Development: Surprise we made one more puppet

We went ahead and decided to make one more puppet after getting the majority of our work done. We ended up doing this so we could have another puppet representing our puppet shorts with intro and outro's because it felt a bit bare aesthetically. And because we've had so much fun with this project and positive support all the way through we wanted to make another Puppet. 

We decided to make a puppet of our Tutor Gair as he's been organising a puppet workshop for over the summer for us with funding and has shown so much support and positive outlook on what were doing. We did have plans to make other tutors and people we know but because of time and because some people weren't comfortable with the idea also didn't want to offend anyone which isn't this projects intention at all. We will maybe make more after assessment for other tutors and friends a like.

Mark made a tiny clay mock up of Gair to get a sort of three dimensional guide before we continued to make the rest of the puppet.

We made him much the same way that our's were made with sponge, cardboard, rubber mouth piece, fleece and felt and put all together with a hot glue gun. The cardboard helped to shape the head better from the inside.

We did both take turns at creating the head but because of time restraints and other work to share between us Mark ended up finishing the Gair puppet while I worked on Gair's audio, blog, uploading YouTube videos, and sketchbook.

We decided to use some faux fur from a winter hat for Gair's hair it ended up being a great texture and best we could to represent his hair.

The next day we booked out the production studio for a few hours to film Gair and to get some photography opportunities of the puppets. The reason Gair is wearing a lab coat is because in the context of when we asked him for advice about if we needed some sort of warning for our project since it is about a serious subject matter. From the audio I created Gair mentions if someone did an introduction wearing a white lab coat in the view that people usually stop and listen to people announcing or introducing something of importance in this way. So from that the idea stuck that his puppet should be wearing one.

Someone left safety goggles in the production studio we borrowed them for our filming.

We set up the green screen area for the performance using the board to deflect the green from the felt of the puppet and used Mark little camera to film it.

I volunteered to perform as Gair to the audio tracks we created for an introduction and a outro of him.
We also used green screen  to keep our options open for a background to use for him and also because we sorta did this all as a secret from everyone.

I also took some shots of our puppets to use for further images for presentation and also to have some shots of them finished to present.

We also have found placing the puppets on lighting stands or microphone stands is a great way to present them and we managed to borrow some from a local church for assessment.

Now theirs a couple of weeks to let Mark edit and for me to finish off the blog, sketchbook, poster and dvd cover get everything ready for assessment.

Development: Week of filming for final 4 : Hannah McClure centre theatre

For our last shoot I contacted the Hannah McClure centre and got permission to use their theatre space which suited some conversations we had about how the art of cinema can help Marks depression. It turned out to be a great space for this and we had a lot of creative control for a few hours.

We were very pleased with the space but had to figure out how to do the lighting ourselves with a switch board as some of it wasn't working. It was a little tricky but we managed to figure it out enough to get some of the effects we wanted. We even brought our own reflectors just incase which ended up being sliver cooking trays since none were available from the university.

We also tried out different seating arrangements for the puppets for angels and to also hide oursevles it was also what best lighting worked out effectively.

Some lighting tests and also brought the puppets some 3D glasses.

We also had to make some readjustments to the puppets and also the seats with tape so the seats were held down by enough weight.

Mark ended up having to hide behind a curtrain to the side and had to control his puppet through bars while I hid under the seats with my arm inbetween them for mine. We also gave them some popcorn as extra props and to make the conversations more like a realistic situation at a cinema and in the context of the audio and environment. We also could hide the laptop in this way in reach of being able to mime the audio.

For some assitance since we had to stay in the same place ready to puppeteer Aimee Stewart was on hand for some help with direction, recording and lighting.

That's us shot all our conversations for assessment now it's over to Mark to edit it all together in Premier and handing over my sound files for him to place over the top of the footage. We also have plans for DVD as well as a poster and our set up for assessment displaying our work. But this plus finishing off the blog is what we will be working on in the next two weeks up to assessment.