I've only recently gotten in to the excellent series
Heroes (it hasn't debuted on television in Mexico yet; I discovered it via the Internet) and I started reading
Beaming Beeman - the blog of Heroes Director/Producer Greg Beeman - just a few days ago. One of the neat things Greg does in his blog is provide insight in to his creative process and how he and his colleagues approach making an episode of the show. I found this list of questions Gregs asks himself before shooting a scene especially helpful:
- Which character controls the scene? (this sometimes this shifts within a scene)
- What is the inherent emotional quality of the scene? What do the characters feel and what do should the audience feel? Sometimes they’re the same, sometimes they’re different.
- What stylistic techniques – i.e. what colors, compositions, camera movement and camera lensing – will support the character's emotions?
Now that there's video equipment,
mass distribution and tons of information about
puppetry and
puppet building available at low/no cost anyone can great puppetry and broadcast their work to a potential audience of millions. That's an incredible opportunity that's only recently become available. Now, the challenge for film and video puppetry artists using the web is increase the quality of work that's being done (not that some of it isn't already good).
After all, if you want to produce your own work on the web and make it great it's not enough to just be a great puppeteer or a great builder. You need to understand writing, directing, lighting, and editing and every other aspect of the filmmaking process.
