Puppeteers (L-R) Amelia Yokel, Frank Langley IV, Mark Bryan Wilson and Ratna Pappert work together on the set of Sam K. Hale’s Yamasong.

About a month ago I was in Winnipeg for Plastic Paper: Winnipeg’s festival of animated, illustrated and puppet film. One of the festival’s highlights was a special “best of” edition of Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams. Among the films screened was the newest short commissioned by Heather, Yamasong directed by Sam K. Hale (see previous post), which I was really excited to see.

Yamasong is a short film/music video inspired by On Ensemble and based on their song of the same name. It’s a visually dazzling piece of puppet filmmaking inspired by the work of  Jusaburo Tsujimura and Ronnie Burkett that also reminds me a lot of Taiwan’s PiLi (see previous post). The film features Sam’s beautifully crafted rod puppets performed Bunraku-style against greenscreen by a talented team of puppeteers that included Frank Langley IV, Mark Bryan Wilson, Victor Yerrid, Amelia Yokel, Ratna Pappert and Sam himself among others.

Sam talks briefly about his process for Yamasong in this interview:

More behind the scenes photos and info about Yamasong is available here, here, here and here. To see Yamasong for yourself go to www.handmadepuppetdreams.com, sign-up for the Ibex Puppetry Newsletter and keep an eye out for when Yamasong will be coming to a film festival near you.