Jane Murphy

Part of that meant that I also came into contact with community art. And when I finished my printmaking degree, I actually went to Sydney and worked in community arts in Sydney. And I lived in Sydney for 20 years or so. but for payment, I basically mainly worked within social issue employment. I worked within a women's refuge. I worked within a domestic abuse refuge in Melbourne, and then I in Sydney, I also worked in a refuge for women with drug and alcohol problems.

So, you know, while I was, was still working within my community arts practice, I was actually working in a completely different field for money because community arts does not really pay the rent But one night, I just happened to be at a dinner party with a friend. And I was sitting next to a woman who I'd never met. And, you know, we did the old, what do you do? What do you do? And she said to me, well, what do you do? And I said, well, I trained as a graphic artist.

And I was about to launch into the fact that I did nothing like graphic art. She immediately said, oh, I need a graphic artist. Can you start on Monday? So I, I sort of said, well, what doing? And she said, oh, I'm making a film about Nellie Melba. And I need someone to recreate all the graphic props. So the theater programs, the theater posters, the newspapers, and I don't know what possessed me, but I was just, I just was in a yes mood. And so I just said, sure, I'll give it a crack.

And I rocked up at the, um, Sydney showgrounds, which was a place where a lot of films used when the show, the Royal show wasn't on. And sat at a desk with my sheets of letraset and paint brushes, and basically fake being a graphic artist in film for the next three months. And everyone was completely fooled. Some of the most enjoyable jobs for me don't necessarily end up being the most successful finished project.

But I would say a career highlight in terms of really, really having such a fun process. Very, very high on my list would be a kid's TV series called round the twist. I've never met anyone who saw it as a kid and didn't love it. And it was just as much fun to work on a really, really intelligent, funny scripts, a very cohesive creative team, the director, the actors. The production team, which was the Australian children's TV foundation.

And of course, Paul Jennings the writer of the first two series, really. I mean, it was like everything just came together in the perfect storm. The designer, a woman called Peta Lawson, who has just retired from 10 years at Neighbours, the absolute joy of going to work every day and working on those scripts with that team, it was just a really, really fun project. And. I think I always put it at top the top of my list. Probably the second one in terms of fun.

And when I talk about this, it always comes back to the script. If the script is good, the project's good. And so probably number two on my list would be Muriel's wedding, which was a feature film, not a series, but PJ Hogan's first feature. Very unknown director and writer, but just the most brilliant, brilliant script, very kind of shaky start. It wasn't smooth sailing from day one, but it was just an absolute joy to work on because of the intelligence and the humor in the script.

So that would probably be number two. And if I'm gonna go on to number three, I'll do three. Probably the most recent one would have to be the dress maker, which again, an adaptation of a book, but a very good script. The director who co-wrote the screenplay with the the writer of the, um, novel really took on the job of reframing or framing the whole story as a Western. And it was such a, an honor really to work on that film because.

It really pulled together the cream of a lot of film talent because of the director and the cinematographer and the designer, people really, really wanted to work on the project and it was such a great script and a great story and didn't have very much money, but people just wanted to go that extra, extra yard to make it the absolute best that they could. And I think it, you know, it looks like it. It had a lot more money and funding than it actually did.

Props usually are something that people don't notice and in a way that means we've done our job. The process for me, for working on a project would be. I would be contacted by the production designer. Who's in charge of the overall look of the film, or maybe the art director. And I would go in for an interview and meet the production designer. The first thing I always do is I ask if I can read the script because for me, I can't just work on anything.

I have to be able to relate to the story in some way, I it's such a passion job. That you can't just kind of rock up to work and do whatever's handed to you that day. So I read the script and when I read the script, I'm reading it first for the story. And I, I don't know what it is, but there's something about the way that my head or, and I think this is the same for any props person. There's something about the way we read the script.

When you are reading it, you are actually putting yourself right into the middle of the story and you are almost kind of acting it out as you're reading it. I read the script first for the story, and then I will approach it depending on what type of story it is. If it's historical or is something that needs a lot of research. Of course, I'm always in the back of my mind while I'm reading it. Where can I dig deeper to research the main themes of this story?

