Tag Archives: costumes

Useful Sites

Monday Link-ography

For your Monday’s enjoyment, here is a short list of some more sites to augment your prop making skills:

Useful Sites

Wednesday Link-O-Rama

Here are some quick links for the day.

  • Lonesome West Prop Tricks – Here are some quick tips for Martin McDonagh’s Loneseome West; most specifically, the stove that gets hit by a shotgun.
  • Costume Properties Construction Handbook – Costume properties has a lot of overlap with props; depending on the show, an object may have equal merit as a costume or a prop depending on the logistics of your production. Regardless, the materials and techniques are very similar for each field.
  • Top Ten Colbert Report Prop Malfunctions – If you watch the Cobert Report, you’ll love these prop malfunctions from the show’s history.
  • Stagehand Primer – Local 470 out of Wisconsin has their primer online. It includes a section on properties.  If you want to join the stagehand union anywhere in the country, this section will give you a good introduction as to what is expected of a props person in the union.
Resources

Movie Prop Replicas

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As I’ve mentioned a few websites dealing with film props, I thought I’d point out some communities based around replicating famous props from films. These are great resources for a lot of tutorials, such as vacuforming, casting, and working with fiberglas. They also focus on DIY and inexpensive solutions, so any prop shop can benefit from diving through the wealth of material they have.

The Replica Prop Forum – This is one of the cornerstones of the community, with members interested in props for a wide range of films. It also has discussions about costumes and scale modeling. Since it is a forum, it can take some time to navigate and search around, but it’s worth it.

TK560 – This site has tutorials and guides to building a number of props from Star Wars, Star Trek, and a number of other sci-fi films.

TK409 – Another site with tutorials for making do-it-yourself Star Wars props.

The previous two sites are part of the 501st legion, the “world’s definitive Imperial costuming organization.” It is an organization of over six thousand people who dress like members of the Empire in Star Wars. All of these sites have a plethora of links to other DIY prop and costuming resources throughout the internet.

The Magnoli Collection of Prop Replicas – Indy Magnoli’s collection of prop replicas. Most are based around the Indiana Jones’ movies, but some other films are represented as well. There are a good amount of paper props as well, with descriptions of how they were made.

That’s it for now. Let me know if there are any other sites you find interesting. You can also point out any other communities or groups which would have useful information for prop people.

Resources

Making indie film props

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Lost in Schlock is a blog by Tim Shrum, who creates  props, monsters, and costumes for super low-budget films. The site has been around for awhile, and is chock full of tutorials and guides for all manner of objects. It is geared to the DIY crowd, so almost any prop shop can pull off the projects. I found some great tutorials on how to make Monster Mud, low budget fake heads, and molded gelatin prosthetics. I also found this old video with Leonard Nimoy about making spaceship models out of junk, which I swear I saw as a kid.