When recreating a period set from the 1800’s in particular, it’s difficult to really replicate the designs of the period because current wood moulding and millwork don’t allow for what was a common practice by designers and architects; true proportional design.
A moulding catalogue of today looks very different from the original moulding catalogues of the 1800’s. Not only because they contained a larger variety of profiles, but there was a large selection of different sizes for almost every profile that they offered.
The cover of the 1874 Universal Moulding Book. One of the first millwork catalogues for wood moulding.
The oldest moulding catalogue that I own is the Universal Moulding Book from 1874. This catalogue shows over 650 moulding profiles in full size. It isn’t the first version. I know this because the catalogue states that 46 profiles have been phased out from a previous catalogue.
Here is a page of a profile known as a Quirked Greek Ogee and Bevel, a popular profile in the mid 19th century. Notice that there are 17 different sizes.
Why so many sizes?
Originally moulding or architectural enrichment wasn’t an afterthought. The mouldings were designed to be used in proportion to the openings that they surrounded.
In America, and England, before the Industrial Revolution, wood mouldings were made by hand. (plaster ornament was as well). With a set of planes called Hollows and Rounds, an infinite variety of moulding profiles could be created. A set of planes were designed to created 1/6th diameter arcs in increments of 1/16th inch.
My working set of hollows and rounds
Various pattern books of the period laid out the formulas for creating the mouldings according to the width of the openings. In his 1827 version of Builder’s Companion, Asher Benjamin wrote that for a door or window, the proper proportion would be found by dividing the opening into eight parts and giving one to the width of the moulding, He noted that this formula would provide a different width for different widths of doors and windows, but said that it wasn’t good to have different widths of architraves in the same room.
Obviously he wasn’t around to comment on this house interior……….
1839 New Orleans 4-bay townhouse
The pocket door opening in the photo is 6′ wide while the window width is about 3′ wide. You probably don’t notice that the architraves and the corner blocks are different sizes. The casing aound the doos is about 6″ in width while the window casing is less than 5″. The casing that frames the doors would look too large around the windows while the window casing width would be too diminished by the pocket door opening width.
Because the casing widths conform to the opening sizes, they look similar enough in size for their differences to be hard to recognize. The fact that they have proportional details within the overal common profile helps as well.
When the factory-made millworker begain to replace the on-site handmade moulding, they settled on a series of profile sizes that would fit most situations based on common door and window opening sizes.
This variety of sizes began to diminish into the 20th century until around 1940, when most catalogues began to offer only a few or even just one size of each profile.
A page from the 1939 Stock Millwork Catalogue
When you have a design that requires moulding profiles that aren’t available, (which is a common problem with 19th century Victorian designs), and you aren’t able to create a built-up moulding from available profiles, you may have to have a set of custom knifes made.
If you order enough linear feet of the mould, some shops will waive the knife fee as it adds to their selection of profiles. Be sure you look into custom knifes before you discount it as being too expensive. The job is also done by CNC now rather than hand-grinding. so the actual operation is not a bid deal.
It can be tricky to identify or specify a particular wood if you’re not very knowledgable about working with it. There are hundreds of different species available and even though a small number of those are in common usage in the construction trade, narrowing it down to the ideal look you want can be frustrating.
For many years a Production Designer was able to just hand a Scenic Painter a photograph and the artist would “grain” the surface to match any kind of wood they wanted. With the loss of painters who are trained in “graining”, it has become more common to find a laminated material which matches their choice or to use actual wood veneer that matches the reference.
One website that I’ve found recently is a very good starting point to locate a match to a reference photo you might have or select a wood species based on your preferences of shade, color, or grain.
The Wood Database was created by Eric Meier in 2007 and now includes images and data for over 600 different wood species. You can search by name, type, location, appearance, and several other catagories.
Each species entry has a color photo of the wood showing grain pattern (depending on the cut orientation) as well as the scientific data as to hardness and shrinkage rates.
The information is also available in hardback book form, which can be ordered from the site, which features the data on over 350 wood types, including large color images of each species.
