CONSTRUCTION: PROP MAKING

The vision for one of our scenes is to capture a sequence of people protesting for the group "Transparent Animals". This group is protesting against the lockdown regulations and their restriction of freedom. Therefore, to make this scene as realistic as possible, I needed to make props that are relevant to this scene. I decided to make two different props that can be used by the protestors, which clearly states the reason they are protesting.

The first prop I made was a placard. This is because in almost every protest you can expect to see someone holding a placard with a message on it. To do this I found two offcuts of MDF, which I then wrote a message on one side of the two offcuts. Using a power drill, I drilled the two MDF boards to a plywood strut. The messages on the placard showed "Freedom" on one side and "Boris lied people died" on the other side. 

The first prop was easy to make as I have good knowledge of carpentry and joinery therefore there wasn't much of a challenge. However, making the second prop was significantly more challenging as my knowledge on making flags isn't that broad. To start off using a CAD (Computer Aided Design) software, I started creating a template which had a crow and the words "Transparent Animals" on. This is because the group protesting is called Transparent Animals, therefore I thought it would be appropriate to put their group name on at least one of the props. Using the laser cutter, I cut out a stencil on Vellum card, which would allow me to spray paint the template on. Then using a white sheet I got given from textiles, I ironed and stabled the sheet to a MDF board. This was to keep the sheet flat and stuck to its position. I then placed the stencil over the white sheet, masking taped it down and stapled it down to make sure the stencil didn't move during the spray painting process. I spray painted over the stencil directly onto the white sheet and then let it dry. I was very happy with the result.