Deliberate Practice and Why Talent is Overrated

Over the past few months I've been getting back in to a lot a of serious puppetry rehearsal and thinking about the concept of deliberate practice quite a bit. While the famous adage says it's important to “practice, practice, practice”, that's not how deliberate practice works. Hit the link for a really good article on the subject, but the basic idea is that how you practice is much more important that how much you practice.

Over the years I've noticed that the best puppeteers are intensely self-critical and have a remarkable ability to identify their weaknesses as performers. They often analyze seemingly trivial details - the way their fingers grasp a puppet, the way their muscles flex, the way they grasp an object in a scene - and continually experiment with ways to improve their performances.

Just some food for thought this weekend.

Four Things To Ask Yourself Before Starting A Web Series

I've been (mostly) offline for the past week due to a screw-up with my ISP so I imagine I'll be spending most of the weekend in catch-up mode. While I'm attempting to slog through my inbox and catch up on work, read some words of wisdom about starting a web series (with puppets or otherwise) from the lovely and talented Felicia Day.

23/5/09 Update: Felicia Day is doing a live chat on ustream.tv at 8 pm EST tonight to promote the DVD release of seasons one and two of The Guild (her web series, which I highly recommend). She's compiling questions to answer in advance via Twitter, so if there's something you want to ask tweet her @feliciaday and include the #theguild tag to your tweet.

Hobey Ford's Puppetry Bailout Letter

We seem to be mired in the worst economic recession of almost everybody's lifetime and puppeteers (like most artists) are among the hardest hit. With the U.S. government seemingly handing out billions every other day, several people on the Puptcrit email discussion list have been debating the idea of a "Puppetry bailout" for hard hit struggling puppeteers.

As part of this discussion, Hobey Ford penned this poignant open letter to President Obama. While I don't seriously expect the idea of a "Puppetry bailout" to fly (imagine what Fox News would say!) it's a wonderful letter and an excellent reminder of how puppetry touches people's lives much more than they realize:

Dear Mr. President,

I write on behalf of America's Puppeteers. Our business sector probably hasn't come to your attention in the recent economic downturn, but we are a vital part of every child?s life in America, not to mention the child in every American. We are bringers of wonder and magic. We teach America's children to love literature, to read, to know when to cross the street, to respect one another and otherwise make their lives brighter. Sasha and Malia know us well. Perhaps you remember our puppets from your own youth. You may have met our brothers and sisters in Indonesia when you lived there as a child.

While American's pinch their pennies and AIG executives take their millions of our tax dollars, we are the affordable entertainment in the American community.

We are the free programs at your public library. We are the assembly programs at every school in America.

We are the ones teaching to the multiple intelligences through the arts where other means fail.

We are in classrooms teaching the 21st century skill of creative thinking and play. We are the preservers of America's veteran puppets, who taught, entertained, and uplifted your parents and grand parents and your grand parent's parents.

We have our own United Nations of puppeteers but when we get together there is only laughter and tears of Joy.

We teach tolerance, we tell the story of Harriet Tubman, and the folktales of the Native American, we help children express themselves when their own words won't come.

We made ET come to life, we live on Sesame Street, we brought Lion King to life and saved Broadway.

We are the animating soul of Howdy Doody, Kookla Fran and Ollie and Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.

We are the balloon characters at the Macy's (Thanksgiving) Day Parade. We are the stars of the opening of Olympic ceremonies.

We foster children into the words of Shakespeare, and we speak truth to power in the streets on Mayday and helped America wake up to the horror of the Vietnam War.

We let the Moms and Dads laugh when they feel like crying.

We are at bedsides in children's cancer wards providing sometimes the last laugh of a dying child.

We are among the oldest traditions on earth. Our ancestors rode the Silk Road with Marco Polo, entertained the royalty of the old world, allowed the oppressed to laugh at their oppressors.

We lived in concentration camps and made our puppets from rags to feign some joy for the children.

We are beloved around the world when our government is hated.

We bring joy! We are American made!