Another good reference is a book called What Wood Is That? by Herbert Edlin. The book explains basic wood characteristics and details 40 common wood types. It also includes 40 actual wood samples so that you can see a real-life sample of the types outlined.
The actual wood samples that are in What Wood Is That?
For larger wood samples to look at, I’d suggest getting a set of veneer samples like the ones below. You can find sets like the one below from various venders on Amazon. Be sure that you get a set that have labels attached for easy identification. With these, you have a piece large enough ( they are usually about 6″ x 12″) to be able to try different stains, finishes, or age to your liking.
If you are in the Los Angeles area at the end of February, The Southern California chapter of the ICAA (Institute of Classical Architecture and Art) is presenting a lecture entitled “Authenticity & Historic Design in Architectural Millwork” on February 26, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.
The presenter will be Brent Hull, a nationally recognized expert on historic design and architectural authenticity. He will present information and inspiration from his new book “The Design and Manufacturing of Historic Millwork From 1740-1950” published by Wiley & Sons. 2025.
Hull is an award-winning master builder and expert in historically accurate architectural millwork and mouldings. For over thirty years his craftsmanship has enhanced nationally registered properties and homes across the country. Hull honed his expertise at Boston’s North Bennet Street School where he trained in the art of traditional building and historic preservation prior to founding Hull Millwork & Hull Homes in Fort Worth, Texas.
He has authored five books on historic millwork and architectural design including his most recent work, which is a follow-up to his previous book, “Historic Millwork”, published in 2003. His current book includes moulding of the mid-18th century and early 19th century periods, which weren’t covered in the earlier volume.
He will be talking about the stylistic and functional shifts that accompanied the transition from pre-industrial hand-crafted techniques to mechanized production. Hull provides a framework for identifying period-specific profiles and understanding the design logic that shaped moulding development across two centuries of American building tradition. Participants will gain practical knowledge for making informed specification decisions for restoration and classical new build projects.
If you aren’t familiar with the ICAA, they are a great resource for connecting with architects and artists who are interested in and trained in the classical arts tradition, both in restoration work and new construction that honors the early periods. They have active chapters all over the country.
Brent will be giving his presentation iat several other chapters around the country so you might check the ICAA calendar if you don’t live on the west coast.
Here is the link to the main ICAA page to find out more about the organization and learn about events in other parts of the country:
This is the second in a series of articles on the anatomy of architecture which focuses on construction details. Many of them are details that are now obsolete because of modern building methods or the evolution of designs due to changing tastes.
There is a type of moulding available today called ‘electrical molding’ which is either a formed sheet metal channel or plastic channel that is designed to hide electrical wiring on the inside surface of a wall. This simplifies electrifying a room when new outlets are needed or a new light fixture needs to be installed without cutting into a finished wall surface.
In the late 1800’s the electrification of offices and homes was becoming more popular and the current method of wiring buildings posed a problem. The method at the time was known as ‘knob and tube’. Copper wires which were covered with a rubberized fabric were strung along the unfinished side of walls, underneath floors, or on attic joists and held off the wood surface by attaching them to a line of ceramic knobs which were nailed to the wood studs. When the wiring had to pass through a stud or joist, a hole was drilled and the hole was filled with a ceramic tube for the wires to pass through.
Knob and tube wiring – photo-Laura ScudderDiagram of typical wiring showing rubberized cloth covering
The problem came when the wiring had to run inside a room interior. A cosmetic solution had to be created to hide electrical, telephone, and telegraph lines from view.
A wooden cleat to be used instead of ceramic knobs.
Cutting into the three-coat plaster and wood lath walls of the period to bury wiring inside them wasn’t an easy option when electrifying previously built houses. Early builders manuals suggested designs that hid the wiring inside moulding on the walls. Some suggested creating a moulding which hid the wiring at the top of a tall wainscot paneled wall, or to create a wide picture rail to serve the purpose.
An example of electrical moulding disguised as a wide picture rail.Another example of a suggested electrical moulding capped by a picture rail mould.
