This page contains the process of the puppet making and rough ideas for Plan A of my short movie which was not successful.
When it came to the puppets, I decided to make them entirely out of rubbish and every day objects. I created a mind map of examples of how this can be done.
I did this for a number of reasons. First of all it was convenient. I didn’t have to spend any money other than some wire to attach limbs in a way that would still allow movement. Secondly it meant there was no limit to how weird and wacky the characters could look. As I stated on my previous post, I’m very inspired by Tim Burton and that caricature style. His characters are recognisably very thin with long limbs, big eyes and long fingers, however some are also very very plump with massive facial features. (shown below) His films never feature ‘normal’ or accurate proportions, and I’ve tried to replicate this, but perhaps in a more toned down way in the puppets above.
The images below show a very early idea for the set of my short film. Originally I was going to have a closed set with a house (also made out of recycled materials) propped onto a green cloth with a box underneath to replicate a hill. My characters were then going to move around below it, and I would angle the camera to make it look like the house far in the background, just like a camera shot you’d find in a Wes Anderson’s film (specifically fantastic Mr fox, as shown on the previous post) .
I also had a real turnip, a pumpkin to be painted and show the grown turnip, and i was gonna other materials to show the other sizes.
Unfortunately this just wasn’t looking the way I had planned, so my second idea was to have an open set in my living room, where the ‘recycled family’ actually lived in my recycling box, which is then destroyed when it gets squished down, forcing them to find a a new home somewhere else in my house.
I started to think about all these things I could make my puppets do on their journey to find a new home. They could climb up onto a cabinet , or use a sponge as a boat to get across the sink. however I soon realised that they weren’t as mobile as I had hoped. At first I figured if I just improvised to see what was and was not possible, I’d eventually have usable foot age. Unfortunately a lot of this footage was lost due to a computer issue where I hadn’t saved what I had done. I do have some very small clips though, and I think they definitely show how this idea was not going to plan. My puppets just wern’t mobile enough, and the set was too unstable.
the lost footage demonstrates how I wasn’t able to get the puppet to stand on it own, which made anything else I wanted it to do would have been near impossible.
please click below to see small videos of plan A:
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