Many of us our watching our bookings slip away. Some are scrambling to make ends meet. Puppet collections older than your grandparents are in need of a good home. So we are writing you for our own bailout. We are vital to America's future. We voted for you accept for one or two but they are our family and we love them all the same. While it looks likes the dogs who helped bring this country to its knees have been bonused more than many of us will earn in a lifetime, I think we need a little consideration. A measly billion would probably do the trick.

We realize that you might laugh when you read this but we'll just consider that a freebie. In the mean time, we'll take what we can get. Its not a give away, we earned it and deserve it, in fact I truly doubt that the nation will be any fun at all if we go down. So come on buck up. You know you want to. You can come visit our little family this summer at our National Puppetry Festival in Atlanta. We will treat you right and you may need a good laugh by then as well.

Yours Truly,

The Family of American Puppeteers and our fuzzy friends

Note: I've slightly reformatted Hobey's original letter for easier reading here on the blog.

Learning from Ernie and Bert

You can learn a lot about puppetry watching classic Ernie and Bert videos.

Last week Tom pointed to a classic Sesame Street segment as an example of what to do with a puppet when you have no lines. As he points out, pay close attention to the puppets' eye line, the positioning of their heads and how their emotions are communicated to the audience through their body language.

Honestly, if you want to study great puppetry you can't do much better than watching the old Ernie and Bert sketches with Jim Henson and Frank Oz. Most of them are available to watch online at SesameStreet.org and they are phenomenal resource for anyone wanting to learn or improve their puppetry.

Here Come The Puppets

I'm crazy-busy the next few days, but here's something really good to tide you over until I'm back...a series of in-depth blog posts about Here Come The Puppets on the Midnight Diaries. Here Come The Puppets was a PBS special about puppetry that was taped in 1980 and hosted by Jim Henson.

Go have a look, you won't be sorry!

Special thanks to Mathieu for discovering this great link!

Taking it to a New Level in the New Year

I guess it's a cliché, but a new year makes people look back on what's already happened and forward to what the future might hold. I was recently thinking about how far puppet film and video on the web has come in the past five years. It amazing to see just how many people out there are building puppets, shooting videos and sharing them online.

Despite that though, I'm starting to wonder if as 2009 begins we've hit a bit of a plateau. If you look with a critical eye you can't help but realize that even though over one hundred puppet videos for the web get cranked out every month, most are still kind of amateurish (and yes, I'd gladly include most of my own work in that category).

Now I don't pretend to better or more talented than anybody else, but as I've been working on a few things I've been thinking a lot about how to take puppet film and video on the web "to the next level". If you're interested in doing the same, here's a few thoughts and ideas you may find useful...

Talk vs Action (and music)

Animator Keith Lango recently wrote a post on his blog called Wither the Cartoon? that laments the demise of the "unapologetically gag driven, musically integrated, over the top classic 1940's style cartoon". His main point is that classic short cartoon (think the classic Disney and Warner Bros. shorts from the `30s, `40s and `50s) has disappeared from the modern animation world in favour of shows like the Simpsons, which are really more like animated sitcoms. Similarily, I notice that a lot of people who set out to create puppetry on the web are going the "animated sitcom" route and doing skits with puppets that could just as easily be done with actors.

As the old saying goes, it's better to show than tell. Virtually all of the most successful puppetry videos (e.g. Ode To Joy, The Mysterious Ticking Noise, any of Lejo's videos) are either musical or mostly musical and they don't really rely on dialogue.

Great puppetry speaks a language that's understood by everyone:



Which leads me to...

Better Staging

One of the most important elements of any great puppet film or video is puppet staging and shot composition. Good staging is really important because it creates emphasis (tells the audience what to pay attention to) and has strong silhouettes (makes it easy for the audience to understand what's happening).

Although some puppeteers understand these concepts really well, it's hard to find fantastic examples of puppet staging online, so I'll turn back to animation to show a couple of examples. Pixar are masters of storytelling and staging, as you can see from this video below:



Notice how you can watch this with or without the sound and still understand the story? That's because it's well staged. Even when these Wall-E vignettes are built around music, they still work without audio:



Physicality is very important to staging. You can learn a lot about this by studying animation. John K. often writes about physicality and staging on his blog. Another good source of inspiration are the silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Also Remember...

