Category Archives: Useful Sites

Useful Sites

End of the Week Props Links

Inside The Deeply Nerdy—And Insanely Expensive—World Of Hollywood Prop Collecting – Wired takes a look at some of the most expensive movie props ever sold and the collectors who bought them.

Found: A Treasure Trove of Candy Wrappers Dating Back to the Depression – Eric Nordstrom found a sweet collection of 1920s candy wrappers while exploring Chicago’s Congress Theater. Be sure to follow the links to his Facebook where he posts more photos in the comments to his original photo.

Off-Broadway Producers and United Scenic Artists Create First Ever Agreement for Off-Broadway Designers – I’m interested to see what this means for prop designers. USA does not seem to cover prop designers; I’ve never seen anyone credited with “prop designer” in a theater under USA’s jurisdiction. Off-Broadway has never been under USA’s jurisdiction until this week, and that is where you find the bulk of credited prop designers. Will that continue?

Ross MacDonald: The Best Set Props Go Unnoticed – An interview and photographs with Ross MacDonald, prop builder on Joy, Boardwalk Empire, Hateful Eight, and so many more.

Useful Sites

Weekend Prop Stories

Inside the ‘Jitney’ Set: Picturing Pittsburgh Onstage – The NY Times takes a look at how set designer David Gallo and props supervisor Scott Laule brought the set to August Wilson’s Jitney to life. Set in 1970’s Pittsburgh, a lot of the set dressing and details come from conversations with Wilson himself when Gallo designed the original set back in 2000.

The tiny town that builds show-stopping sets for Beyoncé, Kanye and Madonna – This is such a great article on all the massive scenic shops which exist in Lititz, PA, the heart of Amish country. I grew up not too far from there, but I never knew that companies like Tait Towers have built nearly every rock and roll set here since the late 1960s. The larger tech theater schools send a lot of their graduates there, but most people are unaware how much fabrication and painting work can be found in the area.

This ‘Circus’ has elephants … in puppet form – A circus is not much of a circus without elephants, but most of these elephants are poorly treated. So the only humane solution is to build life-size puppet elephants. USA Today gives us a close-up look at how the puppet elephants in Circus 1903 come to life.

Batman’s Original Utility Belt Was Made Out Of Sponges – The headline tells the story. Before HD, television shows could get away with glueing brightly colored sponges to a belt and calling it a Batman costume. I have also heard that some of the phasers in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation were simply painted blocks of balsa wood.

Giant, Flame Spewing Animatronic Dragon – The only thing better than a life-sized elephant puppet is a giant, flame-spewing animatronic dragon. Check out how Zollner Electronics fabricated this monster for a seasonal folk play in Germany.

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Mid-February Prop Links

Shop Tips: Cutting Foam for Propmaking – First up, Tested visits Frank Ippolito’s shop to see what tools he uses to cut flexible foam sheets. I want to try one of the blades he uses, which allows him to make some interesting cuts.

Shinken Sword Commission – The Prop Solve is back with an epic post on fabricating a fantasy sword for a client. The post is filled with pictures of every step, showing not just the successes, but the mistakes and learning experiences along the way. I especially like the build break-down she prepared for her client.

Queens Prop Shop Has Crafted Real Name for Itself in Booming Industry – NY1 visits the Prop “N” Spoon warehouse over in Queens and fabrication shop in Rahway, NJ. Check out the video to see some of the cool props they have built as business booms in NYC.

Adam Savage Examines the Props and Spacesuits of The Expanse! – We go back to Tested for this video of Adam Savage talking with James Murray, props master for Syfy’s The Expanse. Check out all the scratch-built armor, weapons, and other sci-fi elements for this sprawling space adventure.

Paperhand puppet master takes Chapel Hill-Carrboro teachers to school – In local news, puppet maker Donovan Zimmerman is teaching puppetry to local elementary students. Zimmerman is cofounder of Paperhand Puppet Intervention, which produces incredibly imaginative and poetic masks and puppets out of mere cardboard and papier-mache. It’s a wonderful program that will probably be cut as both art and education are eliminated in the next four years.

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Saturday Props Forever

‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’: Props to the Prop Master – Yahoo! TV was invited to a show-and-tell of props from Agents of SHIELD hosted by prop master Scott Bauer. There’s some cool stuff in here if you are familiar with the show. And for the journalists out there: please stop using “Props to the Prop Master” as your title.

Book Review – Make: Props And Costume Armor By Shawn Thorsson – La Bricoleuse has a review of this long-anticipated book by Thorsson. You may have seen his work online, whether it’s the life-size ED-209 from Robocop or his giant Space Marine armor. Now he shares all his techniques in this highly polished book.

Up Your Game with the ‘Make Pretty’ – Christopher Schwartz shares one of his secrets to making good furniture. After the fabrication is complete, but before he begins finishing or painting, he takes a few hours at the top of the day to just go over the whole piece and sand or trim all the minor defects.

The Thing ADI’s Creature Work Behind-The-Scenes – This is an oldie, but a goodie. The 2011 Thing was originally going to use practical effects rather than digital, and this video shows all the crazy monsters that could have been.

Learn the Double-Stitch Technique to Handsew Leather – Finally, Make Magazine teaches us the best way to sew leather by hand.

Useful Sites

It’s 2017, and All the Props are Here

Yolanda Baker is the Last Disco Ball Maker. She has made tens of thousands of mirror balls by hand for the past fifty years at Omega National Products in Louisville, the last American manufacturer of this iconic object. Chances are, if you have a US mirror ball, it was made by her. She even did all the balls in Saturday Night Fever.

Make Magazine shows us How to Make Breakaway Bottles and Window Panes.  They use sugar glass, ugggggghhh. The process they describe is easy enough to adapt to isomalt, though, which is superior to sugar glass.

Adam Savage visits Weta Workshop’s Model Painting Shop. Adam seems to be visiting all sorts of cool places lately, and the model painting studio at the shop that built Lord of the Rings is no exception. Check out all the cool work they did while learning some painting tips for yourself.

PuppetVision has a Pinterest board with 92 pins of Animatronics & Puppet Mechanisms. You can spend days looking at all the clever ways to make objects move and come to life.

“Designing Windows is an Art”. Take a look at this interview with Erin O’Brien, a freelance window designer at Bergdorf Goodman in London. She talks about how she got started and shows off some examples of her work over the years.