Kate Buchan

Adventures in film and theatre production

[katebuchan]

Just dug up a few photos from the About Face shoot, graffiti skills, angry toast and an angry bollard shadow, unfortunately the last didn’t make it into the film as we ran out of sun

[katebuchan]

Production I’m currently working on as props master and stage manager for Kelvin Players.

[katebuchan]

How to build a Woman, summer 2016.

I had such great fun with this film written and directed by Joey Beard, Lego is a great medium for film and gives lots of opportunities to make tiny props and arrange miniature scenes. I loved making the tiny placards and the height chart for the Lego ladies. The stone age scene was a bit tricky to get with all the dinosaurs moving at the same time and not falling over, all while I was crammed into a small shed doorway trying not to hit the camera while placing them!

[katebuchan]

How to Build a Woman

This is "How to Build a Woman" by joeybeard on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

[katebuchan]

Sweet Caress by Bearded Gnomes for London Sci-Fi 48 hour challenge 2016

Title: Sweet Caress Dialogue: The natural emotional state is recognised as being ultimately deceptive. Prop: A calendar - a character marks a date on a calen...

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Cast and crew shot from our 2016 entry into the London Sci-Fi 48 hour challenge. This year our Title was Sweet Caress, which we took rather literally and I got to have some fun in the sweet shop. I had a ball with these guys sourcing props and set dressing.

[katebuchan]

Top: cast and crew shot from Recent History, a short film written and directed by Paul Thompson. Below a shelf of history books I sourced and made for the main characters house. Bottom: just the book covers I made for the shoot, created on Serif DrawPlus. All the authors names are members of the crew and the publishers marks all represent Bearded Gnomes production company.

This shoot was in 2015 but is still ongoing.

[katebuchan]

A little bit of an usual request but I was asked to make a fake bomb for a play called Landslide, written by Craig Malpas. 

I made some play dough and wrapped it around a couple of chunks of wood to make the main blocks, then wrapped them in thick blue bin liners and taped them together. The circuit board is from an old freeview box with a few holes drilled in it to allow for some battery powered lights to poke through and the phone is and old display one that some Tesco staff kindly let me have.

[katebuchan]

1970′s set for Abigail’s Party by Mike Lee, performed by Kelvin Players December 2015.

This was a challenging set because there was quite a bit of furniture to find and not a lot of budget. Some of the furniture was borrowed or donated and some was bought second hand from charity shops and online.

I especially loved researching and making 1970′s drinks labels for bottles and searching second hand shops for the specific vinyl records we needed. I was also particularly pleased with the cigarette packets I made.

It was lot of hard work and a little stressful at times, especially finding the sofa, but I was really pleased with the final outcome. The show was a big hit and sold out every night. 

[katebuchan]

Halloween pumpkins I’ve made the last two years. Not strictly anything to do with film or theatre but crafty all the same.

[katebuchan]

Kelvin Players Theatre Company, Tartuffe by Moliere in the Tobacco Factory summer 2015. A little action on stage and my props table back stage. There weren’t too many props to get for this one but I did have to make a few letters on parchment paper and get to grips with sealing wax, not as easy to use as I thought but it may have been because I was using a button to stamp into the wax. It had a perfect pattern on it but lots of fiddly detail for wax to get stuck in if you stamped too soon. 

[katebuchan]

Drip Feed by Bearded Gnomes for London Sci-Fi 48 hour challenge 2015

Title: Drip Feed Dialogue: Try to keep your thinking inside the box, just for a change Prop: Wallet change - we see a character place an item from one wallet...

[katebuchan]

A few props I made for a short film called Drip Feed produced by the Bearded Gnomes for the London Sci Fi 48 hour film challenge. 

We were given the title of the film, a line of dialogue and told a prop we had to find or make and then it all had to be written, filmed, edited and entered within 48 hours.

This was such a fun project and I was really pleased with the outcome, the story was so funny and knowing that we all pitched in and made a great film in 48 hours is a rewarding thought.

The film unfortunately didn’t get shortlisted but we were all very pleased to find it did get an honourable mention and was screened in London!

[katebuchan]

About Face

A short film I worked on, doing some props and set dressing.

Bearded Gnomes make a come back with a typically whimsical short film about pareidolia. Written & Directed by Joanna Beard and Paul Thomson. Cinematography a…

[katebuchan]

The finished article. Inside and outside of the ginger bread house, with real cake sprinkles, for a small touring production of Hansel and Gretel the Opera. Summer 2014.

[katebuchan]

The outside of the gingerbread cottage coming together. 

[katebuchan]

Inside of the witch's house for Hansel and Gretel. Work in progress...