You will never find a large audience for your work just because it's puppetry. You will find a huge audience for your work if it's genuinely entertaining (important note: strangers are the best judge of this, not your family or friends). It's all about telling a good story and creating characters that your audience cares about and can relate to.

Xtensor Hand Exercisor

The Xtensor Gamer Hand Exerciser could be a useful fitness tool for puppeteers.

Puppetry is a very physical art form that often requires a fair bit of flexibility, strength and muscle endurance. A lot of A lot of puppeteers - amateurs and professionals alike - often ask questions about good strengthening exercises because it's very difficult to find a good way to properly exercise the muscles and tendons in your hands, wrists and elbows.

I think the Xtensor Gamer Hand Exerciser could be a great solution to this problem. It's designed with gamers in mind, but the muscles used to operate a game controller are often the same as the ones used to manipulate a puppet. It's available from Think Geek (click the link above) for $39.99 US.

Special thanks to Brian for the heads-up about this!

Julie Taymor TED Talk

Acclaimed director Julie Taymor gives a talk at TED.

This is a great video of Julie Taymor - the creative puppetry genius responsible for The Lion King - doing a talk at the TED Conference about her career creating puppet and mask theatre.

Via Puppetry News.

Writing For Puppets and Animation

Muppet writer/director Kirk Thatcher discusses writing for puppets on the latest On The Page screen writing podcast.

Kirk Thatcher was a guest on this week's On The Page screen writing podcast along with David Skelly (a Writer/Director and Pixar story artist who's also worked with the Muppets) and together they discussed writing for puppets and animation. Kirk talked a lot about the unique technical aspects of writing for puppets and together with David emphasized several key points, including:

• It's all about telling a good story and creating characters the audience cares about and can relate to.
  
• Physicality is very important; sometimes things that aren't funny on the page are funny when they are performed and vice-versa.
  
• Also on the subject of physicality, it's important to make sure that animation and puppetry works with the sound off.
• If you can do it with live action, you probably shouldn't do it with puppets or animation (Kirk says this was a big part of Jim Henson's philosophy).

At one point Kirk also quickly name checks Duck Walks In To A Bar, which I thought was kind of cool.

Via The Bubble Boy Blog.

Rob Schrab's 4 Minute Film School

Filmmaker Rob Schrab talks about his "drawless animation" technique on the 4 Minute Film School podcast.

Rob Schrab is the guest professor for this week's installment of 4 Minute Film School on DIY filmmaking web site Indy Mogul. On the show Rob explains the puppetry/animation technique he calls "drawless animation" and demonstrates how he's used it on a variety of different projects, including The Sarah Silverman Program and the Death Cab For Cutie video Crooked Teeth (see previous post).

I love the way Rob takes everyday stuff, wraps it cardboard, shoots it on green screen and creates something that's very original and very cool!

Via Lost in Schlock.

Babes in the Hollywoods

Legendary animator/puppeteer Bob Clampett created the surprisingly risqué Babes in the Hollywoods in 1950.

Babes in the Hollywoods is a classic Beany & Cecil film by Bob Clampett (see previous post) from 1950. This was made as fundraiser film for RTRA (Radio Television Recording & Advertising) and is surprisingly risqué. What really struck me about this was the way that Clampett performed the wolf, frequently employing Chuck Avery-style held takes and motion takes. I haven't seen nearly enough Beany and Cecil and this makes me want to track down more of Clampett's work and see other examples of him applying animation principles in puppetry.

BTW, if you're interested in Beany & Cecil history, watch this interview with Sody Clampett (Bob's widow).

Special thanks to Wes for spotting Babes in Hollywoods!

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!

Puppet Film & Video Tips: Composition, part one

Composition in an important, but often overlooked aspect of puppetry.

