The California Sunday Magazine: Inside a 110,000-square-foot warehouse in northeast Los Angeles, Gregg Bilson Jr. is showing me his blood. There’s drinkable blood, chunky blood, dried blood, and flowing blood, all sitting in tidy rows on a display shelf. Puddles and pools of blood — resin blood — of varying sizes are affixed to a nearby wall. Each has its own consistency, color, and refractive properties, which Bilson says are important distinctions when your customers are as likely to have a favorite blood guy as they are a favorite restaurant.
23 comments:
I must say that props making holds a very special place in my heart. This summer I spent my time painting puppets for a rendition of Steven Schwartz's "Children of Eden". Throughout part of May and most of June, the shop I worked for made 124 animal puppets for "Return of the Animals". For those who don't know, "Return of the Animals" is a dance number in the second act. The puppets were on stage for a total time of 4 minutes and 37 seconds each night. I can't even fathom building, collecting, or storing over a million movie props. The men and women who do work like this are absolutely amazing. Props making requires an astounding amount of ingenuity coupled with excessive managerial skills. Needless to say, I am cloaked in respect for Bilson. People like him really add a huge layer of realism to any production, regardless of medium. What would we be without them?
Making props is one of the parts of theater that I’ve always wished I got to do more of. I enjoy do that kind of finely detailed work and the whole MacGyver aspect if it can be incredibly fun. For example, for one of the shows I worked on last year we needed a radio to play onstage but we wanted to be able to control it from a technician’s phone. The original plan was to use an adapter that added an FM transmitter to the phone. It turns out that radio transmitters like that don’t work too well through cement walls or in basements filled with metal pipes. So that plan got scrapped, but we still needed a way to make that radio work. What we ended up doing was pulling out the internals of the radio and replacing it with a bluetooth speaker. That was on a much small scale than what the article talks about but it’s one of the more elaborate props I’ve had to work on building. Even when there’s no actual building involved there’s something I find enjoyable about working with props. The attention to detail and the way it can teach you about history appeals to me. To me Gregg Bilson’s warehouse sounds like both an awesome place to work and a giant playground.
I definitely agree with the statement that “if you do it wrong, everybody is going to crucify you. If you do it right, nobody notices”. In China, a TV show set in the Qing Dynasty made headlines when they made tons of fundamental errors including an actor’s wearing a pair of converse underneath his gown that peeked out when he lifted his leg and a car sitting in the background. Even though these errors are pretty ridiculous, audiences do pay attention to details and when they see something, it takes them out of their willing suspension of disbelief. Props may seem small, but its presence is crucial and I definitely admire people like Bison.
I feel like the entire industry of tech theatre can be summed up in the phrase “if you do it wrong, everybody is going to crucify you. If you do it right, nobody notices." There are entire youtube channels dedicated to pointing out prop mistakes, like gibberish text in a newspaper or an object that is clearly the wrong weight. Everyone loves to point out that someone is wrong, but no one seems to have any problem cutting the Sound Design Tony Award. Perfect work is expected from an entire industry of people who the vast majority of people don't even think about. I think people in general forget how the final cut of a movie is only the tip of an enormous iceberg. Untold millions of people saw "The Avengers." Would it have had so much of a following if Thor's hammer was bright green and made of foam? Extreme example, but the point holds true. The audience loves the product, but no one thinks about the expertise and effort it takes to make that product seem effortless. Therein lies the magic to what we do. We make the impossible seem easy.
"If you do it wrong, everybody is going to crucify you. If you do it right, nobody notices." That statement goes for a lot (if not almost) all the people who do backstage work. This would include lighting, costumes, sound, props, and so on. It feels a bit unfortunate, but perhaps that is just how the industry works. Aside from that, prop making and props have a special little room tucked away in my heart. I remember in the 7th grade, spending 3 weeks worth of lunch hours humming away in the woodshop making my very first prop-- a Keyblade from a video game series called Kingdom Hearts. It was a passion project and it opened my eyes to the world of prop making and cosplay. There is also this man who goes by Volpin Props who makes some of the most impeccable replicas of weapons and other fun stuff I've ever seen. Both him and Bison are individuals who I look up to and hope to one day have enough skill to create props like they do.