So if something's historical, of course, over the years, I've kind of, I mean, it's not like a black book, but I have a file of resources that I can tap on to get more information about that era or specific things that might need attention. You just can't use another film to research. You actually have to go to the people who are the experts in the field.

So, for example, this is a really basic one, but a film, like a period film that's set, maybe I don't know, 40 years ago, part of what I have to do is I have to organize to make all the graphic props. So if things are on paper letters or newspapers or whatever that is. I need to get someone, a film graphic artist to recreate these props. Now, what people don't realize is that, you know, 40 years ago, or I think, I think it was sort of around the time we had decimal currency.

So 1966, we also changed to, to metric paper sizes from Imperial. So any film set before that? foolscap and quarter paper, not A4. And the proportion of a sheet of paper is such a subtle thing, but it's something that if I see a piece of A4 paper in a period film or TV show, it's the first thing that jumps out at me because it's visually not right. So it's all of those little details that you have to get your head into. I'm a big lover of books. I go to libraries.

I don't just research everything through Google. I actually will go into R M I T library or the state library of Victoria, and actually talk to the librarians, go into the archives, go into the graphic archive. Stuff like that and actually really research the visual period so that I at least have a benchmark in my body for that project so that I can kind of make sure that all of these visual clues are as accurate as possible.

And that that's kind of the stuff that you won't, you won't notice unless you know it and you can see that it's wrong. I don't sort of store film facts in my head. because, you know, my head's full enough and I, and I can't . Recall that sort of stuff very often. Now that people can stream content there are a group of people who will freeze frames and pick the eyes out of something.

You know, there are whole websites dedicated to film faux pas, and of course, props are often one of them that people pick on a lot because they're so obvious. One thing I can say is I can go to the movies and watch a film and even though I know how something is done, and I, I remember one instance going to the cinema to watch chopper, which was such a brilliant film and feeling.

So I. At the violence scenes, even though I know exactly technically how that's done for film, I nearly fainted with the horror of it. Like I still get really, really affected, even though I know the technology and the techniques I can suspend my disbelief when I'm an audience member. And look, I have to say, even though, you know, you strive always to make something accurate. You may be working on something. It's not a documentary, it's a drama.

So of course there's always license to bend the truth or, you know, change the reality of it or whatever. And at the end of the day, you are there for the director and the, um, and the designer and the actor. I mean, part of my job, you never ever see, there's a lot of props that, that you. That you never end up seeing on screen because the shot may just be head and shoulders. But the fact of the matter is you are making the prop for the actor to help them portray their character.

And so, you know, one of the things that I do when we go back to talking about the process is after I've read the script and assuming I've then been chosen for the job, once I've done my research and everything.

One thing that you always do is make contact with the actors and talk to them about props that they're gonna have to handle within the story and help them to become familiar so that they're, they're just appearing effortless with their props, if they have a specialty tool or something that they're supposed to be really familiar with an example, being for, you know, obvious ones, Kate Winslet, with her singer sewing machine.

When, on the dress maker we organized through the produce or the producers organized cuz she was still in England for her to have sewing lessons on the machine that she, which was purchased in, in England. And she then brought out with her when she came out and is the hero machine all the way through the film. In fact, she became so, so adept at that machine that when it broke down, she would be the one who would, um, fix it on set. we'd all be standing around.

She'd go, oh, I know what's wrong with this and changes the tension. And. All that sort of stuff on, on this ancient singer sewing machine. So, you know, you, part of my job is, is to just make sure that the actors are completely familiar and comfortable with their own props. And that often will involve organizing lessons or training with something long before they ever get to shoot the scene.

I mean, one thing about working in film is that you actually very rarely get time to go to films or see films so I actually do a lot of catch up, but. One of the most recent films I saw, I saw probably one of the most beautiful props I've ever seen, which was in nomad land, the love interest guy. They had a close up of his mobile phone in one scene and stuck to the front of the phone. It was just an old Nokia or something like Americans always seem to have these ancient phones.

