Updated: Modern shadows

I spotted an interesting blog by Michelle Zacharia today, The Modern Shadow. It’s a production journal of sorts for a project she’s developing that will blend Indonesian Wayang Golek puppetry influences with video and digital production techniques. The project is still in its early stages and the blog hasn’t been updated for a few weeks, but hopefully we’ll be hearing more about this very, very soon.

Shadow-puppetry inspired films are a growing trend. In addition to the recent Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets (see previous post), in recent years there’s also been the Aardman short Humdrum, shadow puppets on Bear in the Big Blue House and a new series in the works called Lil’ Suzie Shadow that I’m hoping to have more info about to share very soon.

Update: Michelle wrote me just a few minutes ago with more information about her project:

“…it will actually be an installation to be completed by May next year. My goal in this project is to mimic the real traditional shadow play digitally (will be back projected within the installation) so I choose not to use zooming, facial expressions, just to communicate through gestures, voice pitch, and background music / sound fx. The audience should notice the uniqueness of this play through subtle twisting on the characters and the language spoken.”

Sounds like another really interesting digital puppetry experiment to watch for!