Electrical moulding doesn’t show up in a lot of the moulding catalogues from the period, but a number of them are represented in the Official Moulding Book in their 1907 to 1913 editions.
No. 8249 and 8251 were meant for either a type of cornice mould or to use to run wiring vertically at a room corner.
The three photos below are photographs I took inside an 1890 office building before it was renovated. I haven’t been ablr to find this exact mould in any catalogue yet but they are a slightly more decorative version of No. 8244 in the Official Moulding Book.
Photo – R. WilkinsPhoto – R. WilkinsPhoto – R. Wilkins
Note that the wiring runs to the next room through holes in the wall which do not have any insulators. This lack of insulators, the fragile nature of the rubberized fabric coating, and the fact that the wiring was not grounded made for serious fire hazards with the early wiring systems.
Sources:
Official Moulding Book – 1907, The Chicago Millwork and Moulding Co, Chicago, IL
Building Construction and Superitendence, F.E. Kidder, Part II, 1911, William Comstock Co. NY
Cassell’s Carpentry And Joinery, Paul Hasluck, 1908, David McKay Publisher, Phila, PA
The latest story to excite below-the-line crew members in Los Angeles is the news that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have made a deal with Netflix for their new film, The Rip. The contract includes a stipulation that provides for a bonus to the entire crew of the production if the show performs well on the streaming platform when it is released.
This one-time bonus would be in addition to the salaries which crew members were paid during the production.
Affleck told an interviewer at the Toronto Sun, “We wanted to codify a model that included 1,200 people on the crew, as well as the cast, because we firmly believe that when everyone is investing themselves, that makes it likelier that you’re going to have something that people connect to more.”
“How this business survives and thrives going forward, we believe, is going to be fundamentally related to the fact that (filmmaking) really is a collaborative art form, so (we are) seeking to incentivize all of those folks into making the best movie possible.”
Wether this idea can be a part of other contracts at other production companies and what it’s outcome for the crew will be remains to be seen.
The idea is a revolutionary first for large-scale Hollywood studio productions, but it’s an idea that isn’t a new one. The idea had been suggested to major studio executives 40 years ago by British producer Sir David Puttnam, and it didn’t go over well.
Sir David Puttnam – Photo by Alex Westcott/TODAY
In 1985, I was a Fellow in the Directing Program at the American Film Institute. AFI was a choice place to be and it was a heady experience, especially at that time. It was a time before the internet, or DVDs with director and producer commentaries, or an endless variety of interviews and how-tos by professional filmmakers.
It’s a place where major directors and producers will show up to screen and talk about their latest productions with the school’s community. We had visits from David Lean, Steven Spielberg, John Hughes, and others . Nearly every week there was another Hollywood luminary who none of us would have met in person if not for the AFI program.
One week it was announced that the guest artist would be Oscar winning Producer David Puttnam. And, he would be guest lecturing not just for the day but for the entire week. He would be screening his new film, The Killing Fields, which was nominated for five Oscars.
Also that week, he screened three of his other films; Midnight Express, Chariots Of Fire, and Local Hero. It was a whole week of master film classes by the man who had produced them. I wish they had been recorded.
Sir David was incredibly cordial, approachable, and even self-deprecating at times. He told us that when he was producing his first film, in an effort to prove he was on top of the goings-on of the production, he would go over the budget expenditures for each week. One week he caught a suspicious cost difference and called the line producer into his office.
The line producer looked confused when Puttnam pointed to the line item listed as Focus Puller. “How would this same equipment cost a different amount every week?” he asked. He said his moment of satifaction at having rooted out financial irresponsibility quickly turned to embarrasement when the man told him that the ‘Focus Puller’ was the title of a crew position, not a piece of equipment.
He was as generous with information as he was with his time. As we watched the films he would interject stories about the production challenges they had faced, both comical and daunting. He would examine a production from nuts to bolts and would barter with a director over, for instance, how many animals they actually needed in the background for a believable scene.
Very down to earth in his presentation style, he entertained us with stories of his current meetings with studio leadership. He was being courted at the time by a studio to take over as head of the operation. They were as surprised by his attitudes toward the current Hollywood system as he was by the studios’ expectations and business plans.
