something I've noticed about crowd scenes

[minor muppetz]

I have noticed something about crowd scenes, between the time when Jim Henson and alive and then afterwards. It seems like when Jim Henson was alive, there have often been really impressive crowd scenes, which required more performers than usual, and in most cases no editing was invovled with gettign all of the characters together (though there are exceptions, like the audienc eshots from The Muppet Show). The finales of The Muppet Movie and The Muppets Take Manhattan, and various scenes from The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years and A Muppet Family Christmas have probably scores of characters in various shots. But then after Jim Henson died it seems like ther ehaven't been any crowd scenes that were a simpressive as these. There have been big crowd scenes, but not as impressive.

I was surprised when I read about several performers being needed for the beach scene in Muppets From Space, as there didn't seem to be many big crowd shots. There was really only one wide crowd shot, when the spaceship lands, but then there were too many humans in that shot. I feel like the humans actually took attention away from the Muppets in that sequence. I think I've also read that in the big group shot at the end of the "Brick House" sequence, there was actually a shortage of performers, so some sections were matted. While that is a grea tshot, I don't think it's that big.

And in Steve Whitmire's interview at Muppet Central, he mentioned that in The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson that the ending scene had either 25 or 50 performers, but I've only counted 26 characters in the finale (of course, every time I've counted them, it's when I'm not looking at a still or video clip, and when I'm not lookign at the Mupet Wiki listing of who appears there). Of course, that set is a bit smaller than the other sets that used hundreads of characters, but I think that if Jim Henson had been in charge of that scene it would have included a lot more characters.

 

[Beauregard]

Muppet Treasure Island had scores and scores of Puppets for the Cabin Fever song, especially the end of it when they are all dancing together. Sure, it wasn't Muppet Movie huge, but not bad.

Muppet Christmas Carol ends with a pull-out shot of many many Muppets around the table, and plenty more outside, including te waving lobsters up above...again, not a shabby crowd.

 

[MrsPepper]

Really long tracking shots would need alot of performers even if it's not a crowd, so maybe they started opting for that instead and it just seems like less? I have no idea but interesting observation.

 

[minor muppetz]

Muppet Christmas Carol ends with a pull-out shot of many many Muppets around the table, and plenty more outside, including te waving lobsters up above...again, not a shabby crowd.

I thought about that scene, and debated over whether it should count. It is pretty impressive, although we don't see that many characters at once, and also, it lead from inside to outside, but I think the inside and outside scenes were filmed at seperate times.