Puppetry Tips From Kate Brehm

Puppeteer Kate Brehm offers some great puppetry tips on Expert Village.

There is a terrific series of videos on Expert Village from puppeteer Kate Brehm of I'm Not Lost that give some great tips for puppet performance. The concepts Kate discusses in each of these short videos like weight, plum line, specific action, and pendulums are exactly the kinds of things that need to be studied and understood in order to create great puppetry.

Also, for those of you looking for puppetry experience who are in or near New York City, Kate and I'm Not Lost has been looking for puppeteers (paid) and puppet building and performance interns (unpaid) for their next project, My Name is Hal. I saw some of My Name is Hal when it was presented as a work-in-progress this past summer and it's one of the most conceptually interesting pieces of puppet theatre I've seen in a long time. This sounds like a great opportunity to learn, create and gain valuable experience.

Thanks to C.B. for sending this in!

How To Start A Puppet Company

Puppeteer Paul Louis explains how to start a puppet company in a new Expert Village tutorial.

Paul Louis has created another series of puppet-related videos for Expert Village, this time focusing on how to start your own puppet company. Paul has previously created videos on building and performing puppets and was kind enough to write in about this latest series.

John Kennedy Builds Puppets on Activity TV

Puppeteer/puppet builder/author John Kennedy hosts a new series of puppet building videos for children.

John Kennedy - the author of the great puppet building craft books Puppet Mania! and Puppet Planet - is hosting a new series of puppet building videos on Comcast's Activity TV for kids. The videos all feature projects culled from his books, including:

• Sock Puppy
• Dancing Snowman
• Shoe Box Monster

There are also videos on performing skits, making your own puppet theatre and puppeteering tips from John. You can browse all of the videos in the puppet category on Activity TV.

Via PuppetBuilding.com.

More on composition

You can learn a lot about composition from a new painting tutorial by artist Bob MacNeil.

Following up on last week's posts on composition and emphasis in puppet staging, take a look at this great multi-step painting tutorial by artist Bob MacNeil. In it he takes you step-by-step through the process he uses to design an illustration. It's an interesting read and the principles he discusses can be easily applied to design and staging in puppetry.

Link via Drawn.

Quick thoughts about putting video on web pages

Today while I was working there were five videos I wanted to see on the web. They were all formatted as Quicktime videos and while I wanted to watch them very much, clearly the creators didn't want me to. At least that's what it seemed like because it was nearly impossible to watch them in my web browser.

The lesson I took away from that experience was how important it is to make video as accessible as possible. Here's a list of dos and don'ts I've put together for myself for the next time I am adding video (puppetry related or otherwise) on a web page:

1. Do use Flash video to embed video on a web page. It loads faster and requires smaller files than QuickTime and (cringe) Windows Media. Flash video never seems to crash web browsers, QuickTime does sometimes and Windows Media does it often.
   
2. Don't make videos play automatically when users land on a page. That can be very annoying.
   
3. Do remember to include video controls if embedding a video on a web page. After all, what good to is a video player if you can't control it?
4. Don't presume to know the way your audience wants to watch your video.
5. Do offer download links to the video in different sizes and even multiple formats (Quicktime, iPod, PSP, etc.).
   
6. Don't use Windows Media (seriously, it sucks).
   
7. Do offer visitors an RSS Feed (if you don't know how RSS works go ask Google about it and find out).

While as a general rule Flash video should be used for in-browser playback and other formats like DIV/X, QuickTime, etc. should be linked to for downloading, lots of people prefer using QuickTime to embed video. If you insist on doing that be sure to read this article for some tips on how to it properly.

End of rant.

Puppet Manipulation Video Tutorials

Paul Louis takes you step-by-step through the basics of puppet manipulation in a new series of video tutorials.

A new and much-needed trend on the internet is puppet manipulation tutorials and a slew of them seem to have hit the web in the past week or so. The ever-innovative Paul Louis has a series of videos that provide a step-by-step overview of the basics of puppet manipulation at Expert Village. There's also video tutorial series starting up at Puppetry Lab as well as the recently-mentioned "What I've Learned From the Muppets" series of articles on Todd Liebenow's blog.

Oh, and if you like Paul's videos at Expert Village don't miss his recent series on basic puppet construction techniques too.