Shock Me Like an Electric Chair

Greetings!

I'm not sure an electric chair is the most appropriate post for this holiday...but what holiday would be?

Today I'm digging into the archives and sharing the electric chair I created for the 2008 production of Assassins at The Green Room Theatre. If you're not familiar with the show, it's a Sondheim musical that opens with a murderous carnival game played by the men and women who have attempted (and/or succeed) in assassinating a US President. So we weren't going for realism.

I believe I spent $27 on the entire scenic design for the show and remember spending exactly $2 on this chair.

Step one: Find a free chair. This chair was a school desk in a previous life. I added arm rests and extended the head rest. (The actor using the chair was 6'7".)

Step two: Find the cheapest buckles possible. I purchased two belts from the local DAV, then sanded leather and painted the metal to match.

Step three: Paint the chair. This was by far the worst smelling black paint I have ever used. It was undated and in the back corner of the basement. My nose is crinkling as I type.

Admittedly the chair looked a bit funky in the daylight. But it never appeared onstage without the actor, and the lighting was dark. So for 2 hours work and 2 dollars I was pretty happy.

Designing for The Green Room was a fabulous experience. I learned the realities of tight timeframes and minimal budgets that summer. Most of all, I realized that scenic design was my favorite area of the production process.

Happy Hunting.

Hand Castings

Apologies - between helping with a few shows and working on the design for Chicago, the last two weekends have flown by. But this week's post covers an awesome project!

To create the unique furniture pieces for this semester's production of Madwoman, the shop assembled furniture using mannequin body parts. But we soon discovered the mannequin hands are pretty uniform and uninspired. So we decided to cast hands.

Clockwise around the table - Ryan and Emma shave wax, Molly serves as our hand model, and Tim uses an air hose to remove the hand.

First, we attempted to cast  a hand using layers of wax, then fill the negative with plaster. Several problems: (1) We lacked the ability to consistently keep the wax above the melting point but below the 'Oh God that's hot!' temperature range. (2) The castings were reinforced with steel rods but still proved fragile.

 I don't have any photos of the 2nd method attempted. I was the hand model and needed to sit very still. Tony B formed a red clay reservoir around my hand, then created two plaster shells. The negative was filled with wax. This technique had some promise, but the negative cracked when Tony attempted to pry out the fingers.

Wayne donated his hand to the cause.

(Triumphant fanfare) And then we discovered Alginate molding! The powder is readily available online and easy to work with. Simply mix with water and begin casting.

Not a cake.

 The moldings were kept in the container for casting, but this gives you a sense of the consistency. 5 out of 6 shop employees agree it smells like baby aspirin.

We filled the negatives with fiberglass resin and were amazed at the level of detail in the castings. (You could see the scars on our hands!)

After the fiberglass cooled (it's an endothermic reaction) the pieces could be attached to other mannequin parts using fiberglass cloth and resin.

Once painted the details were highly visible.

Happy Casting!

Custom Newspapers

Newspapers frequent many prop lists and can require custom headlines and photos. How can you create them? This was the technique I used for Floyd Collins and Bonnie and Clyde.

Custom newspaper layout for Bonnie and Clyde

1. Research newspapers of the era, and share them with the director. 

(Remember the library and the giant microfilm equipment? Don't limit your research to the internet!)

2. Have the actors rehearse with paper cut to the dimensions of your custom newspaper.

(It might seem strange but it can save hours of revisions.)

3.  Create a Photoshop document to the dimensions of the rehearsal newspaper (front and back).

Switch to grayscale and keep your resolution around 150 pixels/inch. A 30in width by 22.75in height will match the US standard size.

4. Find your fonts and upload them to all the computers you'll be using.

Dafont.com and fontempire.com are excellent resources. If you'll be going between multiple machines install the fonts on all of them!

5. Set your guides in Photoshop.

Click and drag off the ruler, and you'll notice a blue line follows you. This may be my favorite feature in Photoshop. Guidelines! Set up boundaries similar to your research.

