First VLOG is up, it is a book review of You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day.  Two things I have nitpicked is that 1) I really need a monitor so I can watch the puppet, mouth synching and head movement.  I use my thumb more when looking at the puppet then looking at the ground.  2) Tablet isn't the best medium, or I need to find a setting to turn off.  It tends to refocus when the puppet moves too much.

Ultimately, for best quality you are probably going to want to use a regular video camera. As you say, your camera did refocus and therefore make small jumps during the recording. Since puppets are best with a little action, and not just being talking heads, this is definitely a problem.

I had to laugh at the "Wow, it actually works." You have to love it when something you planned actually came off!

Long live Edgaaar!

I had to laugh at the "Wow, it actually works." You have to love it when something you planned actually came off!

That came out as it was the second take.  The first take would have been funnier if I could have pulled it off, but the thing just would not come down :D  Going to have to keep it for a blooper video.

Here is the first take

I always enjoy blooper reels.

I like this a lot, very clever! Did you find it hard to record audio at the same time as controlling the puppet? I assumed it would be easier to record the audio after.

Thanks   The easiest would probably to pre-record the vocals and lip sync the video.  Never thought about recording audio after.  For me, I like the practice recording live gets me, since I plan to take this character to conventions and festivals. 

I enjoyed that! Cool eyes... and how did you stick the feathers on? If you do any chroma keying in the future, make sure the backdrop is not green .

   Concerning recording audio, in our experience, prerecording is the easiest and very efficient to work with, but boring to film. It is not so interactive so  manipulating the puppets is not so interesting, but, it is great, or should I say a must, if you are doing a song or music video. You have to have your sound track first, to lip sinc to.

  We usually record live though, as you get more of the flavour of the  actor's performance, and everyone acts off each other. We usually record sound onto the camera but record with lapel mics into a separate recorder to get a closer or cleaner audio, then in editing use the camera audio to sinc the off camera audio then silence the camera audio. We use lapel mics on booms, but manufacturers are not making them these days with cables, and we will have to upgrade to radio mics soon.I don't know how all you other guys go with this. There are advantages and disadvantages. If you have mics on booms, it is easy to go 'off mic' by not being close to the mic, but you can get a clean audio, but if you have the mic stuck to you, like a headset, you can bang it and rub it with things easily and ruin the take, without knowing it until you get into post production. If the clip we are doing is not so important we just go with the camera mic, and try and get the camera close so it picks up the audio better.Sometimes on a location it is not  practical or too much bother to have extra recorder, so you try and wing it with the camera.

 Post recording is the last option, and the most difficult. If your audio got ruined in the recording, you have to try and replace it to save the shot. It is quite hard to do well. If out on location and you did not get to use an off camera recorder, and the camera audio is terrible, you have to reconstruct it. You can get the  audio, and rescue a 'background' that usually is drowning out the dialog, by cutting and pasting bits of the audio to go behind where the dialog is, then redo the dialog, lowering the background track until it sounds like you are there, but can now hear the dialog. It is hard to get a matching reverb fingerprint in the post recorded dialog though...is this sounding like gobbledygook? Anyhow, it takes quite a talent to lip sinc the audio after the fact, and even worse if you are dubbing into another language...   

So my recommendation.. record live where possible, and  if you can manage  off camera recording even better.

I enjoyed that! Cool eyes... and how did you stick the feathers on? If you do any chroma keying in the future, make sure the backdrop is not green Smiley.

Thanks   One thing I love about puppet building is that mistakes can make things better!  The original idea was for him to be an owl type creature, since the blue fur had the feather protrusions as part of the fabric.  Well, I glued on two plastic eggs and they were not very stable.  Frustrated, I picked up another egg piece, and hot glued it to the fur and to the other eyes.  Problem was, the hot glue was very visible.  So I cut out a couple pieces of just the feathers, and hot glued them over the eyes to cover the hot glue.  Loved how it turned out! :D

Also fully agree with your analysis of live recording, you stated very clearly what I was thinking.  With live recording, you have the ability to improvise and act out mistakes which can turn out better than the original script.

Excuse for being late on next VLOG