They showed him various options for homes in Los Angeles, all with huge properties and large pools and they told him about the options he could have as a company car. He said he didn’t want a house with a pool and that the cars they were suggesting were ridiculously large.
He had already ruffled feather among a number of studio heads and other producers with some of his comments about the Hollywood system, which he considered to be a “me-too” attitude, as he thought that the system seemed to be content with just copying other people’s successful films.
“You can’t do creative work in an environment like that”, he told an interviewer from TimeMagazine. In one communication to Columbia’s corporate owners, Coca Cola, he said, “The medium is too powerful […] to be left solely to the tyranny of the box office”.
He also pointed out his disgust at huge actor salaries. A New York Times article stated later, “What surprised and dismayed him most about Hollywood was the amateurishness.”
Once he was installed as the new studio head at Columbia, he made it clear that he wanted to make films he would be proud of. “I would be shattered if I could not look with pride at Columbia’s pictures. That would not be true of 75% of films made in Hollywood today”, he said. The New York Times also reported that he was “enough of a realist to want to make entertaining movies, and enough of an idealist to want his films to have social value.”
He wasn’t afraid to point out mistakes that he felt had been made in what were considered audience favorites. A writer for The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 wrote that “He had slammed the ending of the blockbuster E.T. The Extra Terrestrial because he thought the alien should have stayed dead.”
On some days he would express his ideas for revitalizing the entire studio production process including changing the pay structure that was in place in Hollywood. He wanted to move some of the profits down to the people who actually made the films. He had talked to a number of individuals about a possible system where a crew member could benefit from the film’s actual profits, choosing between taking a full salary or partial salary and points on the film’s box office.He said they looked at him as if he was mad.
Sir David would take over at Columbia Pictures in September of 1986. He would stay on as head of the studio for just 13 months. After his tenure, when asked about by a writer at The Hollywood Reporter, he said “Looking back, I was a good movie producer who made the mistake of being persuaded I could run a studio. I hated almost every day of it.”
On the last day of the week that he spent with us at AFI, he didn’t rush off as you would have expected of most people of his stature. When the lecture ended, he stuck around for small-talk. A group of us lined up to say goodbye and offer our thanks for the one-of-a-kind week of instruction and advice.
I hung out toward the back, not sure of what I’d say as a proper thank you. I approached him and he displayed a big smile and held out his hand. I thanked him and then, in a prescient, self-interested moment, I blurted out my unexpected question.
“Is it true?” I asked him. “Is the industry as hard on relationships as some say it is?”
His smile faded a little and he looked at me with a kind of empathy. “Yes”, he said. “It definitely can be.”
Visualization skills are something anyone can learn. You just need to understand the basics of scale. Once you familiarize yourself with the basic scales that are used in design you can start to train your brain to correctly imagine anything and visualize it in an actual space.
I created the diagram above for a blog article I wrote about model scale. The article was about choosing a proper scale for physical models rather than digital ones.
The article didn’t clearly explain what ‘scale’ is or how it’s used in technical drawings. It also didn’t explain the difference between a ‘scale unit equivalent’ and a ‘ratio’, or how to use scales to help you with visualize objects in your mind.
Drawing Scales
Drawing in scale is a way to clearly communicate the size of something, either physical or imagined, in a visual way to help the viewer understand the proportions and size of an object. Either on its own or in relation to other objects.
Some drawing scales are noted by using a measured unit and comparing it to a life-size unit, such as 1/4″ = 1′-0″, which is a popular scale for architectural drawings.
This means that 1/4″ as measured on the drawing is 1′-0″ in actual size.
On the diagram above you’ll see the use of scale ratios. Note the ratio of 1:48 has the 1/4″ scale in parenthesis. The ratio scales can be interpreted as dividing the full size unit into that number of divisions. If you divide 1 foot into 48 segments, each of those segments would be 1/4″ long. So, a drawing with a ratio of 1:96 would be the same as 1/8″=1′-0″. A scale of 1″=1′-0″ would be a ratio scale of 1:12, as there are 12 inches in a foot.
