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Jim Henson Idea Man
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Was Once Ernie
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Hi All!
Thanks for making me feel so welcome.
Here is Part One of the story:
The short version of how I got the gig is that when I read that they were going to shoot the movie in Hollywood, I just contacted Jim. I already had a relationship with him dating back 7 or 8 years at that point. He said they might need some extra puppeteers at some point and he would contact me if they did. They did and he did.
We reported to a sound stage at CBS Radford Studios. This, although you wouldn't know it from the name, is a major Hollywood Studio, having once been Mack Sennett studios, then Republic Studios. In the 60's and 70's, a lot of television shows were shot there, including "My Three Sons", "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Gilligan's Island". In fact, Gilligan's lagoon used to be on the back lot. MTM later used the lot for all their shows. But I digress...
This was for the big finale, in which almost every Muppet character ever built was to appear. I don't believe the Saturday Night Live characters were included... and probably not some of the earliest Muppets, particularly the Sam & Friends characters... but everyone else was there.
We rehearsed for awhile by just holding our bare hands up in the air and doing the mouth movements to the song. It was tricky because there are pauses between "Thanks to the lovers... the dreamers... and you" and you just had to feel the pauses. You didn't want to anticipate the words and open the mouth too soon, just as you didn't want to be late.
We then went over to the stage we were shooting on. As many of you know, most of the time, the Muppets work standing up with the puppets raised over their heads. This means that the sets are either built up on stilts or the performers have to be standing in a trench. For this shot, they built up the entire stage floor, leaving an oval shaped hole where all the puppeteers stood. The camera was then on a huge crane that had to roll all the way to the back wall and the top corner of the soundstage to fit all the characters in.
The other technical problem was the rainbow. They shot it two ways. First, there was a giant scrim hanging across the stage with a rainbow painted on it. A scrim is a theatrical netting that when you shine light on it from the front, you can see what's painted on it, but when you shine light behind it, you can see through it. The other way was to remove the scrim and put the rainbow into the film optically in post production. Can you guess which method was used in the final film?
END OF PART ONE
Thanks for making me feel so welcome.
Here is Part One of the story:
The short version of how I got the gig is that when I read that they were going to shoot the movie in Hollywood, I just contacted Jim. I already had a relationship with him dating back 7 or 8 years at that point. He said they might need some extra puppeteers at some point and he would contact me if they did. They did and he did.
We reported to a sound stage at CBS Radford Studios. This, although you wouldn't know it from the name, is a major Hollywood Studio, having once been Mack Sennett studios, then Republic Studios. In the 60's and 70's, a lot of television shows were shot there, including "My Three Sons", "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Gilligan's Island". In fact, Gilligan's lagoon used to be on the back lot. MTM later used the lot for all their shows. But I digress...
This was for the big finale, in which almost every Muppet character ever built was to appear. I don't believe the Saturday Night Live characters were included... and probably not some of the earliest Muppets, particularly the Sam & Friends characters... but everyone else was there.
We rehearsed for awhile by just holding our bare hands up in the air and doing the mouth movements to the song. It was tricky because there are pauses between "Thanks to the lovers... the dreamers... and you" and you just had to feel the pauses. You didn't want to anticipate the words and open the mouth too soon, just as you didn't want to be late.
We then went over to the stage we were shooting on. As many of you know, most of the time, the Muppets work standing up with the puppets raised over their heads. This means that the sets are either built up on stilts or the performers have to be standing in a trench. For this shot, they built up the entire stage floor, leaving an oval shaped hole where all the puppeteers stood. The camera was then on a huge crane that had to roll all the way to the back wall and the top corner of the soundstage to fit all the characters in.
The other technical problem was the rainbow. They shot it two ways. First, there was a giant scrim hanging across the stage with a rainbow painted on it. A scrim is a theatrical netting that when you shine light on it from the front, you can see what's painted on it, but when you shine light behind it, you can see through it. The other way was to remove the scrim and put the rainbow into the film optically in post production. Can you guess which method was used in the final film?
END OF PART ONE
