All posts by Eric Hart

Features

Taking photographs of your work

If you really want your portfolio to shine, you need good photographs of your props. Taking photographs during a rehearsal or show is another topic entirely; in this article, I’ll be talking about taking photographs either in the shop or backstage.

Blurry and Grainy Pictures

The biggest problem and complaint about bad portfolio pictures are blurry and grainy photographs. Though caused by different things, they are both symptoms of not enough light.

Your camera determines the correct exposure in three ways: shutter speed, aperture, and film or chip sensitivity. With a fast shutter speed, moving objects are frozen in place. As the shutter speed slows down, moving objects become blurred in the photograph. At a slow enough shutter speed, the slight shaking of your hands as you hold the camera will blur the entire picture.

If your pictures are blurry, you need to steady the camera. A tripod is the usual solution. Expensive tripods are made for heavier cameras and able to withstand wind and rain. For smaller cameras used indoors, almost any tripod will help steady your pictures. You can even get table-top tripods, or funky ones like this: Continue reading Taking photographs of your work →

Resources

New York Public Library Digital Galleries

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Miss Fanny Kemble as Portia in the Merchant of Venice
Miss Fanny Kemble as Portia in the Merchant of Venice

As a props person, you’re always looking online for images, whether as research for pieces, inspiration for set dressing, or as elements for a paper prop.

The New York Public Library has a great digitized collection of images in their Digital Gallery.  Some proptacular highlights include cigarette cards from pre-1900s to the mid-20th century; dust jackets from American and European books, 1926-1947; decoration in the Age of Napoleon; and  a collection of restaurant menus from 1851 to 1930.

There is also a ton of theatre-related photographs and ephemera, such as the Vandamm Studio Photographs of theatre productions and players from 1900 to 1957.

These digital galleries have so much visual reference and research; I highly recommend taking the time to look through it all and bookmarking or taking note of what you might find useful in the future.

How-to

Dragon Skin

This week, at the Public Theatre, we begin working on some props for The Bacchae. Since there is going to be a dead corpse which is picked apart and torn up on stage, Jay Duckworth has ordered some “Dragon Skin” from Smooth-On to experiment with.

Many of us in the props world are familiar with Smooth-On and their range of products for molding and casting. My father, a potter in Pennsylvania, has been using their polyurethane for years in his mold-making, and they’ve really pushed some new products for theatrical purposes in the past decade or so.

A Silicone Severed Head
A Silicone Severed Head

But wait, there’s more! Their website isn’t just some bland information portal. They have a treasure trove of guides, tutorials, and instructions for using their products. On the special effects and propmaking section you can find step-by-step video sequences, photo sequences, and examples of what other people have done with their products.

You can also find a Smooth-On video channel over at YouTube. This contains many of the same videos showing molding and casting with their products as their website. They also have a list of “Favorites” showing videos from other users making and casting molds.

Reprints

Curious Stage Props

Curious Stage “Props” Made of German Substitutes

Artful substitution of new materials for old ones that cannot be obtained, a trick Germany learned during the war, has now extended to the stage properties used in that country, with some queer results. Shapes made of thin paper and blown up with air are adapted to all sorts of settings, from rocks and trees to pianos, and serve their purpose so long as no forgetful actor leans against them. “Props” of this kind have at least the advantage of compactness and light weight. Luxurious-looking rugs and hangings are made by a new and economical process of printing on fabric. One attraction has a property tree, so made, of paper and wire, that it can be adjusted to any height, from a bush up. In another case, a real field of waving grain is transported to the stage by gluing straws to folding sections of flat base, the whole being fireproofed. Some interesting new cloud effects are produced, presumably by the optical projection of chemical-vapor images.

Popular Mechanics Magazine, December 1920. Vol. 34, No. 6