I've mentioned this several times before, but composition is an aspect of their art that puppeteers rarely discus, yet it's an incredibly important concept for any visual or performing artist to understand. The basics of composition in a two dimensional mediums like film and video are governed by what are known as the rules of composition. You don't have to necessarily follow them - in fact some of the most interesting videos deliberately break them - but you should be aware of them, if you're not already.

A really good book that goes a great job of explaining basic composition for film and video is Setting Up Your Shots by Jeremy Vineyard. There are also several old posts here on PuppetVision dealing with composition and how it relates to puppetry, including:

• Rex and Boots: Super Swazzle Puppetry
• Puppet Staging and Composition
  
• Puppet Staging: Creating Emphasis
• More on Composition
  

I'll be following this up with a few more links and resources later in the week. Until then, if you dig this kind of stuff you can check out more about puppetry theory in the PuppetVision archives.

Monday Morning Inspiration: WALL•E Superbowl Spot

The character of WALL•E (the star of Pixar's next animated feature) is created primarily through movement, not sound or dialogue.

I am thinking that Pixar's WALL•E is going to be one of the most interesting movies of the year. It's hard to explain why without mentioning the few spoilers that have appeared on the `net, so instead I'll mention the Superbowl ad for WALL•E that aired yesterday in the U.S. (if you can't see the video, click the "Read More" link below to watch it).



I love the way that WALL•E's character in this ad - and reportedly most of the movie - is conveyed primarily through movement. The little robot is really well animated here (most of the animation in the spot was done by Pixar's Victor Navone) and it's a great example of the old axiom "show, don't tell". It also stands up to the no sound test...turn off the sound when you watch the ad and you can still tell what kind of character WALL•E is and what's happening on screen.

I think that both great animation and great puppetry should create character and tell stories primarily through movement, not dialogue.

Composition, Puppetry and Horton Hears A Who

One of best things about the new trailer for Horton Hears A Who is its fantastic use of composition.

I've written about puppet staging and composition as well as creating emphasis in film/video puppetry before. I don't hear a lot of puppeteers talk about composition, but I believe its an very important element of great puppetry - especially in film and video. Before Christmas animator Virgilio Vasconcelos wrote a great post about composition in the new movie trailer for Horton Hears A Who. Have a read and try applying some of the principles he talks about the next time you're shooting something.

Tales from the Bayou

Puppetry Lab's Amy Harder (on the lower left above) recently worked on the Christian series Believer's Bayou.

Amy Harder has been working on a Christian kids’ series called Believer’s Bayou and shares some stories from the puppetry trenches over at Puppetry Lab. I thought it was a particularly interesting blog post because in it Amy discusses some of the challenges of working on a less-than-ideal puppet shoot, including dealing with sets that aren't raised (or "platformed up") and lip syncing to pre-recorded tracks. Amy's also included some behind-the-scenes pics from the shoot as well.

Rex and Boots: Super Swazzle Puppetry

Rex and Boots are two of the stars of Swazzle's "Get A Clue" summer reading tour in California.

Swazzle is touring California libraries this summer with three puppet shows built around the state's library summer reading program theme, "Get a Clue". Turns out that's also the tagline of this summer's new Nancy Drew movie and so the makers of the film are teaming up with the libraries to do a little Nancy Drew/summer reading cross promotion.

As part of the effort they've posted a promotional video featuring Swazzle characters Rex and Boots on the web. It's a great little promo on a whole bunch of different levels, not the least of which is its top-notch puppetry. I thought it would be fun to do a few screen grabs and quickly break down some of the things I really like about this video shot-by-shot:


This is a really simple, but nicely executed shot that reads beautifully. Just looking at this single frame you know exactly what's going on in the scene - Boots is reading something and Rex is surprised/interested by it. I love the expression on Rex's face here; he's a great-looking puppet with perpetually bugged-out eyes that work especially well in this scene.


In good puppetry the audience should always be able to tell what a puppet character is thinking/feeling without hearing any dialog. Here Rex is really getting excited about what Boots is reading and as the audience we know that because of the great expression on his face and the way he's eagerly looking over Boots' shoulder.


