The Seedling Mile sign

When we were one week away from tech for Leaving Iowa, the director decided that one of the road signs we were planning on doing as a projection, would work better as a practical prop.
It needed to be light, easy to move, and look like this.

I kinda freaked out. I imagined hours and hours of careful stenciling to get all of that wording onto the sign, and I didn't have enough time left for that.
My brilliant production manager came to the rescue, however, and suggested foam craft letters. Perfect solution.

The base of the sign is just a sheet of pink insulation foam, screwed to a PVC stand and coated in a home made scenic dope (a mixture of latex paint, latex caulk and drywall mud).

I sorted the letters into piles to make it easier to form words (this was the most time consuming part) and hot glued the words from the research image onto my sign. I then used a foam brush to brush a copper paint over the letters. Since the letters were raised, very little of the paint got on the brown sign behind the letters and I only needed to touch up a few places.
As a quick solution for getting the smooth copper line around the border I painted strips of spike tape and stuck them to the sign.

From the front it looked really impressive, and thankfully that was how the audience saw it, because if you get a view from the side you can still see the edges of my multi-colored foam letters.

Lessons about Polaroids

Recently I worked on a show that calls for a Polaroid photo to be taken in the final scene. There really were no shortcuts available either to get around spending the money on the consumable prop of film for each performance. The photo is taken in full view of the audience and then one character is immediately asked to sign the bottom of the photo after the camera spits it out.

I acquired a working 600 land camera (popular in the 70s and 80s) and then started trying to find film. Turns out...way harder than you would imagine.

First, Polaroid stopped making film for its instant cameras in 2008. Fujifilm has since taken over production of some instant film, but as far as the camera professionals I talked to could tell me, they don't work in older Polaroid cameras and are mostly just for Fujifilm cameras.

To get the film you have two options. The first is ebay, where bidding is competitive for old expired polaroid film. I thought that this would be a good option for me. I figured the chemicals for developing the photos in the expired film might have degraded over time, but since I didn't need a quality image, I should be fine. The problem is that the battery in old Polaroid cameras is part of the film pack and the battery had degraded over time as well. After spitting out half of the photos in the pack, the battery went dead and the remainder of the pack had to be thrown away.

A second option is the-impossible-project, a company made up of former Polaroid employees working in an old Polaroid factory in the Netherlands. For the past few years they have been working to combine their knowledge to reinvent instant film. Their products are still growing and developing (for example they don't have the peel off guard old Polaroid film had. You have to shade the picture immediately as it is being spit out of the camera to avoid over exposure). Typically a downside of this film is the time it takes to ship, but I was lucky (I thought) to find a local camera store that buys it and keeps it in stock. In the end, the impossible film I purchased from the local store had the same problem as the ebay film. It had been sitting too long and the battery went dead after only taking six out of the eight photos in the pack. I would be interested in how film direct from the Netherlands would have held up.

So for future reference, plan on spending around $4 per photo if you need Polaroids, and allow plenty of time for ebay bidding and overseas shipping. If I had to do it again I think I would take my chances with the impossible project as I imagine their products are only going to get better with time.