In the first half of the semester, we watched a DVD produced by the French organization Hors Les Murs, which, among other things, had videos of various types of puppetry. We also saw a video in class of a person tight wire walking outside in a park, which was entertaining for me to watch. After later seeing puppets performing human movements, I wondered what it would be like to have a puppet appear to be walking a tight rope while a person was actually performing the same feat: One performance on two different scales. My ideas developed after I started brainstorming sources that could be useful such as The Indian in the Cupboard, a story about a boy, a toy Indian, and a magical cupboard.
My project will be to create a miniature puppet version of a person that, at some point during the performance, seemingly transforms into a miniature, real-life human being that interacts, or appears to interact, with the other objects around him. The practicality of this may not be known until I get an idea of how deep the stage is, how far back the performer can be, what size and how close the puppet would need to be in order for the puppet to be the same size as the performer on the retina’s of the audience members.(insert jonimage1)
In order to learn how to create this effect, I plan to research into visual illusions that involve scale and that can be produced by controlling what can be seen or the angles that they can be seen at. I should have some useful ideas on how to go about creating these illusions after watching the couple of behind the scenes documentaries that are available on The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring Special Extended DVD Edition, a DVD of a movie that Katie has offered to lend me.
Also, in order to get ideas about stories and themes involving miniature sized people, I intend to watch The Indian in the Cupboardand read parts of the book the movie was based on. Reading and watching them could supply me with ideas or jumping points for create my own stories or even just help me figure out what I’d find interesting in a character. (insert jonimage2) Seeing how a character matures could give me an example or loose structure to follow during my own character development process. It will also help me discover what types of things are fascinating when seen on a miniature scale.
In addition to researching character development, I plan to look through books like the Magic School Bus in order to get ideas about what might be interesting to miniaturize, what settings would be appealing, and what might be entertaining to watch miniature characters perform. I will also watch the movie Thumbelina with similar thought processes in mind.
On top of watching movies and reading books involving small people in large settings, there are several other things I plan to look into before leaving for France. Searching for the string “Hors les murs” on Google to find more puppetry related information is one of them. I will also watch the Hors Les Murs DVD again to see if any concrete ideas or thoughts emerge, noting any specifics that peak my interest. Also, during all of my research I will try to look out for things that might be interesting for a character to explore or points that would be interesting to see a character develop from. I will start with the current sources in my bibliography, which are all stories that involve relatively smaller people interacting with others in a large world. I will also look through my journal entries to see if any themes emerge or anything odd or out of the ordinary stands out. As demonstrated during class, random entries that don’t seem to fit can sometimes be great for developing characters. Not only can making use of seemingly disjointed entries prevent us from thinking too hard, freeing us from our tendencies while reducing the chance we’ll put a dampener on our creative processes, it can also make our character development process more exciting since we won’t know where the process will lead us next. It could also cause stress if you don’t feel you have sufficient time to explore. I will try to keep these things in mind throughout my creative journey. After I have a clear base for a character, I’ll talk with Lauren Talamo and see if she’s willing and able to initially set aside time to help me create costumes for my puppet. My goal is to be able to do a sizeable chunk of the creation on my own before arriving in France.
Ultimately, before my journey in the program ends, I hope to create a piece that can be performed for a decent sized audience, but still allows me to constrain the possible viewing angles enough so that the visual illusions remain intact. If the illusions won’t allow for much flexibility in terms of where they can be viewed from, I might have to look into the possibility of performing for a camera and, instead, have the audience watch the live feedback. This might actually be ideal since it would allow me to do a live performance for a larger audience while also allowing each of the audience members to view the performance from the angles that I planned. If projectors can be used, this may be an option. There probably will be other challenges that I’m not yet aware of, so I’ll remain pretty flexible in the mean time.
