from manuscripts.

Awake the Trumpet’s Lofty Sound, ca 1283-1300 BCE
Awake the Trumpet’s Lofty Sound, ca 1283-1300 BCE

Finally, Chris Schwartz ruminates on technical perfection when building something, and whether it is necessary.