Thursday, Jodi and I shot a pilot episode. We were the only two puppeteers on the shoot, and as often happens, the only people in the room with prior puppetry experience. The puppets were charming but, to my eye, built by a stage puppeteer rather than a film and television puppeteer. How could I tell? Small details, like visible specks of glue. Now, for stage, this doesn’t matter ((We have a saying, “forty feet on a galloping horse” which means that if you won’t notice it while galloping on horseback forty feet away you won’t notice it on the stage either)) but for film work you have to be prepared for extreme closeups.
These were rod puppets and the necks were extremely thin, long and sproingy. ((Yes, that’s a technical term.)) Our slightest tremor translated into a giant head wiggle. On top of that, the mouth trigger would actually pull the whole head down with it. None of this violated the forty feet and a galloping horse rule, but boy howdy did it look funny in a closeup. We weren’t doing lipsync so much as headsync.
AND one of the puppets broke moments after we got there. I had a total MacGyver moment and repaired the puppet with a paperclip, gaffers tape and superglue. (( No, I can’t describe the repair in more detail because to do so would require explaining what the characters were which would blow the secrecy around the pilot.))
The guys we were working for were supernice and thankfully understood the challenges pretty darn quickly. On the whole, they seemed pleased. Hopefully I’ll be able to show you some of it down the line.
In my community theatre company, we set-painters have the 20-foot rule. If you think you’re done with what you are working on, get up, walk twenty feet away, and look at it. If you growl at it, you’re not done. This works even better if you can roll whatever it is on stage (or have an actor hold it, since they’re not doing much that’s useful on set-construction day anyway), sit in Row D, and look at it.
Yeah, I do that too. The other thing I do is take my glasses off and look at things.
When I first saw the title of the post, I was thinking the length of the rods. Of course, I was thinking the kind of stage performance in which the puppets are held to the side of puppeteers who are clearly visible and the rods would be shorter than the ones you need to lift over your head. But yeah, camera captures a lot of stuff. Got to watch out for details like glue.
True enough about the rod length. Then, too, stage puppets and film puppets use different types metal for the rods. For stage I tend toward spring steel, because it’s very hard to bend. But the film shoots I’ve worked on always use welding rod, because it’s easy to bend, which comes in hand for scenes where you need to quickly reshape a rod.
But the details, yeah, that was the biggest problem with these.