Props Designer vs Props Master

I've been recently working on a very big, very high budget show. The set designer on this project is kind of a big deal, he has Broadway credits and TV credits and movie credits and has been working at the top end of the industry for over 30 years.

I recently had a very interesting discussion with him about the titles of props master vs props designer. Over the last few years working in Chicago I have started more and more to call myself a props designer, so I was a little taken aback when John (the set designer) told me that he found the term incredibly annoying and insulting. He feels that calling the props person a designer as well takes away from the credit he should be receiving, or in some way demeans his position as set designer. I understand his point, and while I don't completely disagree with him, I think that the situation always needs to be taken into account.

So to clarify, in my opinion there is a difference between being a props master and a props designer. When I am a props master, I expect to be working very closely with the set designer. I expect to be given research and input on what the furniture, set dressing and key props should look like. The set designer is someone who will look at photos of the 6 desks I have located, and make the final choice of which one to buy. If I am the props master, then I have a collaborative partner who will be taking more responsibility for the final look of the show (whether that credit is receiving positive praise or accepting negative criticism). I will, of course, be making many decisions about details, budget, and small hand props on my own (or else why bother hiring me), but the overall look of the production is mine to support, not to decide.

I call myself a props designer so often in Chicago, because in so many of the small storefront theatres where I work, I am not the same level of support from set designers. In so many cases, furniture, set decoration and the overall look and feel of the props are left completely to me to discuss and work through with the director. I usually make an attempt first to achieve collaboration with the set designer, sending photos and emails, and asking for research; it is only when I do not get the information I need that I start to make decisions without input from the set designer. I am perfectly happy to assume full responsibility for the final look of the show in those cases (at many theatres this has nothing to do with the quality of the designer, it is just the way labor has traditionally been divided), but with that responsibility should come the credit and title of designer.

My conversation with John helped me to clarify and articulate to myself these differences. When the conversation initially started (and for a few days after), I worried that I was being self-important and pretentious by calling myself a props designer. I worried that I should stop using the term for fear of annoying potentially important people. With a lot of thought I have come to the conclusion that the term has it's place. I need to be more careful about how I use it, and after articulating for myself where the line is between master and designer, need to apply the terms appropriately, but abandoning the term completely would be just as wrong as using it in all cases.

covering an uncoverable floor

I'm not sure how common this practice is, but I just learned this trick and thought it was amazing. If you are dealing with a floor you can't put screws in (like concrete, marble) or aren't allowed to screw into (like the high school auditorium I'm currently working in), but still want to use the floor as a design surface, try this trick.

Start with blue painters tape. You can attach it to almost any surface and it will come up easily without damaging the surface or leaving a residue.

On top of the painters tape use double stick carpet tape and then stick your floor covering on top of that. The double stick tape is too strong to stick directly to the floor, if left for any amount of time it can do permanent damage, but the painters tape protects your floor surface while giving you the stickiness you need.

I used it recently to stick burlap to the floor of this high school theatre to create a base for the "gardens" we were going to create in "Love's Labours Lost", but the friend who taught me the trick was using it to attach a masonite deck (sold in lumber stores as "hardboard") to marble, and I'm thinking about using it to cover the ugly linolium tiles in my kitchen.

The blood fountain

I'd hate to ever give the impression that I always know what I'm doing. Many times the difficult props require much more of a back and forth and a ton of tweaking, this is my best attempt to detail that process.

The idea is that in a scene in the chapel the alter starts to drip blood, the effect wanted to start quickly and be very big, but then not draw attention for the rest of the scene. The alter was upright (like you would find on one of the side walls of a church) and about 1'-0" deep. There is a curved piece of lauan at the top that created a space about 1'-0" high and 7" deep to mask my work.

The first part of the idea was always the same. A tube, that "T"s from either side of center full of holes and capped on each end. The blood would be pushed into the T fitting from the back, run through the tubes, out the holes, and run down the back wall of the alter.

My first plan to get the blood there was to use simple pressure and mechanical force. There would be someone behind the alter with a 2 Liter soda bottle full of blood. This would be connected by a hose to the T fitting. The person operating the effect would simply squeeze the bottle and the force would push the blood though the system. The first plan feel though though when the alter (and the curtain that was supposed to live just behind it) got moved 4' upstage. The space behind the alter was now too small to fit a person. This meant that the person controlling the blood would have to be below the stage. The tube would have to be significantly longer and my soda bottle would no longer hold enough blood to fill the entire length of tubing and make it out the top.