6. Add lines, text, and photos.

Add vertical lines over your guides to divide your columns if you like. Or not, look at the research. Either take custom photos of the actors for the headlines, or find public domain images. To help age your shots experiment with the Noise filter options. Don't worry about actually writing authentic stories for the filler. Even the audience member 5 feet away won't be able to read it. And label your layers, or you'll be navigating a layer labyrinth during tech.

7. Import the back page (if you can).

Unless you need a very specific back page to the newspaper, save time by finding a public domain images/advertisement from the era. During Bonnie and Clyde the newspapers were never unfolded, and yours may not be either.

8. Save as a pdf and print!

Save the document as a psd and pdf. (And prior to saving the pdf merge layers. If you can print in-house on your plotter, wonderful! If not, schedule a late night party at your local FedEx Kinko's. Black and white oversize printing will cost around $1 a square foot. 

By the way, odds are you won't find a print shop willing to run newsprint through their equipment. Which is fine - print on the standard white paper. It's more durable anyway!

9. Mist printed pages with gray spray paint and sand edges.

Newspapers aren't printed on high-quality paper. Mist with gray for the 'hot-off-the-press' look, or age the paper with yellows and browns.

10. Stuff the newspaper with misted and sanded paper.

If there's junked light plots/floor plans around first ask if they're really trash, then stuff your newspaper.

If you don't know Photoshop, learn it! Prop work will be easier, your resume will look sharper, and your portfolio will be more professional. (This post was process-heavy for my taste. But newspapers are such a regular occurrence on prop lists.) Next week's project will not use Photoshop, I promise!

Candy Wrappers?

Good Morning! To everyone recovering from the Floyd Collins strike last night - Congratulations on the completion of such an ambitious project!

This week's post will feature another project that came up while working on Floyd's props. Here's some ideas for the creation of period candy wrappers:

1. Call Grandma. Seriously. She'll enjoy reminiscing about childhood candy and the opportunity to help you on a project.

2. More research! Find images online and scale them to the appropriate size. Floyd's were printed on regular typing paper. I selected Squirrel Nut Zippers, Nestles Funnies, and Flying Lindy Sandwiches.

3. Age the typing paper. For this project I used Design Master's Glossy Wood Tone. I followed that layer with a clear gloss (to look a bit more like wax paper). Treat both sides of the paper.

4. Cut out the wrappers, and fold them around a small wood chip.

Finished product.

Cameras for Collins

I'm currently sitting in tech for the upcoming musical Floyd Collins, a production by Florida Players. The musical tells the tale of an explorer trapped in a Kentucky cave, the resulting media-frenzy, and the (literal) carnival that erupts above him.

This production requires two cameras - one for early motion pictures, one for film. The budget for both cameras was $10. The cameras aren't replicas of particular models. The goal was to create pieces that appeared to be primitive film technology, yet shiny and foreign compared to the wooden crates and ropes of the Kentucky camp.

Scrap lumber from the shop was utilized for the boxes (1/2" and 3/4"plywood, as well as 1/8" and 1/4" luan). Two cameras were scraped for lenses and buttons. Goodwill is a great resource. If you have enough lead time you can even request they save any broken cameras. And some similar stores don't sell donated film cameras.

The (implied) flash on the film camera is made from part of a VHS film camera and parts from a broken flashlight. In this case lighting designer will be providing the flash with a strobe.

The crank on the film camera was a bit tricky - it's made from a baton handle, spring, coat hangers, PVS, and a small amount of hardware.

Total cost of cameras = less than 4 hours in the shop, $8.50 in materials.

For more information on the production visit Florida Players.

Welcome

'Insert standard 'First post, whoo-hoo!' greeting here.'

Hiya - I'm Jovon, and welcome to Prop Adventures - my first attempt and blogging about my projects as a Prop Master and Scenic Designer.

As a prop master, I work with the director, actors, and scenic designer to create items that fit into the world of the production. The process starts with research, proceeds to a phase of trial and (not too much) error, and doesn't really finish until strike.

Over the years I've constructed some oddities - whether Mrs. Lovett's meat grinder or Blanche's birthday cake, the process is creative, challenging, and always rewarding.

I hope to share a new project every Sunday, so swing by after you've checked Post Secret's updates!

Thanks!