Look at your shoe. If you are an average size person, the length of your shoe is about 1 foot long (28 to 30cm if you use the metric system). If you wanted to draw the outline of the sole of your shoe in, let’s say 1/2″=1′-0″ scale, that would be an equivalent ratio of 1:24. 12 inches divided into 24 parts would each be 1/2″ long.
If you use the metric system you’re in luck. You don’t have to deal with a silly fractional system and you use a strictly ratio system for drawing scales.
Analog Is Best
A scale of 3/4″=1′-0″ is a very common scale for drawing architectural details, but not for designers who mainly work in the theater. Because of tradition, in the theatrical world, such as Broadway, the standard size of plans and elevations is 1/2″+1′-0″.
A detail of an elaborate doorway will obviously look much larger when drawn at the 3/4″ scale than at 1/2″ scale. If you are used to looking at details in one scale, the same details will look ‘wrong’ in the smaller or larger scale.
I worked with a designer who asked me to not draw details in 3/4″ scale because he was used to visualizing designs full-size while looking at them in 1/2″=1′-0″ scale. Seeing them in a larger scale was disconcerting for him while visualizing.
As far as visualizing in scale, seeing a drawing printed on paper is better than looking at it on a computer screen every time. In terms of viewing images on a computer screen, the screens will lie to you every second of every day, in all kinds of ways, particularly in regards to size comparisons.
Imagine you’re looking at a drawing of sofa that is drawn in 1/2″ scale, or 1:50 in metric, on a computer screen. On your desk is a drawing of a room plan in 1/4″ scale, or 1:25 in metric. If the sofa drawing was on paper you could easily convert the sofa in your mind to the smaller scale to imagine how it would fit in the room.
If the sofa drawing is on a screen, how can you be sure if the scale is correct? You can’t. Even if the software is telling you that the image is being presented in a scale that is true to the stated size, most people could not make the visual transformation unless they were very experienced in doing it.
The Packets
You can download the Visualization Chart packets from the links below. If you’re in the States, you want to download the packet marked “Imperial units”. If you’re anywhere else in the world that uses the non-fractional, uncomplicated, easy-to-use measuring system known as Metric, be sure to download that one.
The packet with Imperial /foot/inch scales contains 8 sheets with 5 scales: 1/8″, 1/4″, 1/2″, 3/4″, and 1″. There is also a copy of my Multiscale in the event that you don’t own an architects scale.
Print these all at 100% on letter size paper. Be sure that the print setting is at 100!
The metric packet contains 7 sheets in 4 scales: 1:100, 1:50,1:20, and 1:10. The seventh sheet is a Multiscale in metric. The Multiscale includes the 1:25 ratio which I didn’t include in the diagrams. That ratio doesn’t seem to be much used anymore. Let me know if that isn’t the case.
Print them all on A4 paper at 100%.
Using The Diagrams
Prepare The Multiscale
Print it out at 100% and check the lower scale markings against a known ruler or measuring tape to be sure it is printed correctly.
Cutout the gray areas for ease of measurement. You can also glue it to a piece of cardstock or a file folder to make it stiffer.
Exercise #1
Get familiar with the different scales. Examine the way objects look in the Plan view from above as opposed to the Elevation views from the sides. Does either view make the object, either the people or the vehicles seem different in scale?
How do they compare to each other? Place one scale sheet beside another and notice how the perceived distance caused by the smaller scales affects your perception of their proportions differently than the larger scales.
Exercise #2 – Thinking Vertically
Pick an object that’s relatively large in size such as a sofa, a piano, TV in your room. Now using the scale on the Multiscale, draw the object on the scale Elevation sheet next to the people or the vehicle.
Notice its proportion and size compared to the things on the sheet. Does it seem smaller or larger in comparison than what you visualized in your mind before to drew it?
Take a measuring tape and measure a wall of your bedroom or living room, and draw it in scale on a sheet or another piece of paper. Now look at a framed picture or mirror or wall hanging from another room or another location. Try to imagine it on your wall. measure the piece and draw it in scale on the scale wall drawing. How does it look? Does it take up the same space that you imagined it would when you visualized it on your wall?
