Tag Archives: body

Behind the scenes at Dexter

Over at the LA Times, Maria Elena Fernandez recently met with prop master Josh Meltzer and assistant in the prop department Dave Maguire. They show a lot of the props, body parts and blood used on Showtime’s Dexter.

We learn what a “gold room” is in television parlance, how they stab somebody, and many other nifty little tidbits. One surprise is that they use retractable knives for the stabbings; these have almost universally fallen out of favor with theatrical prop masters. Perhaps the repetition of performance in theatre makes it more likely for an accident to happen, as opposed to television, where it is used only once under the eye of the experienced prop master.

Also: thirty more days until Halloween!

A body for Bacchae: Part Two

In part one of “making a body for Bacchae“, we developed a series of samples and prototypes of dead body parts out of spray foam, Foam Coat, and Dragon Skin. Since then, we’ve been able to show the pieces to the whole production team; John Conklin, the scenic designer, and JoAnne Akalaitis, the director, gave us the go-ahead to continue on with the actual body pieces.

We started with a skeleton. We were originally going to get a skeleton from a medical supply store, but I found a corpsing tutorial at “Skull and Bones.com” which shows that you can get a “4th quality” skeleton from certain companies for a lot cheaper. It may be missing some hardware and fasteners, and the overall quality will be less, but all the pieces are there, and for our purposes, it was perfect.

The full skeleton laid out on a table
The full skeleton laid out on a table

We broke the skeleton apart into several pieces. In the play, King Pentheus is killed through sparagmos, and we had to make the end result. The legs and skull were three separate pieces. We left one shoulder blade and upper arm on the torso, which left us with one complete arm, and one forearm.

The first steps in adding muscle to the bones
The first steps in adding muscle to the bones

Like the sample pieces, we built the muscle up by spraying expanding foam onto the bones, carving it into muscles, and coating everything with Rosco Foam Coat.

Continue reading A body for Bacchae: Part Two