XF project #4: When you’re a prop person and an X-phile…

One of the several things that I do, is that I am a prop designer/artisan. I’ve worked as such in theatre and film for the past decade or so. I must say, it’s a pretty fun career to have. Basically, I get paid to shop, build, paint, sew and glue stuff.

Anything you see in a play or film that gets picked up and moved is considered a prop. Though, there are lots of gray areas, as we are often in charge of set dressing (stuff that’s hanging on the wall and sitting on shelves) and sometimes even the furniture. And then there’s the whole controversy over whether a purse is a prop or a costume… But that’s really not important to this blog.

What is important, is that as a prop designer I enjoy giving tribute to the things that I love when working on a show. Many geektastic references end up in my work. If someone asks for a nonspecific bottle of alcohol, there may end up being a label inspired by Hawkeye of The Avengers. If there is money asked for, I can guarantee that my prop money will have the face of some random character on it.  I’ve used a bunch of characters from 24, and most recently Elizabeth McCord from Madam Secretary.

But my favorite thing to reference in my prop work is, of course, The X-Files. I fit it in wherever I can, even if it is just putting a 1013 in an address on an envelope, it will find its way into the props that I make.

I’ve been going through my portfolio recently, and decided it would be fun to post some of these items as a part of my summer X-files project. This week I am starting off with one of my favorites. I was working on a production of the musical 9 to 5 at Gateway Playhouse several years back. This was a dream come true considering I loved that movie as a kid and had thoroughly enjoyed it on Broadway.

In the show, as in the film, Violet comes back from shopping for the office and pulls out of a bag; rat poison, ant poison and sweetener… which of course, sets off the crazy strain of events that this brilliant show is comprised of. So these are all things on the prop list, which the prop department needs to bring into reality. The rat poison and sweetener already have a very specific look, as they have to be very similar, and the way they were done in the film was perfect, and somewhat iconic, so my design was based on that. But with the ant poison, I had a bit more of a free-range.

As an X-phile somebody mentions bug extermination, and your mind immediately goes to “War of The Coprophages”, the brilliant season three episode written by Darin Morgan, who actually claims it as one of his lesser episodes, but he is way too hard on himself, because it’s a lot of fun and really quite brilliant!

The town of Miller’s Grove, Massachussettes goes crazy when a string of deaths point to an infestation of killer cockroaches. One item that appears more than once in the episode is a brand of insect spray called appropriately “Die Bug Die” (as seen above). We also see Scully giving her dog, Queequeg, a bath in the episode, and she is using a shampoo called “Die Flea Die”. So in my X-Files obsessed mind, what else does one do with a request to make a can of ant poison, but create “Die Ant Die”?

Not only did I create the label based on the images from the show, but also had fun with the fine print. One of the images is blurry but the information on the side of the can is actually the conversation between Mulder and Scully that includes the line “Her name is Bambi?” And then I made up the fun little warning label as a finishing touch.

 

I love my job.