Exercise #3 – Thinking Horizontally
Measure your bedroom or another space of your house. Now try to visualize one of the vehicles on the scale sheets appearing inside your house. Using the Plan view of the 1/4″ sheet or the 1:50, draw the floor plan of that room in the chosen scale using the Multiscale. Using pencil, you can draw the space right on the scale sheet. Does the vehicle fit in the space you measured? If it does, does the space around it seem to be the same as what you imagined, or is the space larger than what it feels like when you are standing in it?
Exercise #4 – The Teleporter In Your Head
Take the scale floor plan you’ve drawn of your room and go to a store where they have furnishings. Now look around at things like sofas, large TVs, or beds. Take a tape measure with you or use the measurements they provide at the store. Imagine them in the space.
Test your power of scale conversion by estimating the area of the floor the objects would take up. Draw them on the plan with a pencil. You will eventually be able to estimate foot or metric increments visually on a scale drawing. In 1:50, the width of the tip of a finger is about 1 meter in scale. In 1/4″ scale, the width of a finger is about 3 scale feet. The width of a thumb is 4 feet.
When you get home, test your guess. How close were you?
This is the first of a series of articles on the anatomy of architecture which focuses on construction details. Many of them are details that are now obsolete because of modern building methods or the evolution of designs due to changing tastes.
If you try to search for ‘wood bricks’ on the internet, you’ll probably come up with some strange answers. They were a standard feature of brick construction in the nineteeth century that went out of fashion for a number of reasons.
With masonry building construction there has always been the problem of attaching wood elements to stone or brick structures. This was often accomplished by inserting wood plugs into the wall surfaces as an attachment point for nails, or by driving nails into the mortar of joints.
A wood plug in a stone wall of a 17th century Paris hotel.From a 19th century builders manual showing the use of wood plugs for attaching a door frame.Wooden plugs in early 20th century brick.
The use of ‘wood bricks’ most likely evolved in England before spreading to America. Most building manuals of the period that mention their use suggest using well-seasoned hardwood billets set between the brick courses at intervals for a way of attaching the wood linings for doorways and window framing.
For narrower wall opening, this lining could consist of a single board like in the illustration below.
Use of a single plank as a door frame lining for a brick wall. Note that the wood bricks are also used to attach the grounds at the door frame for plasterwork. The architrave exhibits typical Neo-colonial profiles, while the bolection mould on the doors frame is a mould typical of Greek Revival houses, a quirked Greek ogee and bevel combined with a fillet and cove, topped with an astragal, fillet, and cove.
For larger openings in thicker walls, the wood bricks were made longer and the linings were made of several pieces of sawn and planed boards, assembled in what was called a skeleton framed jamb.
The skeleton frame is attached to the wood bricks as well as the wood lintel.
Early manuals show this framework to be mortised and tenoned similar to a frame for furniture, but some mid-ninteeth century examples in America have been observed to be simple vertical boards nailed to the wood bricks rather than a M&T frame. This method would have definitely cut down on the construction time.
The image on the left shows the wood bricks in place while the image on the right shows the vertical boards nailed to them to act as the arch frame lining. Notice the archway lining at the top with boards that have been kerfed at regular intervals to allow the wood to form to the brick archway without having to steam bend them.
Some turn-of-the-century buildings display a more haphazard approach to wood bricks where framing cut offs of softwood were used instead of hardwood, as in the photos below.
Softwood framing cut-offs used in place of hardwood.From an early 20th century building in Southern California. Wood bricks are set at 4′ from the floor. Most likely for a wanescot and chair rail.Long strips of wood inserted in the brick for attaching a paneled wall detail in a 1870’s rural school house.Two more examples of what appears to be framing lumber used as wood bricks.Pieces of what seems to be lath for plaster inserted into the mortar joints between bricks as an attachment point.An unusual sight I found on a building in the Mid-west. The exterior brick wall has eroded to the point that the wood bricks of a door frame have been exposed to the outside.
