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wiley207
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- Sep 26, 2003
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I'm sure some of you remember those goofy Sesame Street-related "storybook video" tapes that Golden Book Video released in 1985: "Three Sesame Street Stories" and "Five Sesame Street Stories" (both later combined into an hour-long video entitled "Eight Super Sesame Street Stories"). Well, last summer I was lucky to find a copy of "Five Sesame Street Stories" at the used book/video department in my public library, cheap and in excellent condition! So naturally, I bought it since I grew up with the video and had fond memories of it. Shortly after, someone uploaded "Three Sesame Street Stories," giving me my first glimpse of it onto YouTube, but was taped via a webcam or something. Last week another user uploaded the video in higher quality, but got suspended due to something else he uploaded that was copyrighted. Luckily I saved the video for a YouTube Poop I was working on (don't worry, it doesn't bash SS; actually it contains quite a bit of classic SS references in it!), and so naturally, I decided to reupload it myself, since I knew THIS wasn't what got that other user's account suspended, and since I knew SesameWorkshop is supportive of fans uploading Sesame Street clips to YouTube these days. Here are the links, first to "Three Sesame Street Stories"...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DCgjFKAh28
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEpy66S8DUQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKNKtOy5l3Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf0yeuku0kU
And here's "Five Sesame Street Stories," also uploaded by little ol' me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T59-0KMFyfg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPGFzWtUEw0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luz18WNYO1Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urmljQIkHvo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5qv_trZOSY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OacuXgVwamQ
Well, my opinions are that I get a kick out of the cheesy limited Flash animation-esque effects used to "animate" the original book illustrations, such as when Grover trips in the crowded auditorium, or Maria (a.k.a. "Dolores") slipping on the snow, or that giraffe galloping by in a fantasy sequence or Big Bird accidentally knocking over the clothesline. My friend and I joked they must've only had a $20 budget for the animation!
I also remember Little Bird was NOT in the original book version of "Everyone Makes Mistakes" (I recall reading it as a kid, I think it was part of a treasury collection that included other Sesame stories like "What Ernie and Bert Did on Their Summer Vacation," "The Count Counts a Party," "Vegetable Soup," a few stories from "Sesame Stories" like "Look Before You Lift" and "The Monster in the Mirror," etc.) The book only had Big Bird as the only bird Muppet appearing in it. I can tell that for the Little Bird shots, they just recycled illustrations of Little Bird from two other books; the shot of him sitting on the fence and flying on a balloon were taken from "I Think That It Is Wonderful," and the other poses Little Bird did were taken from the 1983 reissue of "Big Bird and Little Bird's Big and Little Book" (like "Everyone Makes Mistakes," both those two books were also illustrated by A. Delaney"). Even a couple of Big Bird illustrations I recognized from the "Big and Little Book," too!
As far as name-changing due to unavailability of certain actors, the characters that were affected were Susan (performed by Loretta Long), Maria (performed by Sonia Manzano) and Slimey (performed by Marty Robinson). Susan was renamed as "Mrs. Washington," Maria was renamed as "Dolores," and Slimey was renamed as "Squiggly."
And as far as voices go, the only Muppeteers heard in the videos were Frank Oz (performing Bert, Grover and Cookie Monster), Caroll Spinney (performing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch) and Fran Brill (performing Prairie Dawn, Little Bird, substitutes Maria, Rodeo Rosie and Susan's voices, also narrates "Big Bird Brings Spring to Sesame Street" and voices other females). So without Jim Henson and Jerry Nelson, Herry had to remain silent, and when Ernie and Count von Count needed to speak in "Big Bird Brings Spring to Sesame Street," the narrator would describe their dialogue, and the Count's BATS would do the counting instead! Also, Fran Brill had to substitute for Rodeo Rosie's voice since Jerry Nelson and Richard Hunt were unavailable, and other voice actors that were uncredited would voice incidental Muppets. I also know the narrator for the Super Grover stories is apparently supposed to be doing a Gary Owens impression, IMHO.
And as for music, the famous theme song or any of the other songs or background music are NOT present. They just use music cues from the Associated Production Music library (this is the source for roughly 90% of the background music on "Spongebob Squarepants" and "The Ren & Stimpy Show"). If anyone's interested, I could make a track listing of the cues I know that were used in the video (I already added annotations to "Five Sesame Street Stories" showing which APM music cues are used.)
Sound effects are also interesting too. Many of them sound like they were taken from the Valentino and Sound Ideas Series 1000 sound effects libraries (I do quite a bit of audio production myself), and the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon sound effects do show up from time to time as well (the "Super Grover" stories seemed to employ more H-B sound effects than the other stories did, most likely for comedic purposes). Interestingly, some of the sound effects used in these videos were actually also used on the 1970s/early 1980s Sesame Street episodes themselves (such as the rattling "telephone booth" noise, which is also heard when the Baker falls down the stairs with is deserts; the "exploding"-type noise when Super Grover emerges from the telephone booth is actually the thunderclap they usually used with Count von Count; the fire engine noises when Ernie was counting fire engines at night was also used in Big Bird's fantasy about a fire engine knocking over the clothesline; etc.) I wonder if this was done deliberately due to the Sesame Street connection? Probably not, as the Valentino Sound Effects library, where these effects come from, was also used on Sesame Street.
