Sid the Science Kid explains DTV

Sid the Science Kid helps explain digital television for the PBS Kids set.

Confused about this whole DTV thing that everybody (in the U.S. anyway) has been talking about? Well, let Sid the Science Kid help you make sense of it.

Kanye West's Creature

Kanye West's recent Glow In The Dark tour featured a giant animatronic creature built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

Remember that big animatronic puppet that Jim Henson's Creature Shop was building for Kanye West last year? Well, Sean - who along with his brother Patrick was part of the team that built the monster - sent in some links to some amateur video from one of Kanye's concerts on YouTube.

The monster was apparently made out of foam and fiberglass, built on a carbon fiber spine and covered with hand-stitched fabric. The quality of the videos (which you can watch here and here) aren't great, but the effect looks spectacular!

Creature Shop Open House Recap

Puppeteers bring characters to life with the Jim Henson Company's patented Henson Digital Performance Studio.

Debra Kaufman has written a nice recap of the previously-blogged Siggraph/Visual Effects Society event at the Creature Shop (see previous post). A couple people who were there Tuesday night wrote in to tell me about it yesterday; it sounds like it was a great event!

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

L.A. Weekly Talks to Brian Henson

Brian Henson spoke with L.A. Weekly about the Jim Henson Company's improv puppet work.

L.A. Weekly recently sat down for a chat with Brian Henson. In the interview Brian talks about Puppet Up! Uncensored, which has one of its monthly shows at Avalon Hollywood in L.A. tomorrow night at 8 p.m.

Via Tough Pigs.

Spike Jonze Talks About Where The Wild Things Are

Acclaimed director Spike Jonze is adapting the children's classic Where The Wild Things Are in to a feature film (photo via Ain't It Cool News).

There's been a lot of online nervousness and speculation about Spike Jonze's feature film adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are (see previous post). Very little information and even fewer images from the film have been released (click here for one Kanye West accidentally posted to his blog earlier this year), but AICN's "Moriarty" has seen a rough cut of the film and sat down for a wide-ranging, unfettered interview about it with director Spike Jonze.

What I found especially interesting in the interview was reading about the approach that's being used to realize the Wild Things onscreen. Jonze insisted on making the movie as real as possible and filmed most of it on location in Australia using performers in body suits (made by the Creature Shop) with non-articulated faces, which will be animated in post production. Very little of the film has been actually finished yet, but Moriarty has nothing but good things to say about the work-in-progress.

Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled to be released late next year.

Via I Watch Stuff.

Behind the Scenes of Sid the Science Kid

The new digital puppetry series Sid the Science Kid (see previous post) is now on the air and TV Guide recently went behind the scenes to see how the Jim Henson Company creates it. The Wall Street Journal has also been covering the show's unique production process.

Speaking of which, Brian Henson was in Silver Spring, MD at the AFI Silver Theatre yesterday and gave a presentation about the history of puppetry and how the Henson Co. has evolved over the years from Muppets to animatronics to it's latest work on Sid the Science kid using the Henson Digital Performance System.

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

29/09/08 Update: Brian Henson's presentation was at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD and not the Centre for Puppetry Arts as I originally reported so I've updated the post accordingly. Brian actually spoke at the Centre for Puppetry Arts on Sunday and Harvey Deneroff has some coverage on his blog.

New Henson TV Shows

Sid The Science Kid is just one of several new shows coming to TV from the Jim Henson Company.

The Jim Henson Company must be a busy place to be these days; they've got a bunch of new projects in the works, including the previously-blogged Fraggle Rock movie and three new TV shows for kids! Jim Henson's Pajanimals is a live-action musical series that will debut on the Sprout cable channel in U.S. in November. The show features four soft, cuddly puppets that entertain and comfort viewers with bedtime-themed songs and stories.

Henson's long-in-development digital puppetry series Frances is based on a popular series of books from Russell Hoban, debuts on Sprout this summer as part of a new "Summer Fun Fridays" programming block that runs from June 20 until the end of August. Look for the first episode June 20, 2008 at 12:00pm (noon) in most markets (via The Muppet Newsflash).

Finally, Sid The Science Kid - another animated series made using the Henson Digital Performance System - debuts on PBS on Monday, September 1, 2008 as part of the PBS Kids programing block. "Sid" is a curriculum-based show designed to teach basic science basics to 3-6 year-olds using comedy.

Fraggle Rock Feature Film Going Ahead

The Jim Henson Company's planned feature film version of Fraggle Rock is moving ahead.

First, the good news: The Weinstein Company has given the go-ahead to the Jim Henson Company's Fraggle Rock feature film, which has been in development for a couple years (see previous post). This makes a lot of sense because the Weinsteins want to develop family-friendly franchises and Fraggle Rock is already an established and much-loved family entertainment property. Also, they have the money and clout to make sure the film gets a good release and is properly promoted.