I borrowed The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring Special Extended DVD Edition and gathered information about how the cast and crew attempted to manipulate the appearance of objects of various scales throughout the movie. There were countless scenes where actors playing hobbits’ were made to appear as if they were much shorter than average humans, when, in fact, most of the actors were of average height. (insert jonimage3) Despite the large number of scenes where these illusions were produced, only the scenes with illusions of scale produced using miniatures and forced perspective seemed to be useful to me since they were the only ones that at least had a remote chance of being producible on stage. (insert jonimage4) The likelihood of these visual illusions being producible on stage still won’t be known until I can talk with someone to find out how the stage will be setup, where the audience can be, and what tools will be at our disposal. If I can perform for a camera, I’ll have a better chance at producing these illusions based on scale. If I can’t, my options in terms of audience size and location will become limited. I’d have to could look into the possibility of limiting the number of audience members and where they sat in relation to the puppet and myself, if I still wanted to create the same effect. (insert jonimage4) A camera would really be helpful if I decide I want to appear as though I’m a small person dancing with a puppet of equal size and am performing for a larger audience. And even though The Fellowship of the Ring had many scenes that used video editing to create the illusions, I watched the entire movie since it was possible that the contents in those other scenes could be useful. This was also one of the reasons I chose to watch The Indian in the Cupboard and use it as a source to help inspire me. It had a lot of content that could be potentially useful.
I watched The Indian in the Cupboard towards the end of my preliminary research. Since I had already watched how various dimensions of scale were produced in The Lord of the Rings, I half hoped there would be a section in The Indian in the Cupboard DVD showing how they created their visual effects as well. Although that wasn’t the case, looking back I don’t think there was much to gain over what I had already learned from The Fellowship of the Ring. What I ended up gathering from the movie, were ideas about possible themes. Also I watched and thought about ways in which I could go about showing transformations of toy objects into their real life counter parts. (insert jonimage5) While watching the movie, I noticed that they had found a way to get the transformation to occur behind a cover. But what’s more impressive is that they were able to initially keep it a mystery as to why covering the toy Indian resulted in creating a real person one time, but not the next. That got me thinking. Also, watching objects, other than action figures, become real was interesting since this revealed the possibility that other unknown elements could emerge. I realized that seeing one transformation isn’t enough to allow the viewer to absolutely know what the possibilities are. They may first believe the cupboard makes the objects inside come alive. They may later see a plastic tee-pee turn into a stitched leather tee-pee, and conclude the cupboard makes objects transform into their real life counter parts. This made me think of other possibilities. For instance, can the cupboard only transform things that are plastic? What would happen if an envelope was place inside? Would it become plastic? Do things that start off real have a different fate than similarly made toys? None of those questions were answered, but it gave me many more ideas. I hope reading The Magic School Bus will prove to be as fruitful an adventure. Unusual things seem to be the norm in that series, so I’m pretty eager to find out what ideas it’ll produce.
Also during this semester I did some movement research/exploration in my Composition II class which could prove useful for my project in France. I started off with an Egyptian theme, which later included pop’n’lock and then a form of human puppetry. (insert jonimage6) Although there wasn’t ample time to incorporate a number of my ideas, I digitally recorded some of the material so I could come back to it later. (insert jonvideo1) (insert jonvideo2) (insert jonvideo3)
Since first starting my research, several new ideas have formed. After watching the documentary of the The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring, I realized it would probably be a good idea to look into ways of performing transformations that weren’t ideally suited for cameras. One thing that came to mind was magic-tricks. As long as the tricks aren’t overly elaborate, they could be very useful to me. Along the same lines, after I had a chance to watch both The Lord of the Rings and The Indian in the Cupboard, I realized that having the transformation take place behind a closed area would be ideal, especially if, once the cover is taken off, I can eliminate depth cues that might ruin the illusion of a small person performing inside a box where a puppet once was.
New ideas about what to research were also inspired by assignments in other classes. In my Ballet as Ethnic Dance class, I created a libretto for my own version of Pinocchio. I have since started thinking about looking into plays involving Pinocchio as well. This will allow me to see what has been attempted and what methods have proven beneficial for transforming a puppet into a human being. There may be something I could improve upon.
While I’m in France, I plan to watch plays and view European artwork to see what ideas from them I can incorporate into my own creative process. I’ll also look into finding what types of tools will be at our disposal. The sooner I know whether I can make use of a projector and video camera, the more comfortable I’ll feel solidifying my character and story. I’ll no longer need to worry as much about changing elements of the story due to certain technical challenges. I want to make sure my story has European elements, but I don’t want to limit my thinking to any particular areas yet. If something in an art history museum inspires me, I’ll use it. There basically aren’t certain types of sources I’m looking for at this point. I want to see as many different types of sources as possible and decide what’s best from there. In the beginning, if I have to choose between going somewhere that sounds similar to another place I’ve been, and someplace that could have completely new elements, I’m going to choose the latter. Later on, if I determine that certain types of research are going to be more beneficial, I’ll start looking in those areas. The only thing that I know for sure is that I love the idea of looking to give my work some European twists.