I think the prop business is extremely cool and often overlooked. People do not really pay attention to all of the props in a movie or a play because they are just naturally there and fit in well. If some of those props were missing then people would notice something was weird. Prop departments do not get a lot of credit from normal audiences when they do a good job, but if a prop looks fake then the audience will notice they did a bad job. It is very difficult to make fake things look real and sometimes work. A lot of people do not think about that the actors aren’t doing real drugs or that they aren’t covered in real dirt. You just assume because you are so involved in the movie and it all almost seems real. Good props can really help a show or movie look very professional and real.
Props making is very important to all types of media. Unlike the scenery, lighting, or sound, which all can be very subtle and have an unconscious effect upon the audience, props often become the center of attention and integral to the plot once they are brought in. It's even worse for television and film, because there's always one guy who will pause on every tiny detail and inspect it to see if it looks real, if they're using a dummy, etc. That guy is usually me. I love doing that.
"If you do it wrong, everybody is going to crucify you. If you do it right, nobody notices." Sounds very cruel, yet I think it's so real and kind of sums up the industry we live in pretty well. As production people, people of the outside world never knew or realized or believe how much knowledge a theatre person should have. Props artisans, like this, for example, require not only art, it’s fine art plus physics, plus chemistry (like making blood), plus engineering, plus technologies, and plus lots of Advil, just to make sure it looks right on screen or on stage and or those critics or internet warriors will create a Buzzfeed pointing out all the flaws they noticed in your work and judge you with amusement. It’s also fascinating to see this storage and which I wish I could get a chance to see it first hand and learn the system they use to organized and keep track of all these items they build.
I always love getting a peak at a great prop storage. After working for the props department at the Public Theater in New York this summer I feel like I have a pretty strong understanding of how props are run professionally on both the off and on-broadway circuits, but seeing how the business runs in the film industry is fascinating. In many ways it's pretty much the same, but in theater it seems like there are many more places to source from because many educational and prototypical structured theaters maintain their own prop storage which they often source out to others in need. These shared pools of resources in accordance with professional prop companies make sourcing props for theater pretty viable, in contrast to film where a lot of props/set dressings are specifically bought for the production. With all of that said I think it's interesting to hear about a large scale prop rental for film because they aren't as prevalent as they were years ago when the cameras and special effects weren't as advanced and it was easier to get away with using a less detailed prop. For the most part it sounds like the challenges of props in film and theater are the same, however their is a a lot more freedom and creativity in theater where the props being created don't always have to look so realistic because the audience is 20 feet away. Either way, I really enjoy the challenges working on props present, I just think its interesting to see the minute changes in different industries.
This is amazing! Props are one of the most ignored portions of our business. The dedication of those who make props is astounding. It’s always an interesting game of how to make something fake look real. And the immense amount of space it takes to store all of the props is amazing. The fact that only 20% of their stock is getting rented out at a time means that the collection they have is enormous. Props are the kind of details that can make or break a production. Props are like costumes in the fact that audiences see and observe them without fully processing them, unless they are bad. I also think it’s clever of them to cultivate business with industries that aren’t entertainment. Renting guns to police forces is a bit disturbing but does provide a modicum of financial security in hard times. I will say the sanitary dirt does sound like fun.
An intriguing article, giving a glimpse into all of the work necessary to address of the details involved in creating on screen and on stage magic. While some of the issues presented in this article are specific to film, or more relevant to film, many also apply to theatre. Bilson’s comment about how everyone will “crucify you” if you do something wrong, but not notice if you do everything right seemed especially relevant to technical theatre. The technical aspects of a show are often overlooked by the average audience member, but these details are just as essential as the actors onstage. If a cue is called wrong, or a structure built incorrectly, it could be worse than an actor flubbing a line. It especially reminds me of work in sound. People oftentimes won’t notice sound design elements, or how well a performance is mixed. But if these aspects were handled improperly, it could very well ruin the entire performance. In many cases, this is the goal of sound: to have an impact without drawing attention. In this way, sound can be as much its own design element as it is a tool to augment others.
