Back in 1985, Leonard Nimoy hosted a show on Nicklodeon called Lights, Camera, Action. In this clip he talks about homemade special effects.

via Props

Have you ever had this nagging thing that you knew was wrong, but you couldn’t figure out what? For the last two years, I’ve known that the props work wasn’t satisfying, but I didn’t realize how much I missed the world of puppetry until coming down here this weekend. Some of it was performing, but more of it was hanging out with puppeteers.

We had dinner last night with twelve puppeteers, only three of whom spoke English as a native language. It was this great wide ranging conversation about art and connection.

Today we performed twice, which went well. I got to see the short film series Heather Henson curates, Handmade Puppet Dreams which I’ve been wanting to see for a couple of years now. Here’s one of the pieces, Incubus by Lyon Hill.

Before you watch this, you need to know that these are puppets and are being performed in real time. I tell you this, because otherwise it looks like animation or photoshop. No. Puppets.

See! Totally inspiring.

Afterwards we went out to dinner and I just…I’ve really missed this. Puppeteers talk about their in ways that writers don’t. I mean, we’ll sit around and say, “I’m thinking about doing this one man show…” and everyone will join in this collaborative discussion without (most people) without ever trampling on the other person’s vision. I love writing, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve missed collaboration.

Anyway, it was a wonderful weekend.

For the film shoot last week I needed furniture to represent ten different scenic locations, all shot on greenscreen. Besides dealing with the usual greenscreen parameter of avoiding reflective surfaces I also had a fairly tight budget. This meant that some of the rental furniture I picked up wasn’t in stellar condition. You’ll notice that this table, which has a very nice form, has gaping cracks which were repaired with gorilla glue, leaving nasty white scars all over it.

This particular rental house doesn’t mind if I give their furniture “a little love” so the white scars were acceptable. Most rental houses don’t want you to do anything to their props. Rightly so.

While we were renting out the Little Shop of Horrors puppets, the number of times they came back with horrendous “repairs” or “enhancements” that took a lot of labor to undo.

Just a note: When renting props, unless you have specific permission in writing from the prop house, don’t do anything to the props that you can’t completely undo. And make sure you undo it before returning the prop.

For this, since the practical antique value of the piece is gone, I was able to take the easy route. I mixed up two tones of paint to match the wood tone. Using a stiff bristle brush, I worked it into the gorilla glue, taking some care to match the grain of the wood.

Once I finished that, I gave it a once over with furniture polish and voila. A table that looks rustic, but not trashed.

I signed up to do props for a film this week. It was only two days of work and looked like a fairly light load.  I did a half day on Tuesday lining up furniture and planned another half day on Wednesday to pick up the hand props.  Unfortunately, things imploded when the verbal bid I got on furniture came back as a paper bid that was ten times higher than the phone quote.

So, all my Tuesday work was undone and it meant that Wednesday became about finding furniture. To make things crazier, one of the prop rental houses was in New Jersey and normally only an hour and a half away. It took me three hours to get there.  Upon arriving, my vehicle wasn’t large enough and I had to make two trips. I got about half an hour of sleep all told.

Thursday was the day of the shoot and I somehow managed to actually have everything there. Largely because I hired Emily DeCola to be a runner and do last minute shopping in the morning. It was an insane and brutal schedule that I don’t recommend.

Friday I spent returning props.

I am only now feeling human again.

Well worth reading for the view of theater in the early 1900s.

(from The vaudeville theatre, building, operation, management, by Edward Renton, 1918)

“Resourcefulness” should be the middle name of the individual who is competent to occupy the position of property-man in a theatre. There are other important qualifications, but this one is essential. He may be called upon to supply anything from an Egyptian mummy to a three week-old child, upon a moment’s notice. He must be a bit of a carpenter, something of an artist, a great deal of a diplomat, and he must be “on the job” from the rising of the sun to considerably after the setting thereof-in other words, this is not the place for a lazy or a shiftless man.

via Props.

Sorry for another day of twitter only. It was long and it’s late and I’m tired.

• 01:04 I’m at home after a day running around at the theater. #
• 14:29 I think I’ve done the last of the paperwork props for this show. Now to make the music of the spheres device. #
• 18:11 I arrived at the theater and there was a fire alarm going off. The fire department just arrived looking bored. #

My dad said he thought a dull day for me was more interesting than most people’s day jobs.  As an experiment, I used twitter to record the minutia of today.  There are big silent stretches, unfortunately, where I’m in the theater without a signal to the outside world.