The solution we ended up using was a small fountain pump (purchased in the garden section at home depot). These garden pumps are relatively cheap, have a lot of muscle and, when fully submerged, make almost no noise. They are sold right alongside the tubing that fits them. We placed the blood supply in a paint can on the back of the unit, placed the pump into the blood, connected the pump to the T fitting, and ran the cord for the pump down though a small hole in the stage to an extension cord on the other side. The extension cord is then plugged into a surge protector. To make the blood go, all the assistant stage manager needs to do is flip the switch on the surge protector for 30 seconds.

This set-up was tested before the first preview and declared a success, but after watching that night from the back row, we had to make some changes. The 1/8" holes that I had drilled along the tubing were far too small. While the blood looked very cool up close, from the back of the house the thin lines of blood were almost invisible. We needed fewer bigger holes. I took the back off the alter, covered some of the holes with tape and redrilled other holes so they were almost 10x the size. I then turned the hose so that the holes were facing directly at the lauan back; this helped to spread out the stream of blood.

At the second preview the blood was much more visible and exciting, but after the show we discovered a new problem. The bigger streams of blood were messier, drips were hitting the cross on the wall, bouncing forward and not falling into the tub (made out of long thin planter boxes) at the bottom. I didn't want to make the tub bigger because it needed to be easy to remove and rinse out after every show. I ended up creating a run-off slide out of thin sheets of craft foam (available in sheets at any craft store) and duct tape. Any blood that splashed in front of the tub would land on the foam and slide back into the tub.

Most of these solutions were easy to do, but the trick to being successful with props is more in the willingness to do them, to never expect your first solution to be the final one, and to always be prepared to change your plans to adapt to new problems.

(Also I promise to provide a photo of the blood in action at some point.)

Elizabethan Settee

For the Castle of Otranto we came across a piece of furniture we needed that didn't seem to exist. A wounded man is brought to the castle and in the next scene he is being tended to in the chapel. We needed him to be laying on a chaise or couch, but also wanted the piece of furniture to look somewhat logical in a family chapel.
I came across this image of a jacobean sofa in my research and we decided to adapt it. We decided that by mirroring the raised arm on the opposite end, the sofa would look much more like it was intended for sitting instead of lounging and therefore be appropriate for a family chapel, while still looking comfortable when the actor was using it to lounge.
The legs and turned arm supports are available at Home depot with outdoor decking lumber and the detailing on the stretchers was a cut-off of some dollar-store plastic garden-edging fence pieces. The fabric was a remnant I bought at LZ fabics in Chicago.
The frame of the seat is 2x2 with supports every foot, and a 3/8 ply lid, which makes the whole thing very light but still sturdy enough. The design of the original sofa is inherently weak, in order to better support an actor laying against it I made the cushions in between the turned supports rigid and I added the small braces to the back of the rests for support.

Notes
-If you are in the Chicago area and have never been to LZ fabrics, go. It is located at 2121 21st street and as one friend described it "it's like Harry Potter and the Fabric warehouse!"
-When building furniture I like to designate it as "sittable, standable or dancable" to directors and stage managers. I find it communicates the appropriate uses for the pieces with minimal grey area.

Skeletor Part 2

Skeletor's chest plate is based around a fleece zip up vest, worn backwards, that I found at the salvation army. It has a plywood sternum and ribs made of bendy plywood. The "bones" are attached to the vest by screws, which go through into small pieces of wood on the inside of the vest. Between the vest and the ribcage are strips of scrap fabric that were sewn into the collar line.
The hand is made of small sections of dowel rod which have springs wrapped around at each joint. I nailed the ends of each finger to a small square of wood, and from there attached two dowel rods for the wrist bones. This forearm was then sewn to the top of an old gardening glove (one of the best ways I have found to attach fabric to a rigid wood, plastic or metal is to "sew it on." Drill small holes along your rigid piece and stitch through these into the fabric) . Fishing line was then tied through holes at the tip of each finger bone, and sewn into the tip of the glove fingers. This allows the actors to manipulate the skeleton fingers while his hand is hidden inside the sleeve of the robe.

Skeletor part 1

For a gothic play called "The Castle of Otranto" we needed a ghost. It was decided that the ghost would be played by an actor and I set about making him into a human puppet. His costumes consists of a head piece, a chest piece, a hand and a cloak over it all.
To make the head I took an old plastic skull and cut off the front to turn it into a sort of mask. I built a headglove for the actor (You build a headglove by starting with a plastic grocery bag on the actors head then wrapping it in layers of masking tape, it has a level of suction to it because of the plastic inner layer and the custom fit. It and can therefor hold some very heavy mask and other head pieces). I embedded floral wires in between layers in order to wire the plastic skull to the front. springs were screwed to either side of the hinged jaw and a piece of tie line attached underneath. The actor can pull the tie line to move the jaw down and the springs pull it back up, making the ghost talk.