The FUTURE of puppetry in Television!

[Jack Rennon]

Truly, the internet is a great venue. I mean, without the internet my productions with my Troupe, NearFar Productions (Sesame Street Grover Sketch Throwback, thankyewverymuch!) would never have been seen by anyone!

But I just can't help but want a real, quality, family show to come on TV that has a BIG cast of original puppet style characters. I'm talking about something really great. Something like, the Muppets, or the Simpsons even. Something that just swells with creativity and greatness.

I can't help it! I have really big dreams!

And I stick to the dream of bringing great puppetry to the viewers of television, and even the big screen. If I fail, at least I can say I tried! And I am trying. It's one of the main things in life I'm working on now!

My partner in puppetry, John, and I are HUGE muppet fans. We've been making puppet videos for a year now, and, like many of you have said, the internet has turned out to be a great venue for us getting our material out there to people! We have a reasonable fan following on youtube, and If I may say so, in our humble opinion, we are one of the better puppet-based shows on the internet. Check it out if you're interested! We'd love any new viewers we can get.

Check Out Our On-Line Puppet Videos - SkippyShorts

My friends and I are dedicated to making puppet entertainment, and we work very hard on it!

But I hope one day I get to do something in television... It's the dream for us!

 

[frogboy4]

Television really is the best venue for puppets. It's just the right size, framing and intimate format to communicate to an audience. That can get lost in the expanse of movie screen and tweaky internet streaming speed can step on comedic timing and lose the nuance that television so easily reads. I'm not sure of the likelyhood, but darn it I hope for some puppetry on televsion too.

 

[RKUNKLER]

Nojoy cool Smurf puppet. Do you have a bigger photo?

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Great discussion! I was thinking about this ever since I read Toasty's blog post earlier today. I wrote up some thoughts about the web vs. TV for puppeteers in my blog today (if you're interested in doing your own show on the web it's got a lot of links to articles you may find interesting).

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Brad Bird is fond of saying that "animation isn't a genre" and I think that's equally true for puppetry. Very few people watch something because of the puppets in it. They don't care about the puppets, or the technique, they just want to be entertained. They don't care if it's puppetry, animation or live action; if it's really good it will find an audience.

I don't see how green screen/chromakey puppetry takes away from a puppeteer's performance. It's just a technical process that removes them from a shot. Or are you thinking more about digital puppetry?

BTW, this is a nice example of using puppets on greenscreen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXlnZC--pbI

 

[dkmontgomery]

Chroma Key!

Neat video for sure! I have seen some things on Green Screen - what exactly is chroma-key software?

 

[Buck-Beaver]

"Chroma-key" is the same as color keying, greenscreen and bluescreen. Chroma-key is just software that allows you to substitute one colour with another (to create "green screen effects"). The most popular software is probably Adobe After Effects, but most decent video editing programs have some basic chromakey feature.

 

[dkmontgomery]

Thanks

Thanks for the information on Chroma Key. I need to read up more on this topic.

 

[Jack Rennon]

I've been experimenting with my public access show.

Here are my videos.

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=MuppetPro

Hey, those are pretty funny! I liked "The Eric Crooks Show: Teenagers Are Stupid: Hey Kid". You made those puppets right? I likes em.

You should check this one out. Have you ever thought of doing a email-answering segment?

 

[muppetfan89]

My fellow Muppet fans, I implore you! What will be the future of Puppetry! It has been far too long since the primetime reign of the Muppets! I miss those days. I want to return to them. I want puppets back in primetime television. I want fresh, new blood, new puppeteers to band together and make something that everyone, adults, children, even geezers can enjoy! Yes. Even geezers.

But I'm serious. I have a vision. I know I am a new member on this forum. I didn't really come here for the "message board" experience, although I have nothing againts it! I have come here to look for like-minded people! I want to hear your thoughts and ideas for getting puppetry back into the tv sets and hearts of america, nay, the world.

Jim Henson and his programming is one of the biggest inspirations I have in my life and what I do. I have been a puppeteer since I was 10 years old, and a filmmaker for almost that long. I want to see things happen! I want to bring back the magic. I know Jim Henson is gone, but, I know that he, along with Kermit, Fozzie, and the rest of the dreamers, would not want that magic to die with him. I think he'd want his spirit of creativeness and kindness to continue through the work of others.

So, this is my message to you. If you're not interested, go ahead and just skip over this message. But I would love to hear some of your opinions and ideas.

Heres to the Lovers
The Dreamers
And You

Jack Rennon

I agree with you 100% but let's face it, it's not like anybody can just come up with a new group of puppets, like "Cuppets" or "Juppets", becuase everyone will just say, "that's copying Jim Henson." or "That's not original." Everyone will just feel that the person is just living in Jim Henson's shadow.