• 10:22 Picked up a zipcar at 10 and am going to get a table and chairs for Night Sky. #
• 10:40 Astonishing. Parking in front of the building. #
• 10:40 The very nice French student and her father helped me get the table & chairs into the car. Now, to the theater. #
• 11:16 I have arrived at the theater and am not dead. Again, there is parking in front of the building. This is not normal. #
• 11:36 Dropped off the furntiture, extended the Zipcar res. And heading out for next load. #
• 11:42 Also sending designer reference photos while stopped at traffic lights, of which there are many. #
• 12:06 Ah ha. Now is the driving in circles looking for a spot, as expected. #
• 12:16 I’ll be double-parking, now. #
• 12:25 Furniture loaded and back to the theater. #
• 12:58 At theater. Found parking. Dropping furniture. #
• 13:08 Furniture dropped and off to return the zip car. Fascinating day, I know. #
• 13:21 On the car radio, 89.9 is playing the complete discography of Benny Goodman in chronological order for the next 16 days. #
• 13:39 Whew. I’ve dropped off the car and now have a little room for a breather before heading on the next errand. #
• 14:20 For those folks who wanted to listen to the Benny Goodman complete discography. 89.9 is streaming online bit.ly/Hkmj #
• 15:03 I’m laying out some of the paper props used in the show. Brochures and forms. #
• 15:07 I’ve got the aphasia lesson plans printing now. #
• 15:37 I’m printing flashcards of actors. #
• 15:39 Ugh. A brand new color cartridge and it’s not printing yellow. This is the third one that’s happened to so I think it’s the printer. #
• 15:53 I’ve emailed the flashcards to the office which will print them for me. Now, off to the floral district to buy fake asters! #
• 16:55 Fake asters don’t exist in NYC. I need another flower with a connection to the word “star.” Any ideas? #
• 17:08 Thank you all! I have aquired star jasmine. #
• 17:39 At the theater to drop off star jasmine, jewelry box and put alka-seltzer in a champagne bottle. #
• 21:57 10 alkaseltzer have the right boost, but priming the bottle without losing liquid is hard. #
• 22:01 Back into the bowels now. #

I got home around 1:00 am.

I was at the theater today and one of the folks I’m working with commented on my website. He asked why it doesn’t say anything about props.

Truly? Because unless I’m building something interesting, the job is deadly boring. My posts would consist of, “Today I went shopping for paper, a box and a copy of King Lear.” At best. More likely they would say, “Today I went shopping and didn’t find anything on my list.”

The other reason is that when I’m really in full swing, as I’m about to be this week, I don’t have time to post at all. So it doesn’t say anything about the props ’cause I just don’t have time. Like, I’m heading into tech week starting tomorrow and I won’t surface again for another week.

And the last reason is that I don’t self-identify as a props master. I am one, but I identify as a puppeteer and more recently as an SF writer. The props thing feels like just a dayjob.

Sure, I have to research props for stage, but I also have to research them for fiction too. For instance my upcoming story in Talebones,  is set in England in the 1920s.  I needed to find out if cigarette lighters existed by then.  Yes, but hand held ones were still a couple of years away.

One of my favorite websites, Props, as a great article with a load of links on How to Research Props.  I highly recommend it. In particular, A History of Props: A Timeline of Props and Product Usage.

Somehow the two weeks that I had off turned into rehearsing for two shows, doing props for a third and finishing an essay, a short story and the SFWA website.  Oh yeah, and I have a novel to write.

Clearly, my time management involves the need for a TARDIS. And yet I don’t have one.

Blogging will be, shall we say, extremely light this week.

While researching champagne for stage, I stumbled across this 1906 article from the NY Times.  It’s a fun read if you’re a theater geek like me.

EATING and drinking on the stage,” remarked the chronic theatregoer the other night, “always bores me when I have dined well and tantalizes me when I haven’t; but whenever I go to a theatre nowadays I am sure to find the people across the footlights either enjoying a big meal or pouring down tea or champagne early and often.”

It’s a pdf, but When Actors Eat and Drink Upon the Stage is worth checking out. If for nothing else, the wardrobe.

I had to work this morning, doing the usual stuff. Making stone angel wings from cardboard, ordering 1000 toothbrushes, macheing crows and the like. So Peter was on his own for a couple of hours.

I picked him up in the evening and we went to dinner at Henry’s then downtown to see Avenue Q. At least… that was the plan. It was thwarted by the fact that our tickets are for Thursday, not today.

So, we went over to Times Square and saw Slumdog Millionaire which we both liked. Although it was not the Bollywood musical I think we were both sort of wanting.

My newest gig is doing props and “specialty items” for a play up at Barnard College.  The specialty items consist of a series of crow puppets and a box of entrails.  When the director called me, she said, “So, do you have any ideas on how we can make a box of entrails? ¹

“Yeah.” I continued to fold laundry as we chatted,because this was pretty simple stuff.  “A box of unlubricated condoms, KY jelly, food coloring, saran wrap and a little stage blood.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone and then she said, “Oh. I thought this would be a longer conversation.”  Another beat of silence. “I take it you’ve done entrails?”

“Oh, yeah.” I tucked the last pair of socks into the drawer.  “Had to do a disemboweling for a show.  Fun stuff.”

The crows now.  That’s going  to be  a much longer conversation.

Lately, my schedule has been keeping time with Rob’s which means that we’re often up until 2 a.m.  The advantage to this is that when he goes to bed, I can continue recording in the quietest time.  The downside is when I have to be up early the next morning.  Like today.

I had a rehearsal this morning for a show that Jodi and I are doing on March 12th. It’s a very short piece which involves me being a dish, a fork and a bowl.  Jodi plays a spoon, a knife and a plate. The tension and high drama!  Actually, I think it’s a good little piece and I’ll post a link to the show information later.

I went straight from that rehearsal to a production meeting for a different show where I’m building some crows and a box of entrails.  Really, I have the best job.