Wednesday, October 02, 2013
History for Hire’s Prop Making Workshop
Prop Agenda: Here is a look at History for Hire, a large prop rental and fabrication shop in LA. The video below takes us through part of their fabrication shop, with the added bonus of showing some of the pieces they were working on for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
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12 comments:
This is so cool! I want to live there! It would be incredible to live there for about a week and still not be done looking around. Enough fanning over it now.
I wonder how they got started. Did someone just decide one day that they wanted to start a huge collection of stuff and replicate it? I'd be interested in the history of the place.
I have to wonder more about their methods for replicating the objects. How much research do they do on it? Or do they just methodically take it apart and put it back together? What kind of materials do they use, the original ones or a close substitute? And lastly, how do I get a job there?
I am used to shows where the props are either pulled from a theater's stock, created, found from rental stores, or borrowed. Thus, it is interesting that this company purchases and creates items that they believe will be useful in the future that they can rent to productions. I would assume that film productions are more apt to rent items since they never really have an "extended run" and once these items have been filmed they are done needing them. It is very cool that they are working on a fairly big production in their shop and it would be interesting to see a list of their artisans and their titles as well as how they catalog their inventory.
What I like about this video is the fact that it takes you around the prop house and gives you more insight to what actually goes on there. Here at CMU, we are used to pretty much just having Jon Ward at our fingertips and not really realizing what actually goes into getting these props. We don't always make them, but we order from places like this and it's really cool to see what actually goes on there instead of just thinking there is a magical place filled with rainbows and unicorns and props. It's great to see places like this thriving and really getting work to do.
This prop workshop is really awesome. Before I came to CMU, I did not really have much sense about props. So, I wasn't sure if the production always made the props or bought them every time. That is why when I first went to warehouse at CMU where all of previously used props are gathered, I was so surprised. Also, while taking props class, it was so interesting how props were made with different materials that I haven't seen before. Looking at this video, firstly it attracted my attention because it is located in LA. It is so intriguing how many of rental places are located in LA because of Hollywood. It was also surprising to see how many varieties of same object it has. Even for the baseball gloves, they have tons of different gloves with different styles, indicating different time periods. I think this is really cool how they are trying their best to create accurate and vivid atmosphere of certain time period that each production wants it to be.
Like Kristen, I am also wondering how History for Hire got started? Or how much research goes into replicating these objects. Also, I am wondering about the materials they use for this and the craftsman ship for it. For example, for a baseball prop that has to be busted on the swing of a bat, do they actually configure that? Is that an editing or special effects job? Or is it the material used that allows for this?
I would definitely be more interested in learning about the craftsmanship of prop shops!
Prop shops are some of my places in the world. Being a prop master/builder is one of the most challenging and skilled jobs I know of. You need to be able to build almost anything and do it with very little time. The prop shop in the video looks amazing. It's very interesting how they need to keep old and new versions of every object. I imagine that sort of practice ends up filling a very large amount of space very fast. I didn't get a sense of scale of the warehouse. I would have liked to have seen a walk though of the whole space so that I could tell how big it was. Overall the video work was pretty bad. The camera work was shaky and didn't stay on a single subject for more than a second. The interviewer was also not the most skilled I've seen. The content was cool enough that I can forgive these less then perfect elements.
There is a heaven! I found it interesting to see the differences between our CMU warehouse and this prop shop. The scale of shop in LA was massive! I'm wondering if any of their props are used for theatre or if they are all used in film and television. What is nice about this company making all of the props is that they look old, but they have great durability. What is tragic about vintage items is that they always fall apart. I was a little surprised at how much western leatherwork they had in their shop. We don't really see much western movies anymore, but then I realized television has been doing a bunch of western shows (AMC, etc). I also wonder if they lend their props out to events like war reenactments.
I'd kill to work in a place like that. There's definitely something to be said about how much goes into making a prop. I thought what she said about carrying objects that look 70 years old and objects that look new from 70 years ago was really interesting. There is so much information that people need to know when building these things and I honestly think that the research that someone does when building a prop can be an incredible education. Not only do they need to know what they are building and all the practical information that goes along with it (what is it supposed to look like, when do they need it, how long do they need it for, what does it have to do, and so on...) but they also need to know (if the prop is something from, say, the middle ages,) what it would have been made of, why it would have been made of that and how it would have been made, what it would actually look like if it were new (or maybe how it would age) and whether or not that is possible to make in a prop shop OR what can be substituted. Looking up all of that information can actually give someone a fairly decent historical education. That's actually my favorite part of the job, with every show comes new information to be learned about a time period regardless if you are researching the set, the costumes, or the props.
What a cool video! That seems like a really fun place to work. One of the things that I thought was really interesting was when they were talking about vintage baseball gloves. There's a difference between needing a baseball glove from the 1940s for a film taking place today and a baseball glove from the 1940s for a film set in the 1940s. Now that I've heard that, it seems obvious, but its something that I hadn't really given a lot of thought before.
I was also sort of surprised that big productions get props from these made to order prop houses. Again, this is just something I had not given much thought to. I guess I would assume that a movie might have its own props crew or something but this absolutely makes sense.
This is so intense! It's crazy how they make new things and old things that are the same item, just in different time periods. I had never thought about how one might need an old item to look new, and they have done a really good job of doing just that. The variety that they have in their stocks are really great! It's interesting how they can have things that look so similar, and yet are not meant to look mass produced. I really love looking at props, and I really loved to hear about their process and work.
So this was really cool. I would absolutely love to work in this field!!! It would be so much fun to wake up every day and go to work and make something completely different! I think this video could've done a better job at showcasing just how cool prop shops really are! They are truly such a spectacle to go into and just walk around. From either taking A modern thing and making it look how ever many years old or just making something really old from crap is so much fun and the challenge of actually making it look real is such a rush. I made some props in high school and ive worked in the prop shop here and its always so much fun, it also requires such a wide range of skills! I have so much respect for people who do this for a living!
Prop shops are magical places. There filled with items that are pulled from every place and time. One thing that was mentioned that I hadn't really thought about was they not only need props that look like they're from another era but they also need props that look like they're from that era and brand new. A prop shop is somewhere that I would really like to work because you get to make tons of things with lots of detail for fun
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