Puppetry: Coming Soon To A Theatre Near You?

Where the Wild Things Are is just one of several examples of recent hand-crafted films featuring puppets

A few weeks ago The Toronto Star ran an interesting article explaining how puppets got to be so cool. The article talks about Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, which is just one example of what I think is a much bigger trend towards a growing appetite for interesting, intelligent, handcrafted films. The current renaissance in stop motion animation (which isn’t puppetry per se, but is pretty darn close) and the return to popularity of 2D animated films like The Princess and the Frog and Ponyo offer further evidence of this.

Hollywood is starting to pay attention. The Muppets’ latest viral video, Bohemian Rhapsody (see previous post), has been watched close to 5 million times since it debuted on Monday, part of Disney’s build up to a new Muppet film called The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever that’s going in to production. Likewise, the Jim Henson Company is slowly moving forward with a film based on Fraggle Rock and they’ve gone out of their way to stress to fans that it’ll be made the old fashioned way, with puppets instead of new fangled CGI wizardry. Making films based on established Muppet franchises is a safe bet for Hollywood at this point, but it will be very interesting to see what happens if either of those movies are a big hit when they’re released over the next few years.

I’ve always believed that audiences just want to be entertained and care more about a good story than what medium it’s told in, but movies like Where The Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr. Fox are helping to dispel the myth that all anyone wants to see is computer generated animation. Although I don’t think we’ll see a deluge of puppet films at the box office just yet, don’t be surprised if sometime in the next five years one or two puppet movies hit big and everyone is talking about how puppetry has finally arrived as the next big thing.

Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody

Can you believe that it’s actually taken the Muppets this long to cover Bohemian Rhapsody? While they certainly weren’t first, I think they (unsurprisngly) might have done it best.

Update: So, apparently the Muppets have done Bohemian Rhapsody before after all. They sang it in 2005 on the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon (thanks to Tough Pigs, masters of all esoteric Muppet knowledge)

Puppet Improv

While I wasn’t blogging over the summer, I was doing a series of improv puppetry workshops and rehearsals with Unraku. It was a really interesting, challenging experience because while I consider myself a pretty decent puppeteer, I’m terrible at improv. Fortunately, Stacey was teaching us and she’s always devastatingly funny and a blast to work with.

We shot a couple hours worth of video, but because it was done mostly for training purposes and is pretty rough I doubt most of it will ever be posted online. Still, there were a few scenes that really cracked us up and Kelly Kirkham and I both really liked this one that we did together so I thought I’d share it.

Enjoy!

Cleaning Up and Apologising

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged.

I had previously posted a couple of messages on here about some of the personal upheaval that’s kept me away from the puppetry intrawebs for so long. I’m somewhat reluctant to discuss my personal life and circumstances in a public forum like this – if anything recent events have taught me to never, ever do that again – but suffice to say I had a number of deaths and serious illnesses among my family and friends including the passing of my father and the combination of natural grief and dealing with all the mundane things you have to deal with when people die or are ill kept me away and distracted.

I owe an especially big apology to everyone who enrolled in the Puppet Building 101 course (see previous post) I was running at the beginning of the summer. Circumstances forced me to postpone the course after it started by a few weeks, then until the Fall and finally to cancel it outright because changes in my personal and professional responsibilities just don’t allow me the time to do it. Refunds to everyone who enrolled were held up because of some PayPal-related snafus, but I’m relieved to say that the last of them were issued this week.

Now it’s come to my attention recently that there was some particularly nasty chat about this on at least one other puppetry website. I haven’t really been online much for several months and the relevant threads seem to have now been deleted by moderators, but this flame war seemed to escalate last week to the point where certain individuals (well, ok, mainly one individual) who had been enrolled in the course wase harassing and beginning to cyberstalk other members of the online puppetry community.

I certainly can understand people being upset and frustrated about Puppet Building 101, but I’m baffled as to why someone seems to be taking that out on folks who have nothing to do with the situation. I am not going to name names, but this person knows who they are and would like to appeal to them to come to their senses and stop this. You are only going to end up hurting yourself and not the person you’re mad at (me).

I do want to take this opportunity to publicly and sincerely apologise to anyone who was enrolled for the cancellation as well as any inconvenience and frustration the long, drawn-out situation caused. Although the circumstances were largely out of my control, I wish I had been able to deal with the situation in a more prompt manner.

I’ve spent a long time building up a lot of goodwill with this little ol’ blog here and it’s unfortunate that it has become tainted by the fallout from my Summer from Hell. So to the two dozen or so people who were affected, please accept my unconditional apology. I hope I can find a way to make it up to you in the future.

Slowing Down For the Summer

Sorry for the lack of recent updates. I’ve recently been occupied by a family emergency and updates may be few and far between over the summer as a result. If you’re enrolled in the Puppet Building 101 course, it’s been placed on hold until July 13th, at which point it will resume.

I have no definite future plans right now, but things will probably return to normal sometime around late August or early September. Thanks for your understanding.

Sock Zombie Movie

Kathy Danley made a short video featuring an adorable Sock Zombie.

Remember Erin Glaser’s Sock Zombies? Well, Kathy Danley went and made a short film with one of them! You can watch Sock Zombie “doing the dating thing” on YouTube.

Jay ThePal

Jay ThePal (and Kay ThePal) seem to be popping up all over social media lately.

It took me a little while to figure out what was up with Jay ThePal, a puppet character that seemed to start popping up all over every social media website that you can think of lately. I think I first saw him (along with Kay ThePal) when they gave me a shout-out on 12seconds.tv, which is sort of Twitter for video.

Jay ThePal is one of those FAO Schwartz “Whatnot” Muppet puppets and seems to be a sort of puppetry experiment that’s happening all over the web (Twitter, YouTube, 12seconds, etc.). It’s a little difficult to get a handle on the whole project or where it’s going, but it’s very interesting to watch how people are using puppetry to explore social media. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

A Study of Movement (The Evolution of Dance)

Puppetry students at the University of Hawaii re-create The Evolution of Dance with a puppet.

I love Bunraku-style puppetry, so I really enjoyed seeing A Study of Movement (The Evolution of Dance), a final project for a puppetry class at the University of Hawaii inspired by the famous YouTube viral video.

Going Back To The Future Of Advertising

Paul recently did a great post on his blog about Jim Henson’s early commercial spots and how that could be a successful advertising model today. I think he’s absolutely right; his post reminds me of one I wrote a couple years ago called Using Puppets To Pay The Bills.

The 30 second pre-roll ad is almost universally hated. The web is a new medium that we’re still in early stages of exploring. The people who really “break through” and define it will be the ones who figure out new ways of telling stories and develop new (old?) ways of thinking about advertising and sponsorship.

Monday Morning Inspiration: Dan Stevers’ Christian Motion Graphics

Dan Stevers creates Christian-themed motion graphics.

Over the past month or I’ve been watching and enjoying Dan Stevers‘ Christian-themed motion graphics videos on Vimeo. Two of my favourites are The Light of the World and Life With God. Some of Dan’s videos are artistic interpretations of Christian scripture, while others simply illustrate basic Christian principles.

You can see all of Dan’s videos on Vimeo. His work is available to purchase from Worship House Media.