Now Rex is really, really excited. His jaw is practically hanging on the floor and although his eyes don't move, they look like they've opened wider because of a change in the angle of the puppet's head. Rex has also moved the from left side of frame to right, which is an example of good puppet staging because it balances out the shot and helps to keep it visually interesting.


Now Rex is offended and defensive. Visually he looks stiff and is avoiding eye contact with Boots. Do you notice the connection between changes in his emotional/mental state and the puppet's body language?


We're jumping a head bit here, but look at how Rex reacts before the pile of junk falls on him. That's great use of anticipation - Rex (and the audience) knows what's coming next and that makes it all the funnier when the junk finally falls.

If you live in California and want to see some great Swazzle puppetry in person check out Swazzle's summer tour schedule. And if you're a puppeteer in California looking for a gig you're in luck because they're hiring right now.

(BTW, if you liked this post you should also check out two of my posts from last year - Puppet Staging and Composition and Puppet Staging: Creating Emphasis - which go in to some of the ideas I mention here in a little more detail)

Thanks to Sean and Anita at Swazzle for sending in the great video!

Monday Morning Inspiration: Silhouette

Silhouette is an important concept in puppetry (photo by David).

Shadows are arguably the most simple form of puppetry in the world. I think that strong shadow, or more specifically, silhouette is key to doing great puppetry. If a puppet's pose or movement reads well in silhouette it clearly communicates to the audience visually what a character is doing, thinking and/or feeling.

"Silhouette value" is a fundamental concept in most visual arts. John K. has written about the role of silhouette in animation a lot and Spline Doctors touched on the subject recently as well.

Getting Started in Video Puppetry

I got an email yesterday from a puppeteer in the UK who is auditioning for a TV show. He hadn't worked with hand and rod puppets on camera before (his experience was primarily with marionettes and glove puppets) and was looking for good resources for learning on camera puppetry. I sent him some links and I thought I'd share them here for the benefit of any PuppetVision readers who are interested in doing video puppetry, but either haven't picked up a puppet yet or don't have much formal puppetry training.

None of these resources are new, but they're all fantastic:

Introduction to Video Puppetry: Manipulation for the Camera
This article by Leo Brodie dates back to the early 1990s and it's what I first used to figure out how to perform puppets on camera when I started out in puppetry thirteen-odd years ago. Leo was trained by a number of notable puppeteers including Jane Henson and Marty Robinson and this is a great introduction to the basic concepts of on-camera puppetry.

Setting Up A Practice Monitor
Another old-but-great article by Leo Brodie that deals with how to properly set-up a monitor to practice puppetry. A good companion to this is Marcus Clarke's article on Straight Scan vs. Reverse Scan video monitors, a subject that I've mentioned on PuppetVision before. If you aspire to do video puppetry professionally you need to learn the difference between the two and you'll probably need to know how to work straight scan.

Puppetry Lab
Amy Harder is doing an ongoing series of puppet manipulation exercises, videos and tutorials at her excellent Puppetry Lab site. These are created with live puppet performance in mind, but Amy works with a monitor and most of the techniques she demonstrates work equally well on both stage and screen.

10/01/08 Update: Broken links have been fixed (thanks to Leo for the heads-up!).

If The Gap Needs a Niche You Probably Do Too

The New York Times has a story today called Gap is in Need of a Niche. As Duct Tape Marketing points out, if one of the largest retailers in the world is facing ruin because it can't differentiate itself from it's competitors what chance does a small business stand if it's stuck doing the same old, same old?

If you perform or build puppets for a living (or want to) and you're closely emulating the Muppet style you're competing with a lot of other people whether you realize it or not. There's nothing wrong with building very Muppet-like puppets of course. I like them and so does just about everyone else. Just about everyone makes them too. And uses them. And that's the problem.

When you're different, when you're unique, when you carve out you're own niche you can pretty much write your own ticket. Of course it's not easy, it's hard. It takes a lot of work. That's why most people don't do it. Eventually though you have to decide, do you want to be like everyone else or do you want to be one-of-a-kind?

Remember, revolutionaries push the envelope, they don't hug the middle.