I want to visit this place, the photos in this article are wonderful. Making blood for stage and Film is for sure an art. You can no longer get by with the chocolate syrups they used in black and white films. As Brian has said many times, distressing is an art, and this for sure applies to props as well as costumes. Creating something that is suppose to be by nature gross, unsafe or illegal into something an actor will be willing to interact with takes a lot of innovation and creative ideas. I would love to know some of the ways he came up with creating the fake blood formulas, or figure out what he needed to put together to make the body juices on crime shows tolerable for the actors to play with. The fact he provided training weapons for the DOD and police forces is something i would have never thought would have come out of a prop house. I would love to be able to go into his gun room and take my pick from that arsenal for my range days.
After my internship at the Cleveland Play House where I worked mostly in their props department this article is both fascinating and also a little terrifying. The Cleveland Play House houses both their props shop and storage in the same warehouse as their scene and paint shops, just outside of downtown Cleveland. During the summer months the Cleveland Play House was not creating any in house shows and so my work in the props shop itself was limited they also have a very active rental business and this is where I did most of my own work. Just like in the article our prop storage seemed to stretch on forever. Here and there you would find a dismembered manikin or a 20’ tall shelf of full of different fake leaves that I had the pleasure of organizing. The place was a graveyard of old pinball machines and couches that I honestly wish had never made it out of the 60’s but just as the author seems to describe the quirky and hardworking people who worked there gave the dusty warehouse a life of its own.
I loved seeing the pictures of all the different props. I think that it is amazing how this one company has made and rented out props for so many prominent films. One thing that I especially liked was how law enforcement agencies and training places are going to the company to get fake weapons to train on. I think that it is really cool how versatile a props master can be. It is also interesting how better technology keeps on pushing props makers to new and more detailed levels. Props have to be close to lifelike in order to be passable. I would love to visit the warehouse full of props mentioned in the article. It would be so much fun to see all of the props described in the article, especially the ones that were in some of the bigger movies. I’m sure that each prop has its own story behind it, which just makes it that much more interesting.
This is such a cool look into a really incredible props inventory. I have always been so fascinated by the extreme attention props masters pay to the details of a single piece. I had a teacher in high school, Mrs. Sheldon, who believed that every little thing ought to be as authentic as possible. At times, it seemed a little tedious to be printing magazine covers from that exact month in time and pasting them onto current magazines, but the more I watched her work, the more incredible it was. She was extremely dedicated to creating a reality within the props, and it carried over into the show as well. It seemed the more realistic these objects were, the better the actors were able to interact with them and put themselves in the world of the play. I think Bilson makes an incredibly accurate statement about theatre artists in general, that "if you do it wrong, everyone is going to crucify you. If you do it right, nobody notices." I think this is a fabulous statement that really covers a lot of theatre work, and is something we deal with all the time. Working behind the scenes, we tend to be invisible until we mess up. When we mess up, that's when the people around us say, "Who the hell called that cue?" or "Where is the sound engineer and why is he asleep on the job?" It's sad, but tends to be our reality a lot of the time, and I think in some ways it motivates us to do better work.
What an amazing space of awesome stuff. This reminds me of an article last year which displayed a warehouse in an unknown location. It housed props from the dark knight rises as well as the harry potter films. I loved seeing Thor's hammer and the mechanical penguin from Batman. I love to think how much time and effort was put into every one of these pieces. To me each one has a story and each one is a piece of art. Thats one of the reasons I love going into antique malls, I love to appreciate how much an item meant to someone. Like i said last year I think a museum to put these in would not only be profitable but also an awesome reminder of the influence of entertainment. AMC did just that with their collections from Mad Men. It was showcased in new york and was a huge success. Although it was temporary I think it was better than putting them back in storage like these. I know most of these are still in use but I'm not sure Thor's hammer will be used again after Marvel finishes up this collection of superhero movies. I think a museum would be an amazing opportunity for audiences to see how these props are able to bring so much to entertainment whether that be bringing the actors into their roll better or an audience into the world of the story.
