Prop Agenda: The umbrella gun scene in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is one of the most visually memorable in the play. George, tired of his wife Martha’s insults in front of their guests, exits offstage. He sneaks back wielding a shotgun aimed at her head. The guests see him and scream as he pulls the trigger. Instead of the loud report of a bullet, though, a brightly-colored umbrella emerges from the barrel. Hilarious, right?
4 comments:
I saw that Eric posted this in the props facebook group I am in – I am glad to find it here on the blog. Per usual, Eric has done an excellent job at documenting and sharing his process. What I love about the props community is their willingness to share their work and offer advice to others trying to puzzle through their props needs. This umbrella gin mechanism is pretty awesome. I would not have thought about needing to scale up the bulkiness of the whole firearm to compensate for the size of the umbrella. His review of the chainsaw grinding disc also caught my attention – I like the sound of “wood eraser,” and I would be interested in trying this tool out. I found the video of Eric’s process to be very interesting, and I admire his commitment to documenting his process to share with others, especially in a field where there is so much puzzle solving around strange constraints.
This looks like such a fun prop to make! If I was on this show I would be really excited to get the opportunity to build a prop like this. I cannot imagine a prop master who actually enjoys the work they do would complain or get a headache from building this prop. Sure it is tough but the result is incredible. The history and how iconic this look is is something that people will remember seeing for a long time to come. I really respect people who are so open about their work and their processes like this. It does not make any sense to me when people try to hide how the build things like it will damage them or their reputation if other people can learn and benefit from the work they did like this. A rising tide raises all boats after all. I have never seen a chainsaw grinding disc before, but I definitely want to get one to use now. They look like a great shaping tool that could be used for many different projects.
First thought: Danny DeVito Penguin’s gun made out of an umbrella in Batman Returns. Onwards, The construction of this prop is incredible. Firstly, I didn’t think a shotgun existed which could hold an umbrella within. At least regarding the barrel, I figured any modern model may be too small to hold an umbrella and eventually have enough room to open it. Thus, I’m happy to see how the prop designer went about getting around this obstacle. Additionally, I’ve never seen a shotgun disassembled, let alone the trigger mechanism alone. It’s really fascinating to see how the props master went through all this work just to make an umbrella open. Admittedly I would expect some really simple replication of a shotgun with a button on the side to open the umbrella or something, but the weapon legitimately works as an umbrella gun, which blows my mind (no pun intended). I’d love to see this process in person, or at least something similarly cool and unique so that I can learn how to work around frustrating little quirks in a prop like the shaft of the gun being too small for a standard umbrella. I think it’d be a great learning experience overall.
I really appreciated how in depth this article went into how this prop was constructed. First of all, this prop is absolutely iconic, just like the classic “bang” flag gun. Except in this case, this isn’t a small plastic handgun with a flag in it. This is a custom built, wood and steel shotgun with a functioning umbrella in it. From close up, the barrel looks unusually large, but from the shots farther away, it looks very normal. It’s all in the magic of perspective. Looking through the very detailed images and descriptions gave a really nice insight into just how much attention to detail goes into the making of a custom prop. The mechanism used to make the umbrella spring from the barrel is so simple, yet at the same time elegant and functional. After watching the demo video, and before reading the article, I expected the mechanism to be much more complicated than it ended up being, and i was pleasantly surprised. Overall, major props (no pun intended) to the designer of this wonderful piece.
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