PuppetVision blog is one of my favorite websites because they’re always finding great puppetry video on the internet. Witness this one.

Steve Vitale documents Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire’s visit to the Atlanta History Center including great video. This is an extremely rare opportunity to see the two men work in full view of the audience. It’s engaging and fun.

You know, I’m not sure who pointed out the video highlight reel from the Alfred E. Smith Memorial dinner, but I’m glad they did.  It’s an annual roast that features the two presidential candidates.  McCain and Obama each do a comedy routine, roasting themselves and their opponents.  Obama is amusing.

McCain is hilarious. Not only that, but in the second of these two videos, he’s gracious and reminds me of the man that ran in the 2000 elections.  If he brought that to the table now, I wouldn’t have become so apprehensive about seeing him in the White House.  I’m glad I got to see these, because it reminds me that the two men are human and that at their core, they are both good people.

The first half of McCain’s roast. Honest, it’s really funny.

This is the second half of McCain’s roast and, if you’re only going to watch one of these, you should watch this.  He is gracious and about three minutes in, genuinely moving.  I was impressed with him.

Here’s Obama’s.

The local news covered City Winery, where Rob works, the other day. If you look quickly, you can spot him several times throughout the footage.

He’s the one on the left in this shot. Just in case you didn’t know what Rob looks like.

Eric James Stone pointed this out and had I seen it earlier, I so would have posted this instead of the Feist video for songs that make me smile.

Thanks to D.T. Friedman for spotting this.

This is a post that I wrote over two years ago while working on the television show in Iceland. At the time, I held it because there was no way I could talk about this stuff without giving away that we were doing a circus episode. Well, the episode has been out long enough now that I can post.

So here you go, puppetry flashback.

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April 26, 2006

I did loads of stuff with one of the puppets on a highwire. We had one shot that was really fun to do because it was hard. The puppet had to hold on to one of those bars that tightrope walkers use to balance. I have no idea what they are really called, but we called it the stripey pole. So, normally, you’d tape the rod to his hands and either have someone outside the frame holding the end of it, or you’d put a rod on it. In this case, an actor needed to take it from the puppet in the shot. Which we would normally do with live hands, but the way it had to be framed, there was no way to do either of these and make it look good.

So, I put on a greenscreen top, and used the wrist-entry left arm. (Maybe I should stop and explain that with live hands I have a choice of entering the arm at the elbow or the wrist.) I pulled the green shirt sleeve over the entry sleeve and they keyed my arm out. This mean that everything in green was invisible on camera–it’s very cool. So, it just looked like the puppet was holding the stripey pole and then we could pass it to the actor.

Maybe you have to be a puppeteer to know that this was nifty.

After that, it was more stripey pole action, but I just held the end of the stripey pole out of frame.

We finished the day with a trashcan shot. I know. I thought I was finished with trash too, but no. I was the periscope which had too peek up from inside a trashcan. They painted the fiberglass trash can today and it was still degassing. Mmm…let’s sit inside the container of toxic fumes.

I don’t think so. I requested and given a respirator. Because there wasn’t room in there for me, the periscope and a monitor, I also had to use the VR goggles, all of which were oh-so-attractive. The shot itself was fairly simple. I had to make the periscope peek out of the trashcan, look around, and then an actor had to jump on me. Great fun.

—

And just so you can see what a trippy, trippy episode that was to work on. Here’s the music video and the closing number.

After having Icelandic visitors for the last week, I’m missing the place even more. Daddi and Friða left last night, safely, and our apartment seems empty. As much as anything else, I miss the sound of the language when they would quickly chat with one another. I made a few abortive attempts to use my Icelandic, but have lost most of it. I can still cobble together a sentence, but I’m out of practice at listening to it. It’s starting to blur together into a wash of sound rather than discreet words.

I also miss the lack of bullshit with Icelanders. With an American you so often have to do a social dance to make plans. You know the one.

Host: “I could make muffins or we could go out to a diner for breakfast.”

Guest: “Whichever is easiest.”

Host: “They’re both easy. Which would you like?”

Guest: “Oh, I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

etc, etc, etc… until it’s time for lunch and the whole thing starts again.

With an Icelander.

Host: “I could make muffins or we could go out to a diner for breakfast.”

Guest: “A diner sounds good.”

So, with that in mind, here’s the Daily Show and their documentary on the effort to get Iceland’s troops back in Iraq.

Lisa Mantchev posted this video of You Think You Can Dance and I clicked on it because usually Lisa is smart about these things.

At the 1:34 mark, the male dance did a move that I specifically teach new puppeteers to avoid because it is physically impossible. Let me repeat that. Physically impossible. He stands up, rolling over his toe, in a way that makes it look like he’s being pulled up and back by a string.

He does it three times during the course of the video — which also includes a fantastic dance and is worth watching on its own — each time, I backed the film up and watched it over and over.

Now, the thing is, that clearly, he’s a very strong man and that he’s getting a little boost from his partner, but STILL if I did that with a puppet I’d be accused of breaking every rule about Muscle and gravity in the books. Granted, there are times when we break the rules on purpose, but if one is aiming for realistic movement, what this man is doing would be avoided because it looks impossible.

The funny thing is, that it’s like fiction. There are all sorts of things that happen in real life I could never get away with in fiction because because it defies belief. It fascinates me that the issues involved in creating verisimilitude on the page and on the stage are same. It doesn’t matter if it’s true if it doesn’t look real.

Did you ever watch Blue’s Clues? Steve was the best active listener, ever. Watch this video of Steve and notice the cues he’s giving off to show that he’s listening and interested.

WEIRD TALES is honoring the 85 Weirdest and today is Jim Henson.

Think JIM HENSON (1936-1990) and you think Muppets — yet there’s so much more to the man’s genius. His experimental filmmaking ranged from Time Piece to The Cube. Though his interest in puppetry started as a way to get on television, he stayed with it because of the stories it allowed him to tell, and the weirdness from his film work shone maniacally through. Even with the Muppets. Like those dancing tubes with eyeballs in “Java.” (Wait for it.) And hey, what exactly is Gonzo, anyway?¹

I backed this video up a couple of times because the puppet turns around and I was trying to figure out where the heck the rods are. I’m pretty sure they must be below, but the the darn thing goes and steps on another character. Still… they’ve got to be below.

1. I wrote most of this description. [↩]

Michael Livingston pointed out this handy tutorial called “The The Impotence of Proofreading.” If only everyone who submitted to Shimmer would study this closely.

Remember when I was talking about working Peter? Deb Hertzberg, one of the other puppeteers on the show, took a short video backstage so you can see what I was talking about.

See, marionettes are so useful for education. After that educational film, do you feel ready to stack haybales to protect your livestock from nuclear attack?

Spotted at Bubble Boy Blog

Via Muppet Mashups

Found via PuppetVision