Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Props in the last century
Props: "I just wanted to share some great old prop photographs I’ve come across on the Life photo archive hosted on Google. Remember, it’s also a great place to find primary photographic research since the invention of photography."
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This was a great article at showing the art of props and the advisements we made. I think that we have also made some back steps to we don’t know how to do as many things but hand we depend a lot more on machines and commuters to do the work. But on the other hand things are made a lot faster and are easer to make a ton of them. With all the technology at our hand I am surprised that props dose not uses more of it some times. Also where did all of the old hand crafted things go did the just disappear for our knowing or do people still know them. I would love to learn some of these crafts to just do more things with my hands.
It is amazing that a department that is so essential and has been around so long, gets so little respect and recognition.
They are truly artisans, and have amazing talents and design astetics. Yet, they are some of the most abused and unrecognized people in our industry. I am not sure how to change this, other than to treat the props artisans I work with, with more respect and let them know they are appreciated.
Not to mention... some of these items are really cool!
Well that was a fun spin in the time machine. My favorite was the image of the propman spinning spider webs. I've never even heard of that. And the rubber rocks. I think as theater people we love to see how things are made and its interesting to see how things were made before the techniques we currently use became available.
Props are perhaps the most resourceful of our trade, making use of an infinite amount of materials and objects in order to create the desired effect. They must be experts in everything, able to work with every material. It is fascinating to look at a few of the various ways these things have been done. I particularly like the miniature battleship.
I really enjoyed looking at this article. I wish it could have been backed up with more information, but the pictures alone tell a lot. I'm amazed at how long ago some of the pictures are from, particularly the spiderweb machine from 1937. I'm really curious what some of those props would have actually been used for, particularly the giant pencil and scissors. This article was a good reminder of how much things change over time, as shown through the use of rubber for fake rocks. I'm sure it would have been a much more difficult material to work with than foam. It will be interesting to see in the future how the processes of props change even more.
The props department is unique because each prop is fairly unique in its construction and so there is a breadth of knowledge required on behalf of the artisan. Learning how to come up with creative ways of making certain props takes a certain amount of ingenuity, but I'm sure a lot of the methods get passed down through the years from one generation to the next. There could be a fascinating number of books or documentaries on methods of creating certain props, and I'm sure given a room of prop masters they could come up with 50 different ways to create the same prop.
As technology gets better and better we lose out on the creativity of the past. Props is still one of those fields that gets to create in a really unique way despite advances in materials and technology. Looking at these pictures reminds me how much hard work and thought goes into the construction of props.
It is amazing to see some of the creations prop men had to come up with for films and other productions in prior decades. The intricate detail, and sometimes massive size make us wonder where that went to today? In the theater world...it seems props are still in the same boat, having to create everything from scratch or from pre-fabricated items. Today there are many more tools available to the propman to allow him to create things much faster. In the film world...some items have gone digital, which leaves a lot of work to computer artists. The link to the life photo Archive is a great resource that designers could use to help with research.
Props is without a doubt the department which requires the most diverse set of skills and the most wide base of knowledge.
With the advance of technology, we all have the drive to use the technology to make thing easier. However, easier is not always better. There are some things that require good old fashioned elbow grease to get the desired effect.
The stuff in the photo gallery is truly amazing and a great resource for anyone looking to create these types of items.
I am amazed at how these prop men from fifty or so years a go could create products as realistic and massive as what we can today. With newer technologies being developed - the impossible is now the possible, but it's still very hard to replicate what the prop men of yesteryear did. I guess the price we have to pay now is that it takes more time for a member of the union to build a giant pencil, than it is to digitally create one in a matter of hours, not days.
I hope this trend reverses, though I doubt that it will in the near future.
This post was a lot of fun to look over. There definitely was a very serious approach to a lot of props in the past that I haven't seen in my lifetime. I wonder if part of this is the difference between stage work and movie work, or perhaps the drift to somewhat less stringent expectations of realism. It would certainly be an interesting field to explore today.
Oh man! My first reaction to the article once opened up was amazement at giant scissors and pencils. Then I realized the caption specified the people were the props and not the objects. That is incredible. I didn't even realize that the people were miniature.
Most of the other commenter have been lamenting the loss of artisan pride and technique in theatrical crafts. I would like to add my agreement. Somethings we still maintain the highest level of professional quality, but there are many arts that were previously done by hand that are now done by machines. A huge reason for this is economic; people are expensive. There was a lecture given in the costume shop about beading garments. A beaded dress would cost around $6000 to produce in the United States but only $600 in India. The United States product would have appliqued lace and stunningly designed patterns of beads; the Indian one would just have beads haphazardly attached. The difference in quality is there but for producers, sometimes the money is more important. It's sad, but true.
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