The Center Theatre Group (CTG) out in Los Angeles has posted a video of an interview with their prop shopper, Sarah Steinman. It’s rare to see such an in-depth look at what a prop shopper does. Many people outside the industry think prop shopping is an easy job, but I can tell you from experience that the abilities of an expert shopper go far above just walking into a store and buying things. Enjoy the video!
Tag Archives: video
Finding the Center of a Circle
We open our first two operas this week at the Santa Fe Opera, but I managed to find a bit of time to shoot this video. Sometimes you need to find the center of a circle which already exists. It is actually really easy if you know how, and the following video will take you through it in just over a minute and a half.
Friday Rehearsal Notes
For those of you in North Carolina, the Maker Faire NC is happening tomorrow at the State Fairgrounds in Raleigh. I won’t be there, but the Alamance Makers Guild (where I am a member) will have a copy of my book you can peruse through. And of course, being a Maker Faire, there will be tons of other cool things to see and do.
How to be a Retronaut has a few cool photographs from behind the scenes at Madame Tussaud’s in the 1930s. Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum is still going strong today, and I’ve known prop people who work there, maintaining all the statues.
Adam Savage talks about how being under a deadline can actually improve your projects because it forces you to be more creative. Of course, he uses plenty of examples from his prop and model building days. And there’s a photograph of him in an alien costume.
A California couple bought a house and discovered it had a fallout shelter which was perfectly preserved from 1961. Check out the article for some awesome photographs of product packaging from that time period.
Tony Swatton makes stage combat swords for stage and film. Here is a video where he forges the sword from He-Man. And then he destroys a car with it. I’ve linked to this web series before; every week, he has a new episode showing the creation of a sword or other weapon from film, TV and video games. It is a very insightful view into all kinds of metal working techniques.
Stan Winston School Videos
The Stan Winston School offers classes out in California for a number of crafts. Stan Winston Studios is, of course, famous for many of its movie creatures and animatronics, such as the Terminators, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, the aliens from Alien, and many more. The classes they offer fit their specialties, such as sculpting, creature design, large-scale puppetry, painting and so on.
For those who can’t afford to head out to California and attend monster-making school, they have hours and hours of videos on their website. They offer a number of options for viewing the videos; everything from subscribing for a year of unlimited video watching ($300) to buying a DVD of a single lesson ($40). Previews of all the lessons are available for free viewing so you can check them all out. Below is a pretty fun one of foam fabrication, where Ted Haines constructs a Tyrannosaurus out of upholstery foam.
It seems like a great option to augment your skills since these kinds of classes usually aren’t offered at the local Learning Annex.
Adam Savage, Maker Faire 2013
Every year at the San Mateo Maker Faire, Adam Savage, from MythBusters, delivers a speech to a massive crowd. This year, his speech was called “Work Hard and Work Smart”. It is almost like a commencement speech, so I thought it would be great for all the graduating students who will be entering the professional world in a few weeks or even days. He gives a lot of practical advice as well, and all of his examples are from the world of special effects and props, so his workplace stories will sound familiar to all of my readers.
The speech itself is about 12 and half minutes long. He takes questions at the end which lead to further interestingness, so if you want to see that, you can view the much longer video here.