And it also seems the only other Sesame/CTW staff member working on these videos outside of those three Muppeteers was Emily Perl Kingsley, whom was credited with "Video Adaptation" in "Five Sesame Street Stories," which means that she created some of the new material/changes/improvised lines for the video. As a result, I think "Five Sesame Street Stories" seems to have more of that classic Sesame Street feel to it than the other one.
Any comments/questions?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DCgjFKAh28
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEpy66S8DUQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKNKtOy5l3Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf0yeuku0kU
And here's "Five Sesame Street Stories," also uploaded by little ol' me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T59-0KMFyfg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPGFzWtUEw0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luz18WNYO1Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urmljQIkHvo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5qv_trZOSY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OacuXgVwamQ
Well, my opinions are that I get a kick out of the cheesy limited Flash animation-esque effects used to "animate" the original book illustrations, such as when Grover trips in the crowded auditorium, or Maria (a.k.a. "Dolores") slipping on the snow, or that giraffe galloping by in a fantasy sequence or Big Bird accidentally knocking over the clothesline. My friend and I joked they must've only had a $20 budget for the animation!
I also remember Little Bird was NOT in the original book version of "Everyone Makes Mistakes" (I recall reading it as a kid, I think it was part of a treasury collection that included other Sesame stories like "What Ernie and Bert Did on Their Summer Vacation," "The Count Counts a Party," "Vegetable Soup," a few stories from "Sesame Stories" like "Look Before You Lift" and "The Monster in the Mirror," etc.) The book only had Big Bird as the only bird Muppet appearing in it. I can tell that for the Little Bird shots, they just recycled illustrations of Little Bird from two other books; the shot of him sitting on the fence and flying on a balloon were taken from "I Think That It Is Wonderful," and the other poses Little Bird did were taken from the 1983 reissue of "Big Bird and Little Bird's Big and Little Book" (like "Everyone Makes Mistakes," both those two books were also illustrated by A. Delaney"). Even a couple of Big Bird illustrations I recognized from the "Big and Little Book," too!
As far as name-changing due to unavailability of certain actors, the characters that were affected were Susan (performed by Loretta Long), Maria (performed by Sonia Manzano) and Slimey (performed by Marty Robinson). Susan was renamed as "Mrs. Washington," Maria was renamed as "Dolores," and Slimey was renamed as "Squiggly."
And as far as voices go, the only Muppeteers heard in the videos were Frank Oz (performing Bert, Grover and Cookie Monster), Caroll Spinney (performing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch) and Fran Brill (performing Prairie Dawn, Little Bird, substitutes Maria, Rodeo Rosie and Susan's voices, also narrates "Big Bird Brings Spring to Sesame Street" and voices other females). So without Jim Henson and Jerry Nelson, Herry had to remain silent, and when Ernie and Count von Count needed to speak in "Big Bird Brings Spring to Sesame Street," the narrator would describe their dialogue, and the Count's BATS would do the counting instead! Also, Fran Brill had to substitute for Rodeo Rosie's voice since Jerry Nelson and Richard Hunt were unavailable, and other voice actors that were uncredited would voice incidental Muppets. I also know the narrator for the Super Grover stories is apparently supposed to be doing a Gary Owens impression, IMHO.
And as for music, the famous theme song or any of the other songs or background music are NOT present. They just use music cues from the Associated Production Music library (this is the source for roughly 90% of the background music on "Spongebob Squarepants" and "The Ren & Stimpy Show"). If anyone's interested, I could make a track listing of the cues I know that were used in the video (I already added annotations to "Five Sesame Street Stories" showing which APM music cues are used.)
Sound effects are also interesting too. Many of them sound like they were taken from the Valentino and Sound Ideas Series 1000 sound effects libraries (I do quite a bit of audio production myself), and the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon sound effects do show up from time to time as well (the "Super Grover" stories seemed to employ more H-B sound effects than the other stories did, most likely for comedic purposes). Interestingly, some of the sound effects used in these videos were actually also used on the 1970s/early 1980s Sesame Street episodes themselves (such as the rattling "telephone booth" noise, which is also heard when the Baker falls down the stairs with is deserts; the "exploding"-type noise when Super Grover emerges from the telephone booth is actually the thunderclap they usually used with Count von Count; the fire engine noises when Ernie was counting fire engines at night was also used in Big Bird's fantasy about a fire engine knocking over the clothesline; etc.) I wonder if this was done deliberately due to the Sesame Street connection? Probably not, as the Valentino Sound Effects library, where these effects come from, was also used on Sesame Street.
And it also seems the only other Sesame/CTW staff member working on these videos outside of those three Muppeteers was Emily Perl Kingsley, whom was credited with "Video Adaptation" in "Five Sesame Street Stories," which means that she created some of the new material/changes/improvised lines for the video. As a result, I think "Five Sesame Street Stories" seems to have more of that classic Sesame Street feel to it than the other one.
Any comments/questions?
