What puppeteers go through.

Xerus

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When you're watching a really neat and memorable muppet moment, do you wonder what the puppeteers underneath have to go through to make these skits?

Like in Mahna-Mahna's Some, None, and All skit, where those puppeteers had to run in and out of camera at different times deciding which puppeteers would appear.

The Do the Rubber Duck skit where they all marched around in a circle in the tub. I bet that was fun for the puppeteers. But some others probably had to do Kermit and Guy Smiley since Jim was probably doing Ernie.

The Kermit and Grover skit where Grover is carrying 4 huge blocks demonstrating top and bottom. I'm guessing Frank Oz is operating Grover while someone next to him was holding those huge blocks steady.

The Telephone Rock where Little Jerry and the Monotones were singing in a cramed booth. Imagine the puppeteers cramed together like that?

And Guy Smiley taking his studio audience to lunch skit. It might've been hard trying to find over 40 puppeteers. I believe what they did was tape the first 1 to 14 muppets being counted, stopped taping, and retapped them going into the restaurant, stopped tapping and picked up muppets 15 to 27, started taping them being counted, stopped taping, and had them go into the restaurant, stopped taping, and then did the whole thing again with muppets 28 to 39. Then they edited all those scenes together making it look like 39 muppets went through.
 

CBPuppets

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Woah.....But I'm Sure the Muppeteers managed to deal with all of that frustration.
 

minor muppetz

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Not Sesame Street, but I imagine that the baseball diamond sequence in The Great Muppet Caper was difficult. The Muppets all through and caught the baseball diamond. The performers had to have their arms up in the air, inside the puppets. I wonder how many takes that took.
 

Beauregard

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Not Sesame Street, but I imagine that the baseball diamond sequence in The Great Muppet Caper was difficult. The Muppets all through and caught the baseball diamond. The performers had to have their arms up in the air, inside the puppets. I wonder how many takes that took.
I bet this scene was actually less hard than it seems. In the movie it appears as if there are loads of performers all running around like crazy, but in most of the shots there are only a few puppets. The others are probably drinking tea or eating cake while they do close-shots of, say, Beaker catching the ball and throwing it. Then they film, say, Lewis K. And later Lew catching it. Etc.
 

abiraniriba

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Puppeteering is hard job

While I am not a professional puppeteer I agree with most of you guys it is not an easy job, I mean walking around with your arms up in the air all day can be tiresome to say nothing of those guys in the full body suits (There's a fan in Big Bird that keeps Carrol Spinney from passing out). My wife didn't think too much of it till we went to see the show Avenue Q. Granted we both disagree with many of the ideas put forth in that show, but it was well made and since the puppeteers were showcased onstage My wife saw what it really was like and changed her tune.
 

minor muppetz

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I wonder what it's like to perform The Newsman when a heavy object (like a piano or wieght) falls on him. The objects probably aren't really that heavy, and I don't know if the puppet actually protects the performers arm.

And I wonder what it's like for a Muppet to have to hold a lit bomb.
 

Ilikemuppets

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I wonder what it's like to perform The Newsman when a heavy object (like a piano or wieght) falls on him. The objects probably aren't really that heavy, and I don't know if the puppet actually protects the performers arm.

And I wonder what it's like for a Muppet to have to hold a lit bomb.
And I though that hand in the air a long time was painful.:stick_out_tongue:
 

Skekayuk

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When you're watching a really neat and memorable muppet moment, do you wonder what the puppeteers underneath have to go through to make these skits?
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As someone who got seriously interested in The Muppets via being a fan of one of the puppeteers, yes when I'm watching the memorable moments it does cross my mind.
What about when they have to cope with Special Effects, - such as Dust storms (Pigs In Space). I can't really think of any specific examples right now. Except perhaps 'Why Can't We Be Friends' on TMS - It was a battlefield scene springs to mind.
Oh and what about the boat on MTI - I read somewhere that made them all seasick.

In the book OM&M is specifically mentions that for protection when doing the Newsman, the puppeteers were wearing hard hats.

I have read that once, during the first series of Spitting Image there was an incident when producer John Lloyd literally added insult to injury by cutting a skit, that a puppeteer had cricked their back doing (they had "heroically" finished the sketch). Of course Spitting Image also had the problem that the puppets were even heavier than most of The Muppets' puppets.
 

Muppet Newsgirl

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In GMC, when the Muppets were scrambling up the gallery wall, the Muppet performers were on a special elevator on the other side of the wall - the elevator consisted of a bunch of platforms stacked on top of each other and lifted by a crane, and there were about two performers per platform.
 
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