When I was a kid I would have loved Axtelevision, a new video from Steve Axtell that aims to educate and inspire kids to have fun. Steve and his crew are the stars of the show here and take kids behind-the-scenes at the "Axtelevision" workshop where they guide their audience through the process of producing a puppet video, showing how Steve and co. design characters, build puppets, create sets and make a video.
I'm always inclined to cringe when producers/puppeteers cast themselves as the (human) star of their own show, but Steve obviously loves kids and loves to have fun and his goofy enthusiasm is great and comes shining through here. The look and feel of the video is bright, colourful and playful.
There is an annoying tendancy to jumpcut throughout the video that's a little out of place in a kid's video imho and the post production people broke the video posterizing rule (never, ever use the video posterizing effect!), but those are minor asthetic quibbles. Basically, Axtelevision is a lot of silly fun.
I'm way too cynical for most children's entertainment, but this video is so wacky and off the wall that even I couldn't help but be in to it. As a concept it has a lot of potential and I hope it becomes a regular TV show or at the very least an ongoing series of DVDs.
You can order a copy of Axtelevision online at www.axtelevision.com.
