Action Movie Puppets?

[mrhogg]

Can anybody point me to puppets (muppet-style or otherwise) used in action movie sequences, or involved in physical action? I don't mean stop-motion; I'm thinking of real-time manipulation of puppets that make it look very physically active.

I'm thinking of like Miss Piggy when she punches people, only with a sense of realism.

I'm sure there are a half-dozen movies that can be easily pointed to, but if you could help me out, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!
Brian

 

[Whispers]

I can't think of any regarding fighting very much I'm afraid.
The Great Muppet Caper, however, has tons of realism in it which instills me with awe. There's Miss Piggy swimming [and fighting], the Muppet Gang on bikes and Kermit, Fozzie & Gonzo thrown off the bus and lots of other things.

 

[JDAmato]

Look at pretty much any monster-based horror movie from the 80s...unless the monster is big enough to have a human inside, they are usually just puppets. Alien, for example, is mainly large manually controlled puppets (although a lot of the famous shots are huge animatronic rigs).

 

[Blink]

Hey Brian,

Check out Crow Police made by the guys over at Puppet Greetings.
*Warning the clip cointains foul language.

P.S. JD I've tried to check out your blog but the link doesn't seem to work for me.

 

[muppetperson]

What about Team america?

 

[mrhogg]

Thanks for the link, Blink. I've got something in my head that would be visually Muppet-esque, no animatronics, but action movie-style with precision movement, without the need to go in for close-ups of fists to sell accurate punching, flipping, and the like.

I don't know if such a thing is possible, of course.

As for Team America, that's not specifically what I was looking for. The marionettes are in an action setting, but they really aren't capable of human-level action movements (and indeed they make fun of that inability to "fight" near the beginning of the film).

 

[Buck-Beaver]

The best example I can think of off the top of my head is Puppet Rapist, which if I'm remembering correctly had some nicely shot and edited action sequences.

The best way to tackle something like this is probably Bunraku-style with puppeteers in-shot and then take them out using wire removal techniques. It's pretty easy to do with Cinepaint (open source, free) or Photoshop. The only trick is getting the background plate (what you replace the erased puppeteers with). You could probably do this really well with careful editing and a series of close-up and locked-off (non-moving) shots with puppeteers erased digitally.

 

[JDAmato]

(Blink, thanks for the heads up, I think I fixed it!)

I dont know how this slipped me, but Peter Jackson's puppet movie "Meet the Feebles" has a lot of action in it. It is an extremely inappropriate movie for some audiences but it has some nice puppets and a lot of action.

here is a sample link (I am sure there is much more on youtube):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjIPSZPB5UM

 

[SesameKermie]

I would consider making 'live hands puppets. Those hands move and look more convincing than animatronic or rod puppet ones.

 

[staceyrebecca]

We had a guy come to our theater, I'll find out his name. He's a 5th or 6th generation puppeteer from China. This guy had puppets (hand/glove puppets) jump up in the air, off of his hand, do a flip & then smoothly come back into a sword fight. He also had hand puppets that would pick up a bow and arrow and shoot it onto a target across the stage. Granted, it's not in a movie setting, but its high action & I might be able to find a clip of him somewhere... (I want to say last I heard he lives in Denver..)