I stumbled across this online while doing some research earlier this month; it’s an excerpt from a CBC interview with Jim Henson taped on the set of Fraggle Rock in 1983. In it Jim discusses his family, working in television and mentions the then-yet-to-be-released Muppets Take Manhattan and Labyrinth, which Jim describes as “his next fantasy movie.”

This is a nearly 50 year old film produced by Jim Henson that was recently rediscovered and released online by AT&T. Robot is one Jim Henson’s business films from the 1960s, it was shot in 1963 for an elite seminar organized for business owners on the then-brand-new topic of Data Communications.

From the video’s YouTube description:

The seminar itself involved a lot of films and multimedia presentations, and took place in Chicago. A lengthy description of the planning of the Bell Data Communications Seminar — sans a mention of the Henson involvement — is on the blog of Inpro co-founder Jack Byrne. It later was renamed the Bell Business Communications Seminar.

The organizers of the seminar, Inpro, actually set the tone for the film in a three-page memo from one of Inpro’s principals, Ted Mills to Henson. Mills outlined the nascent, but growing relationship between man and machine: a relationship not without tension and resentment: “He [the robot] is sure that All Men Basically Want to Play Golf, and not run businesses — if he can do it better.” (Mills also later designed the ride for the Bell System at the 1964 World’s Fair.) Henson’s execution is not only true to Mills’ vision, but he also puts his own unique, irreverent spin on the material.

The robot narrator used in this film had previously starred in a skit for a food fair in Germany (video is silent), in 1961. It also may be the same robot that appeared on the Mike Douglas Show in 1966. Henson created a different — but similar — robot for the SKF Industries pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair.

Kudos to AT&T for releasing this fascinating little piece of Muppet/Henson history!

Via Tough Pigs.

Tomorrow would have been the 75th birthday of Jim Henson. To help celebrate his life and career Google has teamed up with the Jim Henson Company. If you visit the Google Homepage tonight or tomorrow you’ll see a special “Google Doodle” featuring six digital puppets that you can perform using your mouse and keyboard.

It’s pretty neat to see digital puppets on the homepage of Google, but what I especially love about this is the way that it seems to be unleashing people’s creativity. Within hours of the Google Doodle’s appearance videos of digital puppeteering began popping up on YouTube. So far most of them seem to be making “digital puppet karoke” videos.

Here’s one of the Black Eyed Peas’ Boom, Boom, Pow:

…and one of Earth Angel:

Pretty neat, huh?

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

Henson & Oz: Never Before, Never Again is a video essay about Jim Henson and Frank Oz from the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, where the exhibit Jim Henson’s Fantastic World is ongoing through January 16th next year. Although this doesn’t really any new or previously unseen material (the video is compiled from a number of sources, most notably the 1984 documentary Henson’s Place), it’s a very nice tribute to two men who were truly one of the greatest comedy teams of the 20th century.

Via Drawn!

There was lots of Muppet-related stuff to see at Disney’s D23 Expo this past weekend. Brian Henson accepted a Disney Legend award – which recognizes people who have made “an extraordinary and integral contribution to The Walt Disney Company” – on behalf of his father Jim. Afterwards, Brian treated the crowd to the live puppetry demonstration above, re-enacting Jim Henson’s classic “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face skit” with Leslie Carrara-Rudolph.

The marketing machine for the upcoming Muppet movie (see previous post) was in full swing as well. Jason Segal made an appearance on stage with Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy to introduce clips from the new movie and Kermit also performed a duet with Rowlf the Dog:

Visit Tough Pigs and Hollywood.com for more coverage and commentary about the Muppets at D23.

Here on PuppetVision Mondays are usually devoted to Monday Morning Inspiration and, well, it doesn’t get much more inspirational than the man himself, Jim Henson.

It’s become a tradition for Muppet fans and puppeteers alike to celebrate his remarkable life and legacy every year on May 16th (see previous post), the anniversary of his unexpected and tragic passing in 1990. The video above is of Harry Belafonte eulogizing Jim Henson at his memorial service and is probably one of the most eloquent eulogies ever written.

I firmly believe that the true depth of Jim’s genius wasn’t appreciated (or perhaps was just taken for granted) by most of us until after his death. While he was famous all over the world for The Muppets and Sesame Street, he was also a pioneer in digital puppetry, animatronics, experimental filmmaking, reality television and was looking forward to technologies like high definition video decades before most people. Even Frank Oz – Jim’s closest performing partner – remarked that he didn’t quite realize how big a man Jim truly was until he attended his memorial.

A lot of people in my generation remember where they were when they heard Jim Henson died the way that my parent’s generation remember where they were when they heard John Lennon had been shot, or President Kennedy was assassinated. That’s the kind of cultural impact Jim Henson had.

Although the world is a little duller without him, it’s a much better place for having had him in it.

This is an incredibly rare episode of Sam and Friends, Jim Henson’s first television show, which aired in Washington, D.C. from 1955-1961. Few episodes from the series have survived because (as was the case with most shows in the early days of television) the show was filmed live-to-air and Jim Henson would reportedly only record a kinescope (the precursor to videotape) when he was trying out a new technique or wanted to review a specific aspect of the show.

This is also a notable episode because Jim Henson can be heard doing several character voices instead of having the Muppets lip sync to popular songs or recordings, as was usually the norm on Sam and Friends. It also serves as a precursor of sorts to the Muppet saloon skits that would become a staple of Sesame Street for many years.

Spotted over at Puppeteers Unite.

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday, unfortunately I was without internet yesterday. Hopefully I’m making up for it with this amazing video, which was submitted by several PuppetVision readers in the past few days. It’s a very inspiring talk from the DICE 2011 summit by puppeteer/animator/director John Stevenson, who got his start working on the Muppet Show and is probably best known for co-directing Kung-Fu Panda. In it John discusses his career, his relationship with Jim Henson and why he believes love is the most important element in everything you do. Watch it, you won’t be disappointed.

22/2/2011 Update: There seems to be some issues with this video not displaying properly. If you don’t see it embedded above, click here to see if it’s available on their website.

This is a brief interview with British puppeteer Toby Philpott telling an anecdote about working on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It’s interesting to listen to a puppeteer discuss working on a film like Roger Rabbit, which is one of the those movies that people don’t realize involved a lot of puppetry (puppeteers were used to perform on-set stunts and gags that helped integrate Roger Rabbit’s live animated characters with its live action).

Toby worked on an incredible series of high-profile movies that were shot in England in the 1980s, including The Dark Crystal, Return of the Jedi (he was part of the team that performed Jabba The Hutt) and Little Shop of Horrors before leaving the film business about twenty years ago. Dark Crystal fan site The Book of Habidabad has a great interview with Toby where he discusses his career in film and working alongside greats like George Lucas, Frank Oz and Jim Henson.

This is such a cool idea for a blog….an online version of Jim Henson’s personal work diary, which he kept from the mid 1960s until just a few years before his death.

From Henson.com:

In June 1965, 28-year-old Jim Henson started a written log of his activities in what became known as “The Red Book.” He noted down what had happened up until that point (deemed “Ancient History”) and then recorded anything that he felt was worth recording until the end of 1988.

It’s long been known that Jim Henson kept extensive records and that the Henson Archives is a treasure trove of wonderful stuff like this, but very little of it has ever been made available to the public. Kudos to the Henson Co. for making such an important and exciting record of their history available online for free!