One of the reasons that I wrote the Wrand Film Glossary was to record many of the obscure film and entertainment industry terms that get passes down orally but are never recorded.
Art department and set construction lingo is usually not included in the typical film glossary, and “Double dap” is one of those odd terms that you will hear used by Prop Makers* but have probably never had it explained.
The term refers to how the hinges of a door on a stage set are to be installed. Normally the installation of hinges for a door involves creating mortises in the door stile and the jamb that match the thickness of the hinge leaves. That’s referred to as a “single dap” installation. (Note: this is specifically for doors in North America or the UK. Many Continental European doors are half-overlay and don’t use the type of leaf hinges that are standard here.)
Typical hinge installation – referred to as a Single Dap
A “double dap” installation involves creating a mortise in the door which is twice as deep as usual and not making a mortise in the jamb, as shown below.
Example of a Double Dapped hinge
The diagram below is a side-by-side plan view showing both types of installation.
So what’s the purpose of this? Well, this is something that is more typical on sets for a broadcast show than on sets for a feature film.
One advantage is speed. We tend to build sets at a pretty brisk pace, sometimes building an entire set over a weekend. For example, if you have a set with six doors, that means you need to install 18 hinges, which means routing 32 mortises. With a double dap installation you cut that number in half.
Another advantage is if you are redressing a set and need to change out the door of an opening for a different door. With a standard installation, you will need to patch and fill and re-rout three mortises. Instead you just need to fill some screw holes.
This is also the case if you need to change the swing direction of a door at the last moment. (Good luck prying off and repositioning that door stop.)
Double dapping has fallen out of favor lately. Production Designers don’t like the look of it for one thing. (Along with Phillips head screws on a period hinge!) They tend to stick out particularly when the hinges are a contrasting color from the jamb or if the wood is painted a light color and the hinges have a dark laquer/black finish. In some instances this condition can either visually hide the extra mortise depth or accentuate it.
Also, notice the round corners on the hinges in the photos. Round corner hinges are a 20th century invention to speed up production. Once machinery, i.e. routers, was being used for mortising, it became a lot faster to create hinges with leaves that didn’t require squaring off the mortise corners as was necessary for period, square hinges. Round corner hinges come in 1/4″ and 5/8″ radius corners, so be aware of what radius size they are if you’re choosing hinges for a door that has already been mortised.
Note: Prop Maker is a designation for a union stage carpenter in Los Angeles to differentiate them from a ‘civilian’ carpenter. They are trained it building theatrical scenery of all types and historical periods and specialize in creating scenery for film productions. They are more similar to cabinet makers than a typical carpenter and are skilled in construction techniques and methods that would baffle most people outside the entertainment industry.
You’ve probably never thought about how sound can affect your stage set. Beyond trying to not create an environment that would drive the sound recordist mad, you usually don’t think about odd acoustic anomalies that might pop up that you never intended to happen. Like echoes.
Computer Hall set – Gattaca – Columbia Pictures 1997
Yeah, echoes will bite you in the ass if you’re not careful.
On the main set for the 1997 film Gattaca, just such an anomaly occurred, and it was the cinematographer who ended up saving the day.
And what does the cinematographer have to do with sound problems? Keep reading.
The Computer Hall set was designed by Production Designer Jan Roelfs and was inspired by the real-life location that he and Director Andrew Niccol chose for the film. The actual building chosen for the exterior of the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation was the Marin County Civic Center in California, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The art department flew to Marin and surveyed the interior details so that they could be matched for the set on stage, which was in a warehouse in Playa Vista.
The building they had leased made for an odd sound stage, but its size made it large enough to build the sets for the film in. There were the normal problems you deal with in a structure that was never designed to be a sound stage: support posts at regular intervals, a ceiling that is not nearly as high as those in an actual sound stage. On the plan below, you can see where the oval columns were designed to hide two of the building’s I-beam columns.
These are my drawings of the plan and elevations of the set with the areas of the sound problems circled.
