Hi there Folks.

My name is Callum. I'm a third year student at The University Of Winchester (UK). Being a third year in-tales writing a FYP (Final Year Project) The course I have taken is a BA Hons in Street Arts (http://winchester.ac.uk/studyhere/Pages/BA%20(Hons)%20Street%20Arts.aspx) From this course I have chosen Puppetry as my specialist subject.

My title for this piece so far is "How do you make an animal puppet come to life? A study of micro thoughts in the construction of animal puppetry" This is still subject to change as my research keeps going further but is just a rough guideline.  To explain more, the term Micro Thoughts was new to my vocabulary until I met some of the team from Handspring Puppet Company (War Horse?) They used this term to define the moment when an audience member has a small train of thought from a micro moment from the puppet... i.e The horses in War Horse so every life like movement, even breathing.. But even the breathing can show a story/emotion of the puppet. Fast breathing - panic, scared etc etc
    Hope that makes sense?

I was hoping that some of you could possibly reply to my post with any directions I can take my research? Have been burrowing my head into web pages, books and all things puppet related but have hit a brick wall. Any Youtube links? Book titles? Maybe you have a book lying a round and have a few pages you fell would help you wouldn't mind scanning on? or even an old book to pass on? Anything would be helpful to get the ball rolling!

Thanks!
Callum
 

Here's something you need to read:

http://southerncrossreview.org/9/kleist.htm

Perhaps it's me, but I don't understand the question you're posing. Are you asking how to make an inanimate object seem to have it's own ability to breath? If it is, I think the answer is less tangible than it may seem: it's one of those X factor things, where there's no real definition, you just know it when you see it.

My question posing for the document is "How do you make an animal puppet come to life? A study of micro thoughts in the construction of animal puppetry"

So not only breathing... everything else.. the breathing part was just an example.?

I doubt you are really going to find much in the books that are out there of for that matter even any videos. I've never really seen one that goes into that much detail about manipulation theory. You actually might have better luck looking at books written on acting.

The theories behind an actor creating a convincing character are really the same when it comes to puppetry.  Rather it be a person or an animal you need to study the original and look at what movement and actions define them. Not only did they look at the breathing in War Horse but they also where studying the movement and position of the ears and the gaits of the animal. I know the spent a lot of time at the stables looking at horses.

This is an excellent program.  It was on the Documentary Chanel back in October, but you might be able to find it somewhere else. This is not about animals, but it does a great job of communicating a lot of emotion through puppetry.  http://www.documentarychannel.com/movie.php?currID=9844&t=Puppet

Julie

I just found another listing at 10pm Dec. 24th on the Documentary Chanel.

Ok, so at least I was on the right track...

I'm not a performer so I'm not sure I can answer this one. I can say though, after 10 years of acting classes, how to make anything seem believable is a combination of psychology (understanding how people work), action/reaction, lots of rehearsal, genuine input of emotion, and ultimately the X factor. You see, you can perform in front of an audience and have all the above, but if the audience is drunk or bored, you'll find the X factor disappears. But if you have a responsive audience, you're more likely to be able to pull off a good performance (I've seen this in action).

I think the better question to start with is "how do you manipulate a puppet?" and then break it down from there. Ie. a puppet of an elephant will seem believable if it is moved in a way you'd expect an elephant to move; but then, it may also be anthropomorphised, which means it might also do things that humans do. How does one then make an elephant be both believable and do things that it wouldn't normally do?

I think that comes back to act/react. We relate to objects if they seem to 'see' things, and so the position of the eyes on the puppet, and the direction the head is pointed in, informs us of what the object is looking at or reacting to. We also relate to objects if they seem to react to events/objects in the space. So whilst an elephant climbing a ladder may not be 'realistic', if it's running away from say, an alien spaceship, then the action seems believable because it's also relatable. We'd be scared of alien spaceships, so the elephant running away fits our preconceptions of what things do when they're scared. (Hope that makes sense)

But then, puppets can do a lot of different things, so it also depends on the context of the story, and so on. I've seen shows that were 'technically' proficient - well-made puppets, good manipulation - but just weren't believable. This is where the X factor is required. It could be dependant on the fact that you were just sitting on the wrong side of the audience and the action is directed to another side; it could be that the puppet is badly made; it could be that the puppet does something out of context of the story or character; it could be that the story itself is difficult to follow; etc. As with all other theatre, a lot of things go into a show that might break believability. But all of the above is important in context of one other thing: there are trillions (nonillions actually!) of ways to make a puppet, and so the believability of movement achieved with a muppet-type puppet is different to how you would achieve it with a shadow puppet.

