Throat Prop: part 1 procurement and wire armature

I've been asked to make a throat prop by Lisa Kappel for her VCA short film Wordless. After meeting with Lisa and discussing the build it was a bit more complex than I first imagined, which made me worried because of the time frame for completion. Anyway, the build I'm now doing is a little bit different from what was originally hoped for, but hopefully should achieve the same result.

In an ideal world with lots of time and money the prop would first be a sculpt out of clay then fabricated in fibreglass in silicone. We've opted for a cheaper build made out of wire mesh and plaster bandages.

Today I bought some of the materials needed, got some others out of storage and collected the tools I thought I might use. I also started some work on making the form out of wire armature for the throat.



A trip to Mitre 10 got me wire netting ($23) and new wire cutters ($27). And I forgot to buy sandpaper from the hardware store while I was there... A trip to Kmart got me some glue ($5.50). After some thinking in Dean's Arts I opted for Matisse's range of acrylic paints: 250ml Titanium White ($14.70), 250ml Light Skin Tone ($14.70), 75ml Prussian Blue ($7.10) and 75ml Napthol Crimson ($10.75). This should give me a good range of colours for painting the base coat and some capillaries. Probably could have also bought some black paint for back of throat. Total spend thus far, not counting wire cutters and armature wire from storage: $75.75!

I then set about forming the shape of a throat. Wire mesh armature is a bit trickier to work with than it looks and I scratched my arms and hand a bit before I remembered the gloves I had (old gardening ones which are not ideal but do the job). First the wire form is pretty floppy until I added progressive layers of wire mesh and tied it together with bits of armature wire. After wrestling with wire for a bit I had some basic shape that resembles a throat - minus uvula (dangly bit at top) and tongue.



After I had some basic shape I went and looked at some images of throats. Then I went back and added some further form to the sides of the opening to the throat.



I still have to source some more materials and will post updates as it takes shape over coming days.

[I'm also really curious how much time this build is going to take me for future reference if I have to think about doing something similar to this again. Total time thus far involved in build: 4hrs quotes for materials, 2 hrs meeting, 2 hrs communication about build, 1.5hrs procurement, 2.5hrs work on wire armature = 12hrs]