(One note: on the title block, you’ll notice it reads “Eighth Day”. This was the original title of the film. In pre-production, the producers learned that there was a French movie of the same name that was going to be released, and a name change was required. The writer and director Andrew Niccol decided that he would create a new title using the four letters used to identify the nucleobases of DNA: GATC.)
Turns out, theater designers had known about the sound reflective effects of elliptical and parabolic ceilings for years, as most of the western world designed theaters in the mode of the typical Italian horseshoe layout plan.
A presentation at the 2017 International Congress On Sound was focused on this phenomenon.
In New York City’s Grand Central Station, there is a ‘whispering gallery’ or acoustic vortex. This is an architectural phenomenon created by a number of configurations, in this case, a vaulted ceiling in the subway entrance under the terminal. A person standing in one corner of the hall intersection can whisper into the corner and the sound travels over the curved surface of the ceiling and can be heard by a person standing in the opposite corner.
New York Grand Central Station
I discovered the echo one day when I was walking the set and stopped at the point in question. I saw a gnat and clapped my hands together to kill it. That’s when I heard the strange echo. Horrified, I clapped again and there was the same echo. I clapped a third time, just as Jan was walking through the set. He stopped and frowned. “Don’t do that!’, he said.
I think what was happening was that the area beneath the lower section of the ceiling of the set created a flutter echo, which was enhanced by the smooth ceiling surface. The two large skylights didn’t seem to affect this echo.
There was no carpeting or fabric to dampen the sound which would have eliminated this effect.
The solution came for the most part when the cinematographer, Slawomir Idziak, told us that he needed more practical lights in the set. This required creating dozens of new openings in the lower sections of the ceiling. These holes interrupted the acoustic waves and the echo disappeared. With the addition of the desks and the background actors, the sound reflection was minimal.
The photo below shows the original skylights in yellow, with the new lights circled in green.
The look of construction drawings for film and television has changed a lot over the years, particularly now that most drawings are done digitally with computers rather than by hand.
While many current drawing styles now incorporate photo-textures, shadows, and icons to add life to drawings beyond what is typical of architectural drawings, it’s hard for them to match the aesthetics of hand drawings.
CAD drawing from 3D model – photo textures applied
Having started as a pencil draftsman I guess I do have a bit of a personal bias, but the unique style of each person on a hand-drafted drawing was immediately recognizable to people who knew their work.
Before digital illustrations and renders of 3D models, hand-drafted drawings had to serve as a design sales tool as well as instructions for scenery construction.
Here are some shots of a set design by Erich Kettlehut in 1923 for the UFA film, Die Nibelungen, for the scene where Siegfried kills the dragon.
The drawing was displayed as part of an exhibition of artwork from the UFA silent film period of the 1920s and 30s at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2014. The drawing is from the collection of La Cinématiquè Française in Paris, France.
Note that the drawing not only provides a pictorial description of what the dragon should look like, but calls out dimensions, construction materials, how the action prop is to be operated, surrounding scenery requirements, and specific technical details of mechanical movements.
Technical drawing of the Dragon by Art Director Erich Kettelhut – ink and pencil on vellumKettelhut called out the length of the neck as well as the tension springs, framework, control cables and hoses required for the creatures fiery breath. He calls out “only rubber!” for the mouth area.The size and depth of the recessed path required for the props operators.drawing describing how each part of the dragon was to be operated by stagehands.Note in red indicates that a telephone/communication system needs to be added to the prop for the crew.
The scene where Siegfried slays the dragon in Die Niebelungen from 1923
Here are a few more hand-drafted pencil drawings from more recent films:
Salem – drawing by William Ladd SkinnerGangs Of New York – drawing by Luca TranchinoShazam – drawing by Greg PapaliaHaunted Mansion – drawing by Barbara MesneyHaunted Mansion – full size detail of fireplace for the plasterersThor – drawing by Oli GoodierShazam – drawing by Stella VaccaroDisturbia – drawing by RD WilkinsHaunted Mansion – drawing by Hugo SantiagoBaby’s Day Out – window detail
The Designer's Assistant 