Tag Archives: video

Useful Sites

May Day Links

Happy first day of May, everyone! I’m going into tech today, so the links will be short but sweet:

Jay Duckworth made 160 candlesticks for Hamilton, the most popular show in the world right now. Read his article in Stage Directions to find out how he did it. Hint: he used his drill press like a lathe. Okay, that’s a bit more than a hint.

Creative Media Skills interviews Gavin Jones, a prop maker on Game of Thrones.  Find out how he got started and what a typical day is like for him.

Barry Gibbs shows us some of the new weapons used by the Avengers in the new Avengers: Age of Ultron. Gibbs is the prop master on the film, not the last surviving member of the Bee Gees.

Behold! The quickest tutorial on Wonderflex! Demented Cosplay has a video briefly going over the properties of Wonderflex, a plastic sheet that becomes pliable with very little heat, and hardens into place at room temperature.

Useful Sites

Prop-pourri

I was a big fan of He-Man growing up, so I really enjoyed seeing this Instructable on making a He-Man Power Sword. Blast Replicas uses an interesting technique of creating a “skeleton” with thin plastic guides, and then adding body filler between the guides to fashion all the curved and beveled faces. The paint treatment on the final piece is also pretty sweet.

Millennium FX created a giant polar bear operated by two puppeteers as part of a PR stunt for Fortitude on Sky Atlantic. Be sure to check out the video which has some “making of” footage that’s sure to be helpful to anyone who needs to build an articulated animal form.

Tested visits Monsterpalooza 2015, a convention for creature makers, practical effects shops, and special effects makeup. I’m amazed at all the high quality work being done out there in the world.

For those of you building things out of craft foam, WM Armory has compiled his ten best tutorials on crafting foam. I’ve linked to some of these individually before, but here they are together in case you’ve missed some.

Finally, here’s a beautiful video showing a couch being made. It’s a real couch, not a prop couch, so they have some pretty sophisticated machines for some of their processes (they roll their own springs!), but it is still very satisfying to watch the final piece grow out of a pile of raw materials.

Education

What’s a Set Decorator?

In theatre, the props master is responsible for all furniture and movable items on stage, whether the actor uses it or not. In TV and film, those duties are actually separated. The props master is responsible for the items the actors use, but the set decorators are in charge of supplying the furniture and dressing.

“The Crew” has a great video showing what the set decorators do, and introduces the different members of the department.