Now, the bad news: It's being directed by Cory Edwards. His first movie was Hoodwinked, which was also produced by the Weinsteins. It drew a respectable $50 million or so at the box office, but the animation was horrible, the script wasn't much better and watching it I got the feeling the filmmakers were a little out of their depth (or perhaps in way over their heads). Pulling off puppets and humans interacting believably in a movie is surprisingly difficult so you have to wonder why filmmakers with better track records or more experience were passed over. Hopefully the Henson Co. will maintain a strong say in how things get done and this will do a beloved show like Fraggle Rock justice.

Update: My favourite blog post about this so far has to be Fraggle Rock to Stop Being Fond Memory, Become Sad Future.

Go See Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Jason Segal writes a Dracula puppet musical in the new feature film Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

If you're looking for something to do this weekend go see Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It's a great comedy with a great cast, including Russell Brand who almost steals the movie. Especially neat is that the finale involves a Dracula puppet musical called A Taste For Love featuring puppets built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop as well as Scott Land, James Hayes, and B.J. Guyer.

The Dracula finale involves about 30 puppets and is really elaborate. A large team of puppeteers worked on the sequence including Carol Binion, Tim Blaney, Julianne Buescher, Leslie Carrara, BJ Guyer, Drew Massey, Michelan Sisti, Kevin Carlson, Victor Yerrid and Sean Johnson among others (I've missed some names, but I'm just listing them from memory). The film's star Jason Segal was trained for the role by Henson and does a great job performing Dracula himself in the finale.

The team behind the movie obviously had fun working with puppets; after making the movie Jason Segal sold a pitch to Disney for the next Muppet Movie, which will be directed by "Sarah Marshall" helmer Nick Stoller.

30/02/08 Update: I read online today that in addition to Henson, the puppets used in the musical were also built by Scott Land, James Hayes, and B.J. Guyer and I've updated my original post accordingly.

Kanye Visits The Creature Shop

Is this a model of one of the monsters from Where The Wild Things Are?

Jim Henson's Creature Shop is rumoured to be working on something "big" for Kanye West's next live tour. The popular Hip Hop artist recently paid a visit to the Creature Shop and posted some photos from the trip on his blog. The pictures include the one above, which appears to be a model for the upcoming (and reportedly troubled) film adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are.

Image via /film.

Update: Aaaand just like that the picture goes "poof". Maybe Kanye wasn't supposed to post that? It turns out that the Creature Shop is building a bunch of giant puppets for Kanye's next tour. I've updated my original post accordingly.

Henson Library on iTunes

The Jim Henson Company has announced that select titles from the Henson film and television library will be available on iTunes. This is great news for Henson fans and it's so nice to see developments like this and Sesame Workshop's recently launched video site making lots of classic puppet programs available to download and watch legally.

For more on the Henson/iTunes deal and what the future holds for the Henson library check out the January 28th episode of the Henson.com podcast.

Henson's Place

Over at Puppeteers Unite Tom has scored another great YouTube video find - the rarely seen documentary Henson's Place. It was produced in 1984 just as the Muppets were at the peak of their success and discusses Jim's early work, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and Muppet movies and then-new endeavours like Fraggle Rock and The Dark Crystal.

You can watch it online in seven parts:

• Henson's Place Part 1
• Henson's Place Part 2
• Henson's Place Part 3
• Henson's Place Part 4
• Henson's Place Part 5
• Henson's Place Part 6
• Henson's Place Part 7
  

I had heard of this before and seen a few clips from it over the years, but this is the first time I'm aware of it being available to watch in it's entirety. I am guessing this is unauthorized so watch it quick before the YouTube police find it.

Tinseltown Pilot Online

Tinseltown is a new puppet sitcom from the Jim Henson Company about a gay Hollywood couple.

Tinseltown (see previous post) is a new TV project from the Jim Henson Company. It's a puppet sitcom built around a homosexual couple - Bobby Vegan (a pig) and Samson Knight (a bull) – who they juggle work, relationships a 13-year-old human foster son named Foster and careers in Hollywood. The sitcom airs on the Logo Network in the U.S. which caters to gay audiences. Logo has limited availability in the U.S. though so for those that don't get it on cable the pilot episode of Tinseltown is available to watch online.

You can read more about Tinseltown over at The Muppet Newsflash and Tough Pigs.

The Great Santa Claus Switch

It's Christmas at Tough Pigs and Danny Horn has posted an overview of the rarely seen Muppet holiday special The Great Santa Claus Switch. Unfortunately, it's one of those classic bits of Muppetry that hasn't been released on video or DVD (yet) but it does make the rounds on Kazaa and some of the other file sharing networks if you know where to look. It's also available in the collection of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and LA.

Fraggle Float

I forgot to mention in Monday's post about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade videos that in addition to footage of the Kermit balloon, XE Entertainment also has this clip of the Fraggle Rock float that appeared in the 1984 parade.

Jim Henson at the Macy's parade

Macy's annual Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City wouldn't be quite right without the annual appearance of the 75'0 tall Kermit the Frog balloon, a fixture of the parade since it debuted in the late 1970s. X-Entertainment has a rare clip online from the `87 parade that features Jim Henson and Kermit being interviewed by Williard Scott (link via Chris). Also from the XE is footage of the Kermit balloon in 1985.

I remember watching these when they originally aired - hard to believe it was almost 20 years ago!