Hello. I'm new to these forums but I have been a lurker for a while. What I wanted to say is that I've already created a few puppets and I came up with an idea for a movie about a year ago. I finished the script and I am remaking the main characters so they look better. I m going to post pics of the various characters as I finish them. Most of my puppets are hand-puppets with dowel controlled arms, although I do have one live hand puppet. I would just like some tips and pointers from other people who have made puppet movies. I'm thinking of setting up a Kickstarter campaign.Thanks for taking the time to read this  

Welcome aboard. Best wishes for you project, but I don't think I can chime in- not qualified...

These are Elbow and Razzamadoikdoik and Godfrey,I've improved them since these pictures were taken Thank you for straightening me out about the pictures.

  . It seems like your picture did not work out as hoped...first download it to your gallery on here and then choose picture button when you type a message and then pick the right one...second I would strongly suggest to do some short skits with puppets before you tackle a Movie even for a person who has a pretty good idea on doing stuff...I would feel overwhelmed on doing a movie with puppets...that could certainly come later on when you get a better feel on performing and camera angles...I wish you all the luck on this and hope you post more pics and your video's when you get them up.

StiqPuppets

Welcome to Puppets and Stuff keep us updated on your project.

We are about 2/3 the way through a puppet feature and believe me when I tell you it has has been an eye-opening experience. 

Tip #1 - Be patient.  It takes a lot more time than a regular film because you have to account for the fact that largely only the top half of the puppets can be visible, with means carefully setting up your shots and making sure no arms, heads, etc can be seen in the bottom frame, not to mention that the puppets themselves tend to drift left/right/down.

Tip #2 - Whatever you think it'll cost... double it.  We set up an IndieGoGo account and raised $600, which was our entire working budget.  We have just shy of half the film to go and we'll probably spend over $1000 by the time we're finished.

Tip#3 - lip synch matters.  Even through there are no 'lips' to speak of (see what I did there?), the vocalization is obvious when it's off.  This is important not just in filming but also if you end up having to do some sound looping in post.

Tip #4 - Build your puppets durably.  A puppet will wear out rather quickly when you're doing hours of film work through the course of a day, especially the mouth. 

Tip #5 - Keep needle, thread, and hot glue on hand for on-set repairs.

Tip #6 - As in any film set, feed your actors.  Assuming your cast is volunteering their time, make sure to have snacks (fruit, muffins, juice, water, etc) and spring for pizza half way through.  Keep them happy if you want them to come back on their own time.

Have fun.  And check out It Came from Uranus on Facebook or here on Puppets and Stuff.

I love the green one eyed monster...I am glad that you figured it out.

StiqPuppets

We are only 1/8 of the way through our feature length movie. I would add to Poorfishy's comments, whatever TIME you think it might take,....double, or even triple it. That sort of fits under his tip#1. It definitely takes more time as set up and technical things take a while to organize. But that is half the fun of doing  Puppets. Two things extra.. lighting, and audio. Work hard on those, particularly audio. I recommend  recording the audio on a separate recorder, say a laptop, as well as on the camera, and then replace the  camera audio with the cleaner laptop audios (unless you have a really top notch camera that you can feed the  audio into with external mic.) and stiqpuppet is right in saying it is a good idea to do some shorter things  first to get some experience. But in the end, a feature is just a two hour video. (as good as you can get it of course, because you want them to play it over and over again.)

Yes.  Audio is key.  This is one of the lessons we have learned as well not just in puppets but filmmaking in general.  If you are using an external mic (which you should and I presume if you do it's probably not going to be personal lapel mic or anything sophisticated like that), make sure to keep it in a neutral space so that it's equidistant (sp?) from each performer.  There's nothing more frustrating than discovering one performer's voice is crystal clear and the other is muffled and far away.

And I agree with pagestep007 in that it will take way longer than you think it will.

One thing we have done for this project is taken our script and broken it into dialogue sets (sort of a written storyboard) so that we know what pieces of dialogue are going to be tight on a single puppet, or medium on a double puppet, or wider on a few puppets.  Then we just took all of Puppet A's single lines and ran them off one at a time.  Then we set up all the doubles, all the wider shots, etc. So you'll be shooting dialogue out of sequence, which makes organizing footage in editing a little more time consuming, but it keeps actors from flubbing lines in long bits of dialogue and complex scenes.

Also, keep your camera moving.  The fact that you're using puppets means that essentially you will have an hour or so of talking heads.  So to break up the monotony, make sure the camera moves regularly. 

Also do a few over-the-shoulder shots to make it interesting, as well as a few inserts as well.  If your character is holding a knife or a telephone or something, grab a close-up.  Get some reaction shots of other puppets.  This is good to again break up the talking heads, but it can also be useful to hide an otherwise awkward cut, say if the first half of take one was great and the second half of take three was great, you can hide the fact that you have just jumped between two different takes (and slightly different positioning of the puppets.

Hope that all made sense.

Thank you for the tips.