Georgia Film Academy adjunct professor Nick Ragazzo has something his students absolutely want. It’s years of real-world experience as a professional property assistant and prop manager in film and television. Alongside it, Ragazzo brings top-level prop craftsmanship skills which he is passionate about teaching to his students.
For the past 15 years, Ragazzo’s experiences as a crew member in the property department of films like “Hidden Figures”, series “Stranger Things”, “Will Trent” and “The Walking Dead” have been immense and intense.
In his job in the prop department of “The Walking Dead” in Senoia, Georgia, for instance, the first episode Ragazzo worked on went down in the show’s history.
“My first day was actually the day that Negan killed Glenn and Abraham with his bat,” he says. “So the crew that had been there before was crying [and]saying goodbye to these actors.”
An IATSE Local 479 member since 2015 (and IATSE 491 member in North Carolina and South Carolina for three years before that), Ragazzo day-played for a time on the series before landing a prop assistant role for two seasons.
Most of Ragazzo’s experiences have been like that—he saw a production opportunity, found his way onto the crew on a day-by-day basis, demonstrated his skills, and was then brought on as a regular crew member.
Comedy-drama feature “Arthur Newman” with Emily Blunt and Colin Firth was another one of the opportunities he met head-on, and it was Ragazzo’s first film.
“It was right after Colin Firth won an Academy Award for ‘The King’s Speech’. So, it was an incredible experience being able to meet an Oscar winner in one of my first film jobs,” he recalls.
By 2015, when Ragazzo relocated full-time to Georgia, lured by favorable tax incentives and a booming industry, he decided to take a year off to travel and add to his experiences.
“I ended up working on a Guatemalan independent feature as their prop master,” he shares.
Once back in the U.S., other prop department work for Ragazzo included the series “MacGyver” as a fabricator, and the horror series “Creepshow”.
“‘Creepshow’ had Greg Nicotero from ‘The Walking Dead’ as executive producer, a big special effects makeup artist, so we were kind of hand-picked from ‘The Walking Dead ’ after we left there. So I got to work on the new show for two seasons,” Ragazzo describes.
Recently, Ragazzo worked for three seasons on the “Will Trent” series as assistant prop master/second unit prop master.
All of his industry experiences eventually led Ragazzo to GFA, where he is training up-and-coming art department crew members as they work to enter the industry and make it in a changing world filled with potential.
So far, Ragazzo has one semester as an adjunct professor under his belt.
After years working on film and television sets, Ragazzo says he’s relishing his new role as instructor. “Today, we spend the first half of the semester slowly honing our skills on a lot of the tools, ones that are large and can be a bit intimidating, like a table saw or a miter,” he says.
This is accompanied by classroom work that starts with an introduction to the art department, where the prop discipline resides.
“[We talk about] what each position does, and I gauge interest on who’s [gravitating toward]what kind of role,” Ragazzo describes.
Next, his class begins building props and also works on storyboards and mood boards.
“Whether we’re pitching to directors or producers or we’re storyboarding it out with a director and director of photography and figuring out what each frame is going to be,” he describes, “we understand what the camera lens is looking at, and we know what’s important vs. what’s not important.”
Ragazzo’s students also learn to build Hollywood flats—single, lightweight and temporary wall frames.
“We learn how to measure and cut them so they’re eight feet tall and four feet wide, and how to put them together,” he describes. “Then we start learning how to paint them and seam the edges so that it looks like there’s no connection of the boards anywhere.”
For a final project, Ragazzo’s students demonstrate tool knowledge, an understanding of various art department roles, and actual set-building proficiency.
Leading into his next semester of teaching at GFA, Ragazzo is eager to pass along even more of the experience he’s gained over the years. And he believes his students can use it to find work in the growing Atlanta independent film scene.
“I’d really like to see the independent scene keep growing in Atlanta,” he says. “I believe Atlanta and the Southeast can be a really big hub of independent filmmakers. And working with the Georgia Film Academy has opened my eyes to a lot of students that want to make things.”
Ragazzo closes, “Sometimes you just have to go out there and actually make it. Hopefully, this inspires them.”
Learn more about Georgia Film Academy, part of the University System of Georgia, here.
