Tag Archives: Chris Young

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Props Links for Friday

Just a reminder that you have until May 15th to apply for one of the $1000 grants being offered by S*P*A*M. If you have a props internship or apprenticeship either now or in the near future, you are eligible, and it is super easy to apply for!

Slammin’ Ham! – FFFriday Guest Post from Victoria Ross – For one of our shows at Triad, my apprentice cast and painted this very hefty ham out of silicone rubber. The final scene in Two Trains Running is punctuated by a character slamming the ham on the diner counter, and this ham made that slam very dramatic.

Someone Has To Clean Up After Broadway’s Creative Destruction - True West features the near-total destruction of everything on stage by the end of the performance, and the current Broadway production delivers that. Find out how the show’s prop team accomplished not only that, but the clean-up and reset before every show as well.

How Disney uses more than 7,000 props to make Galaxy’s Edge look and feel like a ‘Star Wars’ movie – The new Star Wars theme park requires a ton of very custom set dressing. Find out how Eric Baker and his team are salvaging airplane parts and other pieces of junk to build this “final frontier.”

Behind the Scenes at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Props Warehouse – Chris Young, the props director at STC, explains how they accomplished all the blood effects in their recent production of The Oresteia.

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Weekly Props Roundup

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For the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s props director, one blood is not like another – The Washington Post does a fantastic job interviewing Chris Young, Properties Director of the Shakespeare Theater Company. Chris shows off all the different kinds of blood he uses, and why he needs so many. The article has some great photographs, including a few of the blood delivery devices he incorporates into props and costumes.

I Ain’t Got No Body – A lot of dead bodies seem to appear in Jay Duckworth’s props shop, so it’s about time you get to hear his side of the story. For Shakespeare in the Park’s production of Cymbeline, Jay used the Saran wrap and packing tape method for making a body, and he gives a good step-by-step tutorial in this article.

Midlands Professional – Set Designer and Prop Maker David Hardware - David Hardware tells his story of how he became interested in working in film. He started out working in craft services, and eventually opened his own prop-making studio in Leicester, England.

Pressure Casting a Glow-in-the-Dark Slimer Model – The folks at Tested have a video showing how Frank Ippolito cast a glow-in-the-dark sculpture of the Onionhead Ghost from Ghostbusters.

Finally, in an update to last week’s story about the devastation to The Alley Theatre in Houston from Hurricane Harvey, the theater recently posted some videos and photographs from their prop storage area. It looks like it will take awhile to clean everything up, and a lot of it may end up being unsalvageable.

Useful Sites

Last Links of Summer (observed, not actual)

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Well, well, we made it almost a whole week without a hurricane or earthquake here in New York. Here are some links to keep you occupied over the weekend. I would wish you a happy “three-day weekend”, but most of you are in theatre, and we don’t get holidays off.

List of Tools is more than just a list of tools; it breaks down all sorts of tools into different categories, tells you what they are used for, and includes all sorts of other relevant information. It’s great when you want to know the difference between a ball peen and a straight peen hammer, or how to measure the inside diameter of a pipe.

Here is an interview with Clive Lankford of Lancaster’s Armouries, a British sword and armor maker that specializes in stage combat weapons.

The Washington Post did a nice spread on Chris Young, prop master at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. It’s wonderfully photographed, and always great when a larger media outlet pays attention to the work that goes on behind the scenes.

How old is your globe? This site lists various names of now defunct countries, along with when they changed and what their modern equivalent is. So if you find an older name on your globe, you know how old your globe is. Also great in reverse, for when you need to make a globe or a map and want to make sure you aren’t using any anachronistic geography.

Finally, here is a walk through a haunted house. The pictures are all taken with flash, so you really get the details of the construction behind a lot of the pieces and scenes.