My Little Video....

[staceyrebecca]

Hey guys,

You know how I made some puppets in a very short amount of time awhile back? I think I'd mentioned somewhere that we were going to end up filming something for an independent film competition (done locally in Phoenix through IFP)...

I went to the premier tonight, expecting to show up, hide & go away quietly...Instead we came home with 3 awards(!), one of them being 1st place in the competition (which came with a nicely sized check). I was umm...surprised. (The other two awards being best story & best use of puppets---seems like they made that last one up, but it got us a plaque nonetheless!)

So now i'm able to unlock that link on youtube (It's inappropriate for anyone who doesn't like inappropriate things).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIYaLHSYgIQ

Since this is the first time I've ever done puppetry for video, please be gentle (and at the same time honest). I can already see some huge mistakes.

So yeah...first puppetry project for film won 3 awards at a film competition..I'm feeling pretty confused.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

This is really cute!

My only suggestion would be to drop the hand...that's a common thing in puppetry; the hands get held too high.

 

[staceyrebecca]

Thank you Buck-Beaver! You mean *her* hand, right? I'm actually just barely getting used to performing with rods. I think in all of 6 years I can think of about 5 times I've used them, so let's call it a dozen times to be on the safe side.

Thank you!

 

[Onath]

Nice job. Is that your voice stacey? If so you have a great voice for puppetry.

 

[Toasty]

Stacey! Thanks for sharing this and congrats on the awards! Your voice work is great and the comedic timing is there and the character is really cute.

Two observations for things to watch for when shooting next time are the puppet's hand position (as Buck said) which doesn't have to be in the frame at all times (I make this same mistake, too, when I'm not thinking about it), and also the puppet's eye focus with the camera (the Wolf's POV) while she's speaking seems to wander a lil (I think that could be your wrist turning while your punching out the lip synch (the synch is very good, btw!). I sometimes struggle with eye focus, too, especially in very tight shots on video where the character needs to look right at the camera. A few degrees off either way and the focus is lost. Were you using a monitor of any kind? Those are invaluable when working with video. The flip-out LCD on the video camera is okay in a pinch, but it is small and there will be times your head will be hidden behind something or bent down in a position where you can't see it. A small TV hooked to the video out jack on the camera is all you need. I have an 8" LCD monitor that's portable and runs on battery if needed that works well when I'm performing.

You nailed it for the most part... I'm just nitpicking because you mentioned it was your first video puppet project.


Bravo! and thanks again for sharing!

 

[Buck-Beaver]

The thing about eye focus is that it's very difficult to maintain on a single point in a long sustained take and that also tends to get boring. Even if you watch some of the best Muppet videos you'll notice they don't do it very often.

Everybody has different ways of working, but what I have learned to do is break down the script in to emotional or mental "beats" and work out what the character is thinking and/or focusing on for each particular beat. "Definite focus" - having the puppet always doing or focusing on something very specific works very well I think.

There was a Sesame clip posted on Puppeteers Unite yesterday and Tom talked about the arm movement in it, but it's also a great example of good eye focus. Watch where Bert and Ernie's eye focus goes and when in relation to what's happening in the scene and what they are talking about.

I guess we're getting off topic here, but there is so much you can learn about puppetry and staging from those old Sesame clips with Jim and Frank. People get really hung up on lip sync and technical stuff like that, but I think it's the staging and a character's thought and focus that's more important. If that works really well people don't notice little technical things.

I wrote a post on my blog about puppet staging awhile back that some people might find interesting.

 

[Toasty]

That's a great point about "definite focus." That along with effective staging can really improve (and make or break) a performance piece. I've always been a keen observer of composition and staging.

The time I am most concerned about actual eye focus is when my character is breaking the fourth wall and looking directly into the lens---where the camera is the viewer (or another character). That is where off-axis eye focus can really bug me (it's the kind of thing that I notice when editing my own stuff and it always gets on my nerves).

The body position and hand gestures and all the other nuances and how it was staged as shown in that Sesame clip were really well done. You are correct in saying that so much of the power of that and performances like it were Jim and Frank (and Richard, etc) and how they worked together to make the whole piece flow, and of course how it was framed perfectly for the TV "stage".

Thanks for posting it, Andrew.

 

[staceyrebecca]

wow thanks guys! All of this feedback is exactly what I wanted!

A few weekends after I shot this Dave Goelz came into town (oh can I ever stop talking about that?), he gave us a 30 second lesson in eye focus & keeping bits of your hand still. I'm hoping I've picked up on it a little.

I knew the wandering eyes were my biggest issue. Wandering eyes and just a shaking head in general. I think that sort of thing hasn't mattered so much when we're on a large stage (or at least its way less noticeable).

We were using the on-camera flip LCD monitor. Wowever we discovered when we uploaded the footage to the laptop, that there was a good chunk of the video at the bottom of the screen that the LCD monitor cut off (thanks sony, thanks a lot). I was also..*cough* reading the script *cough* so that might have had something to do with it.....

All in all, I'm very surprised that it won anything, let alone first place, considering the mistakes we made. But considering the judges are not puppeteers, they don't look for things like vocal separation or lip sync (we had to dub the final version...breaks my heart)

Director's cut will happen someday. It's certainly put a bug in me to make more videos.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

All of the "flipped" LCDs on cameras I have seen give you a mirror image rather than a reversed one. That often creates weird problems with focus and staging because you are not seeing what the audience is (many webcams do the same thing).

Worked reversed is called "straight scan" (mirror image is called "reverse scan" just to make things confusing). Virtually all of the professional film & TV puppeteers in North America work straight scan. Marcus Clarke - a really good puppeteer in the UK who's a convert to straight scan - has written a great article about his experience with both and the differences between them.

Also, I kind of automatically assume everyone has read this because it's so old, but worth reading is Leo Brodie's Introduction to Video Puppetry: Manipulation for the Camera if you haven't already. It's the best basic written "how to" I've seen on video puppetry.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

The time I am most concerned about actual eye focus is when my character is breaking the fourth wall and looking directly into the lens---where the camera is the viewer (or another character). That is where off-axis eye focus can really bug me (it's the kind of thing that I notice when editing my own stuff and it always gets on my nerves).

This is very true. I am by no means the world's greatest on camera puppeteer, but occasionally I teach just the very basics and one of the practice exercises I do - which I learned from a more experienced puppeteer - is to make 'targets' on the screen with a dry-erase marker to practice eye focus. Ideally you should be able to enter frame and snap the puppet's focus to any point on the screen. That's a very useful skill to practice and master.

Just make sure the marker will come off before you start using it!