Henson's Place, Part Three

In the absence of material of my own to post, I am posting the long-overdue third segment of the "Henson's Place" documentary, with my own pithy comments.



"Watch the duck!"

The footage of the early programs shows that, even though limited in technical resources, the attention to quality was still there. Christian puppeteers--including yours truly--need to remember this.

Henson's Place, Part Two

At long last I am posting part two of the Henson's Place documentary--along with my own astute comments on aspects which relate to puppet ministry.



The difference between the first concept of a puppet and the final result is good to note.

I was fascinated by Henson's comments on what it is about puppets that fascinates children.

Note the effort that goes into developing the various personalities of the puppets in Sesame Street.

Think running an effective puppet program is easy? Check out the "job description" given by Mrs. Henson in describing her husband.

Henson's Place, Part One

The following is a real find for the puppet community. It is a documentary which delves into the evolution of Jim Henson's Muppet empire. I first heard about it at Puppeteers Unite. It was posted by the same YouTube-er who brought us the Of Muppets and Men series.

The documentary comes in seven installations. I am going to post one a day for the next seven days, and make comments on some of the aspects of these documentaries that are relevant to using puppets in ministry.

Here is the first installation:



In watching the first part of the video, I cannot help but be impressed with how the Muppet industry "started small". They did not begin with big, multi-million dollar productions. Yet, from "a way to make extra money in college", it grew into one of the biggest entertainment companies in history.

It is also pretty neat to see that they got their start on local television--exactly where we are working. Of course, today there is also YouTube.

What Mrs. Henson says about "little tiny movements" is very important. It is those movements that give a puppet it's life.

Also, pay close attention to her talking about the potential of puppets to communicate.

The way they work the "human-arm" puppets has never ceased to amaze me. The amount of coordination needed for each hand to be operated by a different person boggles my mind.

One formula for their success: skilled puppeteers+skilled puppet makers.

Stay tuned for the other installments. There is a lot of puppeterring gold to be mined from these videos.

Speaking of Jim Henson

When I was just getting started in puppetry, one of the books that influenced me the most was "Of Muppets and Men", which was a behind-the-scenes look at the Muppet Show. I borrowed the book from the Addison Public Library (the fact that the Addison Public Library actually had the book is only slightly less surprising than the fact that Addison, NY actually had a public library) a hundred times. I spent hours looking at each picture, and as I prepare for our filming project now, those images come back.

The book is kind of hard to find today, but it is well worth the effort if you do. What I did not know back then was that a documentary of the same title--and covering much of the same material--was produced. Recently it surfaced on Youtube, and I am embedding it below. All six videos take a while to watch, so schedule some time, fire up the computer, get some hot chocolate, a note pad and a couple good pencils, and take it all in.

Learning from the Master

The all-time, undisputed master of puppetry was Jim Henson. If you want to learn about puppetry, watching anything produced by him is always a sure bet. Which is why I was very excited to see a series of never-before-published videos from Gary Friedman at puppetrynews.com. It appears that Mr. Friedman participated in a puppetry seminar run by Jim Henson himself somewhere in France. Five videos were made, each one showing different aspects of the seminary. There are a couple actual student productions, and one "making of" segment.

Click here, sit back, and feed on the puppet goodness.

Jim Henson on Character Development

One of the most difficult and yet most rewarding parts of setting up a puppet program is the development of the characters. In the case of our Cidade Feliz project, we are currently designing and building our puppets from scratch after having given them personalities and character traits.

Many church programs rely on mass produced puppets purchased from any number of companies. Even so, the development of a puppet's personality is key to the success of a program--key to how well the message is transmitted.

Here is a video of Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Michael Frith, and Kermit the Frog talking about character development.

By the way, I got this from an outstanding collection of puppet videos put together by Andrew from Puppet Vision. If you are at all interested in working with puppets, you need to check out these videos, and be a regular reader of the Puppet Vision blog.