Prop Agenda: With this summer’s season at the Santa Fe Opera at an end, I can begin to show off some of the props I’ve built there. First up is a giant champagne bottle.
We needed four champagne bottles of a very specific size; they were going to be the barrels of cannons that I would also build. Nobody manufactures champagne bottles that large, so we had to make them. Since we would vacuum-form them from plastic, I began by making a solid foam bottle.
10 comments:
I think is amazing! I have always been impressed with the fabrication of the custom things you see on stage. As a kid, I would watch shows and would be astounded by the amazing things I saw on stage. I think this was my initial draw to go into theater. This was spectacular to see the fabrication of something of such size. As a production manager, my favorite thing is when a problem arises and we must find a creative way to fix it. This must have been an interesting conversation that occurred between the props shop and the production management team. In the end, the solution was quite spectacular and perfect for the exact purposes of the show.
How cool! In the world of theatre, almost everything can be created and designed to replicate another object. These prop champain bottles are incredible, but also consist of many steps and intimately time and money to produce. Since these props are used for the Snate Fe Opera, they will most likely have a good budget to produce these props. In props for stagecraft we have just started mold making using a one part mold. Mold making is extremely time online and can eat into your budget very quickly. I know that we own a vacuume forming machine and would love to put my hand on it. I find prop making absolutely fascinating and this looked liked an awesome project to work on.
I remember the first time I used a lathe, I was so excited by the possibility. However I have only worked with relatively small materials. I used it to carve out spacers for a wooden bike chain. This is a really cool use of the machine though. The world of props has always been a cool one because it makes everything into a toy factory. With the ability to create a 4' tall champagne bottle, I'm sure there are so many cool things you could make in similar fashion. Every time I see something like this, I immediately think about what I could create in similar fashion, given the free time and resources.
Most of the time when you see stuff like this onstage you might assume it was just preordered or in stock, without really considering it was custom made just for you to see. Of course, we don't really want the audience to be thinking about this. I am very impressed by the meticulous detail in which the bottles were created at every step of the process. It would be interesting to know the timeline for a project such as this from its inception in the design phase to its completion.
And this is why large companies have enormous prop warehouses... There are so many items that need to be created just for a single moment in a single show, like the champagne bottles discussed in this article. Prop construction is much more interesting to me than standard scenic construction as the materials and fabrication methods are wildly more varied.
THIS IS HILARIOUS! I think props are so cool. It's so interesting to learn about how to make these things! I am really interested in learning about special effects make-up and not just the make-up part, but the actual process of making the prosthetics. I think it's so cool to be able to manipulate someone's features with make up and prosthetics!
Keith made a good point about them having a decent budget to make this champaign bottle. I wonder if there is a way to make the same thing but slightly cheaper for a company that might not have to luxury of such a budget. I know that there are very cheap and fast ways to make prosthetics as well as really expensive and EXTREMELY slow ways. It would be interesting to see what a low budget production would do in this case.
This is a really cool insight into the prop production process. It's really easy to assume when you see a prop like that on stage that it was just ordered from some prop company and done. But to see the amount of work and skill it takes to make even a seemingly simple prop like that is awesome. It also really makes me want to learn how to use a lathe. There are so many cool things you can do with a machine like that, and a 4' tall champaign bottle is just one. It really adds a lot of production possibilities to a shop.
Pretty neat idea I must say. The level of the writing was great for me. He didn't explain every small step to me, but he also didn't assume I knew everything about the topics he was talking about. I check out the video that he links to. It's very cool. I had never seen a vacuum form that large. I also watched one or two of the other videos that Eric Hart has put on Youtube. They are all very cool. I a now subscribed to him so I can watch all of the new videos that he puts up.
Of the most interesting new things that I learned from reading this was that some lathes have a duplicator that lets you copy the shape of something that you already have. I had never thought that was possible before. I also thought that the way he cut the foam bottle in half with a hot wire was really clever.
At Carnegie Mellon, we have a laser cutter, 3D printers, CNC tooling, and all the other state-of-the-art fabrication equipment. These are all very cool and important from an educational standpoint, but as this article demonstrates, some of the old fashion techniques are still the best way to go. Vacuform is one of the first ways developed to manipulate plastics, and based on this article, may still be one of the best.
This project is so impressive. I have made some of small props in my freshman year, but since I never dealt with such enormous props, I was very astounded by how many infinite things we can make. With the final touch such as dye and label, it totally looks like giant champagne bottles. Also, it was really amazing how much effort that was put in for a single production. I agree with Philip's saying how people can think that it was ordered from some prop manufacture factory when they see a giant props. With this kind of scaled props in the stage, I am confident that it will totally bring a different feeling/mood to the show. Although this article did not explain the procedure of making them in a great detail, I really want to explore and have a chance to build giant props like this.
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