As far as I go, and I haven't read/done much on the actual subject of puppetry performance, the best explanation has been 'act and react' by Neville Tranter. This was a masterclass, so there are no official books or notes of his explanation; the masterclass included visual demonstration. It was interesting that the professional puppeteers brought up as volunteer demonstrators seemed actually quite bad at puppeteering; until Tranter got them to break down the actions. That is, an action such as 'acting frightened' can be broken down into further actions (going about your business, seeing danger for the first time, shaking, moving out the way, checking the coast is clear). When all of the components were broken down, the puppeteers were suddenly capable of making precise gestures that were easily translatable to our minds; whereas before the actions were imprecise and strewn together. Believability went from 0 to 100%.

Tranter had some other good points which I posted here:
http://www.puppetsinmelbourne.com.au/blog.php/2008/04/10/live_from_unima_2008_day_nine
They may be worth your time.

The answer is complex, so I'm not sure you'll easily find a definition out there somewhere in a sentence. Perhaps it would be a good idea to find the puppetry journals out there. There are many organisations around the world for puppeteers, and a number of them have regular publications. A good one to start with is the UK one:
http://www.puppetcentre.org.uk/animationsonline/aothirtyfive/
Some of their issues are online I believe (available for free is what I mean)
As a background note, this publication is offered by the Puppet Centre in the UK, but is not related to the UK puppetry branch, http://www.unima.org.uk, which publishes a separate but likely-equally-useful publication. I've seen Animations before and think their quality of info is good; whereas I've not seen UNIMA UK's publication.

And the US ones here:
http://www.puppeteers.org/puppetry-journal/latest-issue/
http://www.unima-usa.org/publications/index.html

These publications are likely to be better because they will be more technical, rather than books, which tend to be more for beginners and touch on 'how to move something', rather than 'what is believable movement'. Actually, most of the above publications, and other UNIMA centres around the world, likely will be archived in libraries around the world, and UNIMA is over 80 years old - the UK centre may be younger - so you might actually find many decades worth of these publications stored somewhere near you. Or you may be able to obtain copies through your university. UNIMA itself is a huge conglomerate of information, and it may be worthwhile contacting companies near you and visiting/talking to them - many collect publications, books, etc for their work. UNIMA UK has a list you could start with, although I know there is another organisation as well, http://www.puppeteersuk.com/, which also has a list.

Seeing some rehearsal might also help, it's kind of hard to get your head around how things work if you don't actually see it yourself.

.... Ok, I think that covers my meagre understanding. Good luck with the assignment!

I doubt you are really going to find much in the books that are out there of for that matter even any videos. I've never really seen one that goes into that much detail about manipulation theory. You actually might have better luck looking at books written on acting.

I disagree. Very few people out there will have written books on acting that includes anything other than maybe mentioning/using improvisation and method acting. I've been through enough classes to know that teachers generally stick to the basics of how to get the human body to be believable, and maybe if you do some clowning or improv they may discuss props as 'extensions of the bodies', but that has more to do with looking comfortable using props than it does with puppetry.

However I do agree that a good basis of acting is necessary to perform puppetry well. It requires a lot of the same psychology and understanding of creating characters; but not how to put that stuff into an inanimate object.

It's why Avenue Q actors generally get puppetry lessons. If it were that easy to translate from one to the other, they wouldn't bother with the additional training.

Here's another trailer  http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5447692/puppet_movie_trail

I also wanted to post this. Neville Tranter works with puppeteer Duda Paiva. Paiva combines puppetry and dance, and has performed the most believable puppetry I have seen to date. His performance of 'Angel' included him manipulating a foam angel puppet that believably looked like it was strangling him, whilst simultaneously believably looking like he was trying to pull the puppet off him. I to this day have no idea how he managed to make it look like he was no operating that puppet.

Here's a clip from his website (http://www.dudapaiva.com)


About 1.10 in, he starts actually using the puppet. Notice the focus of the eyes are directly on him, which is what makes the puppet seem believable. I think later on where the puppet is on the wall is just after the strangling scene... But keep watching till 2.30. Because that's where it gets really good believability-wise.