How are props marked anyway?
They aren't. Occasionally I use Post-Its or string tags to mark props during production, cleaning, repair, and other backstage activity. But in all the theaters and films in my experience, no prop goes in front of an audience or a camera sporting any visible mark. It's just not done. Backstage, the prop goes on a table or shelf or box that may be marked. It's the property master's job (and also sometimes the actor's) to know what prop is what.
Then why mark the set with the risk of being discovered?
In many cases sets must be marked. On a theatrical stage, props must be placed to coincide with the preset lighting or with sightlines. Often that can be done simply by reference to other objects or features of the stage. Our stage has a multitude of lifts that feature seams in the deck, so we simply place objects relative to those.
Where precision is required, a small strip of tape made specially for that purpose is laid down by the stage manager and is generally invisible from the audience. The most such "spikes" I've seen were on Penn and Teller's stage in Las Vegas -- not inappropriate for a magic show. But they're invisible from the audience; you have to be on the stage to see them. Most spikes are actually covered by the object whose position they mark. You don't put a spike near where a prop goes. If someone had found it necessary for any reason to mark the position of the rock, then the rock would have gone over the mark, not behind it.
In film, actors must often hit marks that, again, coincide with lighting; or more likely -- with focus and camera sightlines. These marks are also made with spiking tape and can be very large so the actor can see them with peripheral vision. However, they are well outside the camera's field of view.
That all presumes motion. That is, a theatrical stage and a film set are filled with actors and objects in motion, requiring the limits of that motion to be identified and controlled. In a still photography set there is no need at all to mark positions of things. You place the objects; you take the pictures; then you're done.
The overriding philosophy for all that stage work is: don't let the audience see it. So very often conspiracy theorists try to tell us about theatrical methods and technology whose tell-tales they think they see in Apollo records. Unfortunately it just reveals that conspiracy theorists know as little about stagecraft as they do about astrophysics and space engineering.
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