I think one of the coolest things about theatre is the vast amount of props you can have at your disposal. With the multitude that are out there, it helps if they are all relatively in one place. I don’t think they would give tours in a place like that with as much business that they get coming and going for rentals, but I would definitely want to try to check the place out, I mean who wouldn’t, just being able to walk around and see so many classic props that were used in movies or television shows over the years can be a little nostalgic. The fact that it has stayed in the family has been even that much more impressive, one would almost figure that it would have been bought out, but when business is good, you just keep it coming. It is humorous to see that the most used prop are dummies.
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Working in props this summer, the largest chore was not making the props, or sourcing them, but the upkeep and repair of prop stock. I spent hours and hours going through a basement deciding that furniture would never be useful again. So many times the props master and I would moan over something that had once been beautiful (and would have been perfect for what we needed) but had been abandoned in a corner or buried under something else for so long that it had been rendered useless. I know there are serious constraints working in a small theatre company, but still. One can only dream or working in a place that is not only able to handle so many things, but also be responsible for the upkeep and repair of them all.
It’s also interesting how much more specific the job of a props master becomes when working in film. The intrinsic properties of the media are full of possibility, but it makes it challenging to make things look as real as they need to in order to successfully convince an audience.
“If you do it wrong, everybody is going to crucify you,” he says of his job. “If you do it right, nobody notices.”
This statement basically sums up my props experience from a production team member to an audience member watching a production. Props are some of the main key elements to any story. It's need for the set, character and any special moments in the play. having to deal with the amount of props in this warehouse must be incredible and a challenge at the same time. Everything needs to be organized and put in it's place or then it becomes chaos. Then for each show you need to know whats in your inventory, however, if it's a special prop then you're adding even more to the warehouse. Props just seems to build and build and build. Hats off to my friends who want to deal with props in the future.
Having just finished finalizing a props list for Stagecraft this article came at the perfect time.
Theatre is so cool. People know so much, especially Props masters. The fact that this shop has become the largest supplier for not only guns on stage but the SWAT team as well, is mind boggling.
Props in general are so cool. They can make or break a production. Props masters also have to be really precise. “If you do it wrong, everybody is going to crucify you,” “If you do it right, nobody notices.” These quotes are so relevant in regards to props, as well as lighting, and scenery, and costumes. Theatre is about the story, to propel people forward into a new way of thinking or feeling. Technical elements, especially props. are meant to enhance the story, and knowing that such a successful prop house is of this same understanding is humbling, and reassuring.
The props industry is incredible. Making fake things look realistic is not only expensive, but just plain difficult. I wish that there was a larger props program here at CMU but props is such an expansive art that it would be hard to know where to start. My favorite aspect of props is fake blood. As a huge fan of the horror genre, I love to see just how many different bloody types there are varying from runny to clotted. I like to experiment with special effects makeup, and blood is a key element in making a look go from good to incredible. Layering scab blood, thick blood, and runny blood creates the most realistic wounds that I have been able to do. Thinking about such simple things as a wound, and how complex it is to recreate, I am in awe at all everyone successful in the props industry.
I would love to see Bilson’s prop house just for the sake of how many interesting things must be there, not to mention how surreal shelves and shelves of eclectic but sorted items would be. This article does make me wonder how someone would get started as an independent prop supplier. Presumably one would need to have a large enough inventory to be diverse enough to have what a lot of people need but still have a variety of any given type of object so someone can find what they want for their show. Additionally, as is mentioned it the article, people tend to have their go-to props people, so it would be hard to carve out a market if customers don’t have much reason to try a new person. It was cool that this article gave an inside look about what kinds of things such a major prop house stocks and (to a degree) how they determine what to stock.
I would literally be able to spend an entire day in Bilson's prop house!!! I mean, I would love to train with SWAT... at a prop shop. It is incredible to think that one prop house supplies such a variety of materials to so many different entertainment medias. To be a prop master would be insanely cool. To create things used daily in reference to a performance. Props add so much to the story and bring focus to things that the audience does not even realize they are focusing on, all because of props.
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