The quality of the footage in this YouTube playlist isn’t great, but it features the highly regarded Stephen Mottram demonstrating some beautiful, remarkably life-like marionette manipulation techniques.

Schultz and Dooley were popular “Spokesmugs” for Utica Club Beer in a long-running series of commercials in the 1960s. These two beer steins have an impressive pedigree; they were built and performed by the legendary Bil Baird and both characters were voiced by Jonathan Winters.

Classic commercials like this represent both the best and worst of television advertising in the `60s. On the one hand these are seriously great and most brands don’t do character-driven advertising like this anymore. On the other hand, I don’t think the agency behind these ever met a racial stereotype that they didn’t embrace…and use to sell more beer. The ad above isn’t too bad, but some of them like this one are a little cringe inducing.

Either way you look at it, they don’t make `em like they used to.

Cage is a rockabilly single off of Sallie Ford and The Outside’s album Dirty Radio. The video was produced by lead singer Sallie Ford’s talented father Hobey Ford (see previous posts). Hobey doesn’t really consider himself a marionette puppeteer – he’s best known for his stunning rod puppetry work and inventing the popular “Peepers” puppets – and was apparently a little nervous doing this, but I think he pulled the video off nicely.

Via IFC.

Last month I wrote about the fundraising campaign for An Attic Full of Puppets, a documentary that Richard Butchins is making about acclaimed British marionette puppeteer Frank Mumford (see previous post). As an update of sorts, Richard recently posted this interview with David Berglas – a magician who used to tour the variety circuit with Frank and his wife Maisie – that will appear in the finished film. Although Richard and his team have already raised $2,778 for the production as of this writing, there’s still a little over a month left to go in their campaign. which is still well short of its $30,000 fundraising goal.

It’s very important for those of us who love puppetry to help preserve the history of the craft and I think this is a worthwhile project that will help ensure the legacy of a great puppeteer who’s work deserves to be more well known. If you haven’t already please consider supporting this project with either a contribution and/or by blogging, tweeting and sharing it online.

For more details please visit www.indiegogo.com/Atticfullofpuppets.

This is a very ambitious marionette video for the song Modern Times by funk rockers 100 Monkeys. It features some gorgeous-looking marionettes that were made by Alexander Mergold and performed by Scott Land (assisted by Keith Land) as well as some very impressive miniature sets that were built on a tight budget. The video’s director Chris Buongiorno has a nice gallery of behind-the-scenes photos from the shoot on his website that’s also worth checking out.

Special thanks to Christine Papalexis for sending this in!

The Smurfs opens in theatres today here in North America. Deborah Glassberg and James Wojtal Jr. – who seems to get the lion’s share of the interesting puppet building gigs in the Greater New York area – designed and built these marionettes of Papa Smurf and Smurfette for one of the film’s opening scenes. Hit the preceding link for a better look; James has also been posting more images and early work-in-progress videos to his Facebook profile.

Award winning documentary maker Richard Butchins was attending a party last January when he made the acquaintance of an older gentleman named Frank. Over the course of their conversation Frank casually mentioned that he “used to be in show business a bit,” and revealed a cupboard full of old cans of film. Richard eventually realized that Frank was Frank Mumford, a legendary British marionette puppeteer who used to perform alongside the likes of Laurence Oliver and at venues like the Moulin Rouge and the London Palladium. The cans of film in Frank’s cupboard? They were a 50 year old treasure trove of lost and forgotten film and television puppetry.

Richard was so inspired by Frank that he’s decided to make a documentary about his life and career called An Attic Full of Puppets. Unfortunately, finding a lot of the archival footage that’s need to tell Frank’s story completely is a challenge and requires a specialized (read: expensive) researcher, as well as  transfer costs and  license fees to use the footage once its found.

To help pay for all of this, Richard and his team – which includes British puppeteer Darryl Worbey – are trying to raise $30,000 through IndieGoGo. You can check out Richard’s pitch embedded above and if you’d like to support this worthwhile project, you can support An Attic Full of Puppets on IndieGoGo.

Those short films from the 2011 O’Neill Puppetry Conference a couple weeks ago were very popular, so here’s another one…The Spy! was directed by Tim Lagasse and shot as part of a Marionette Performance for Film workshop led by Phillip Huber.

You can find a little more info over at Tim’s excellent Sons of Punch blog.

I love simple, beautiful, life-like puppetry. Kawasemiza – a Japanese puppetry company that tours internationally – seems to do a lot of that. Watch the video above and check out their YouTube Channel for more great work.

Over the past few years Etsy has been producing a lot of videos, ranging from craft tutorials and “how-to” videos to really beautifully shot mini-documentaries about prominent Etsy members. I think my personal favourites are their Process series, which profile artists at work and their creative process. One of the best of these features the work of Geahk Burchill, who is the founder of The Cast Iron Carousel Marionette Troupe and sells his beautiful work on Etsy. Not only does Geahk do great work, but this is a really inspiring video to watch.

You can watch all of the Etsy videos online for free. I previously mentioned their profile of my friend and fellow Unraku-er Stacey Gordon back in 2009.