Stuck to the front screen on a little bit of paper with sticky. was the pin number for the phone. And to me, that was the most informative thing I saw about that character in the whole film. So I don't know that I could really say that props have changed a lot other than I know now when I work with a lot of younger props, people. I find that their referencing is probably more likely to be other films than deeper research. And that's what worries me, but then, you know, that's life, isn't it.

You know, your references. Your reference. I just, you know, make sure that I, when I'm giving classes at the VCA or whatever, that I really warn people not to just sort of do a navel gazing to actually go a bit further and deeper and to try and understand like one thing as I was growing up, I was always really interested in how things you know, I used to take my, my, uh, bike gears apart and put them back together again for fun.

I don't know if that's something about my personality, but I really like to drill down on how and why things work the way they do. And I think that's one skill that's been really useful for me as a prop master is actually understanding the how and why of things. And why people would choose one thing over another to. With them as their personal possessions. You know, I just find that really interesting.

I remember traveling a few years ago and coming across a museum in Berlin that has become my most, one of my favorite museums. It's called the museum Der Dinge, which is called the museum of things. And it is a museum of objects. And I really recommend anyone going to Berlin. Go to this museum, cuz it's absolutely fascinating. You can tell a lot about people by their stuff.

And that is what really interests me and what I think about a lot and what informs me when I'm thinking about propping a character. An art department is made up of many, many people. So you have your production designer, who's in charge of the overall look. And then you have your art director. Who's in charge of translating that, you know, getting the people on to actually make that happen and managing the budget.

And then you have your set decorator, which is a person who's in charge of creating the environment. Informed by the production designer. And then you have the props team, which are in charge of the personal props. And some of that can just be things they keep in their handbag. There's no hard and fast rule about how things are divided up amongst this team in a way there are some jobs where the props person might say, get a piano for a character.

If it, if they're a pianist, though, you would say, well, that's a really large piece of furniture. So why isn't the set decorator doing that? But if it's a piano, that is something that is so specific to that character. Sometimes it gets given to the props master because it is something that really portrays that character in terms of their things. Every job is different and every job you have to negotiate where the demarcation lines.

So say with Muriel's wedding that was made back in the days where the art department was not as, uh, extensive as it is now in a lot of ways. So. In fact in mural's wedding, there wasn't a dedicated props person. There was basically only three of us in the art department. And so we divided up the sets according to how it was gonna be shot so that we would sort of tag team each other in the order that it was shot.

So. Say for example, I did the opening wedding sequence and then Glen, my colleague did the scene, the locations that were came up in the story after that, the way we did it then was that we would do what's called the set dressing. So the furniture and also the props for that scene. So we did a bit of both. in terms of the house, in terms of the Heslop house, we actually did it together. Cuz there were so many rooms inside that house.

But what would happen is you would have a location person who would go out and find the locations required. There were no sets built for Muriel's wedding. It was all basically shot on location. And in actual fact, a lot of the film was supposed to be on a cruise ship. And we had a company lined up a well known cruise ship company lined up who actually pulled out a week before we started shooting. And so the whole island sequence was originally set on a cruise ship.

So we had to actually create that at the very last minute. I mean, it was a huge spanner in the works, in the making of that film for such a main location to drop out at the last minute. So basically your, your location manager goes out, finds a few locations. The production designer will go and have a look at them and see how they can make it work, what they can do to it, to service the story.

And then once one's picked the set dressers or set decorators, go in and furnish the scene, you might have a bit of construction go to maybe put in a wall or hide something or something like that. And then, basically that, you know, if there's food, if it's like say, um, the banquet scene on the, in the island, you know, where the Mama Mia scene is shot, there was a big banquet table with huge tropical fruit displays and stuff like that. So you organized someone.

And we actually got a fantastic artist. We employed a lot of artists on Muriel's wedding, not film people. And so we got this fantastic artist called Pip Playford from the Mardi GRA workshop to come in and do that whole fabulous over the top. Carmen Miranda fruit display, and then you shoot the scene.