Puppetry Difficulties?

[Ryan]

What are the most difficult puppeteering tasks for you to achieve? Here's some of mine:

Keeping Eye Conact- This is a lot harder than it seems. ESPECIALLY when your puppet has bad mouth grips.Fortunatley, I don't really have this problem wih Candy.

Keeping my head down- Epecially when you have no monitor, this is really harsh, for me.

Reading scripts- I always flub my lines! PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! ;0)

Voices- My voice range is....okay. I can do Frank Oz voices, but That's about it. Maybe a manly Janice......

So, any others for you guys out there?
Maybe we can all help give tips and "tricks of the trade"!

 

[Joggy]

Working with people who never worked with puppets and never will give a d^mn about working with puppets. For instance, camera people who seem to think people won't notice the puppeteer when his head, neck, shoulders AND arms are in view. UGH.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

We just ran a ton of auditions up here with a lot of VERY experienced puppeteers and a lot of not so experienced puppeteers and the difference was amazingly apparent. Some of the biggest problems with the less experienced people were:

Eye Focus - This is usually a HUGE problem when two puppets are in a scene together, even if one puppeteer can maintain proper eye focus the other can't.

Lip Sync - This is a surprisingly big problem, even among people who understand lip sync technique - I find I tend to "bite-off" words if I haven't been puppeteering for awhile - especially if I take my eyes off the monitor.

Memorizing lines - Puppeteers are notoriously lazy when it comes to this (and often get handed the scripts right before they go on anyways) and hey, I'm like the king of non-memorizing, but you really should be in the practice of learning lines. I always say, do as I say, not as I do...


As for tips, the best article on TV/video puppeteering I've found is

Introduction to Video Puppetry: Manipulation for the Camera by Leo Brodie. Also see Leo's article Setting Up a Practice Monitor.