Prop Agenda: This past summer, our production of The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein at the Santa Fe Opera had a lot of tricks. Like… a lot of them. One trick I worked on was a set of magically-appearing flags. The set had seven flag poles along one wall, and during one big moment of pomp and circumstance, the design team wanted flags to suddenly appear on them. The idea is kind of like those “bang” flags that pop out of guns in the cartoons.
6 comments:
I have to say that props usually proves to be the department that I don't really think about until they pull out a really cool and creative solution for something. I think I was most impressed by the system of ropes and pulleys that made the simple machine behind the wall. That's quite an extensive project and probably something we wouldn't think a prop master would have to think about. After seeing articles like these, I must applaud the prop masters, as that was no small task. Reading the article also reminded me of all the simple machines we learned about in PTM last year and the various things you can do with them.
Oh props, ever the intriguing section! Props is very underrated, but some of the coolest stuff comes out of their shops. There is a sort of magic that happens there. To some people, these little tricks seem quite base and unimpressive, but then you see the way that they solve the problem and you're like "WHOA! How'd you come up with that!?" The best part is that they do it in such an easy way that no one, except another props person, would probably expect.
When my theatre group did Beauty and the Beast a few years back, there was a small, insignificant prop that was made for the show. The director wanted an effect, like an explosion or something, to happen when the witch cast a spell on the prince. What we ended up with was a lighter sort of thing that set off a small fireball, and it was palm sized so that the witch could hide it on her hand without the audience seeing. It was the coolest thing ever! Props people are awesome!
Well, that was not as intriguing as I thought it was going to be when I had only read the title. But once I understood what they were talking about I was actually rather surprised at how complex of an operation was needed to turn a simple pole. The pole itself was almost beautiful in its simplicity. I think often times these days we see a show calls for hoof beats and we put dancing zebras on stage. Sometimes the most basic route to a solution is the most effective in getting your point across and most powerful when an audience sees it. This is not to say that many of the extravagant things we do today are not fantastic and when warranted, we just need to always make sure they are indeed necessary and adding to a production or piece rather than distracting from it.
I love this! It's such a small, almost silly little detail, but someone had to but a lot of though into this in order to make such a simple, clean effective design. Even the most trivial of details can prove to be a challenge. Also, the video was strangely adorable. I love that it looked super homemade. It made me think that with some thought anyone can solve those problems.
A very cool and elegant solution to a reasonably challenging problem. I really like how gracefully the flag appears and it is not entirely clear where it is coming from from the audiences perspective. The falling flag obscures the rotating tube and making it seem like the flag just attaches itself to the solid pole magically and fall into view.
This was such a cool little project. For something that seems so simple and unimportant from far away, a lot of work went into creating these flags. The design of them is great, and the dropping of the flag looks great. It's such an elegant solution.
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