Seemore Goodstuff

We had a fun, two-day shoot last week over at WTVI, the local PBS affiliate here in the QC. I have puppeteered a character named Seemore Goodstuff there for years. Seemore is a 6-year old (perpetually) elephant who tries his best to know right from wrong. He hangs out in the Kids' Clubhouse and soaks up adult-type advice from Beverly Dorn-Steele, WTVI's Ready to Learn Diva.

Over the course of the two days, we found ourselves shooting on-location in a dentist's office, a playground and around a police car in a parking lot. We also shot several spots in studio. Seemore and Bev usually say their piece in a nifty 30-second interstitial that's shown in-between regular PBS Kids' programming.

I'm always reminded during these shoots how lucky I am to be able to puppeteer both on stage and on camera. The two are so different and it's a blast to explore the manipulation differences inherent to each. A subtle twitch of the puppeteer's wrist is lost on stage but becomes an incredulous look of disbelief on camera. Large, sweeping movements that read well on stage are big and overblown on camera. Using the camera's perspective to puppeteer by, via a monitor, is a must. What a neat challenge it is to create a believable character while it stays neatly tucked inside the tiny camera frame.

Role-playing with an on-camera character in between takes is an important personality builder too. What may appear as frivolous fun really is an exercise in finding out what a character is capable of physically and also how and why that character may react to different situations. I really believe that exploring the character's traits off-camera creates a better performance on-camera. It also helps mask the puppeteer's pain, since we usually are crammed into some unnatural position, with head craned downward to keep it out of the shot!

The end product is so different with on-camera work versus on-stage work. The immediate reaction of the audience is not there. It's a delayed gratification for sure; the end result put on hold until the piece is post-produced and readied to air.

So it went last week. A great two days of exploring what new things this character I know so well might be capable of. And then seeing if I was capable of making him achieve them through movement and dialogue. I look forward to seeing the end result of our work soon, after the spots are edited and complete!

Grey Seal's Three Ring Circus

Last week found me wearing a lot of different hats and that's one of the reasons I love doing what I do so much. Each day presents a different template and it's fantastic. As puppeteers, we're involved in many different areas. Not only creatively, but in a business sense too. Good business practices have always been important to us and we try to practice them constantly. It's not easy turning a profit as professional artists, but we have been lucky to stay afloat and happy for all these years.

Early on in Grey Seal's history, we decided that several irons in the fire was a smart way to go. Better to have a few different options rather than relying on just one revenue stream. We settled into three areas; on-stage performances, on-camera performances and the custom-design and construction of characters for others. These different areas would serve as safeguards to one another as we rode the ebbs and flows of the financial seas. This early cornerstone philosophy has served us well over the years and each week usually finds me involved in each of the three sectors.

Take last week. Back in the workshop the finishing touches were put on a new mascot character for The University of Virginia. "Sabre the Horse" was packed up and shipped just as a new "CavMan" was being "foamed out" for UVa as well.

Last week also found me performing Salsa Cinderella out and about the Tarheel State. Over the weekend it was a privilege to perform the show at the prestigious Sarah B. Duke Gardens in Durham and then return to Charlotte for a performance of Salsa Cinderella at McAlpine Elementary School. Great fun!

Then it was time to slip on another hat and write some dialogue sequences for a couple of Dalmatians named Alto and Tenor who will be a part of our 26th consecutive year of performing with the Carolina Voices acclaimed Christmas concert called The Singing Christmas Tree. Next up, a meeting with Lucy Hazlehurst from Children's Theatre of Charlotte to plot out our upcoming performances of Tangle of Tales there in January. After that, another quick hat change and some pre-production work on our upcoming shoot at Charlotte's PBS station, WTVI, where we have performed "Seemore Goodstuff" on-camera for the last 10 years.

So it goes at the three-ring circus we call Grey Seal Puppets. Just another week of "pandalerium." Who knows what the next phone call will bring. Stay tuned and we'll keep walking the tight rope.

Accounting 101 For Puppets

Last week found me jetting to the Windy City of Chicago for two days of corporate puppetry. The late, super-great puppeteer Bil Baird once said, "you can make puppets out of anything, you can make puppets out of meat." Here at Grey Seal we like to think that not only can you make 'em out of anything, but they can handle almost any kind of material as well.

My trip to Chicago is proof of that. The Reznick Group P.C. is a national accounting firm with a 90-employee office in Chi-town. They held a retreat last week to cultivate teamwork and good customer satisfaction. Dean Sellers is the Director in Charge at that office and he understands the power of puppetry. Dean had the idea to bring in a puppet character not only for a little levity, but also to convey some sensitive material to the participants too.

So, there I was manipulating our puppet Steve Sticklewood, crack investigative reporter, who was on the trail of good customer service and satisfaction. I learned a long time ago that puppets can get away with things that people cannot. This lesson works perfectly in complex corporate climates such as this. There is information that members of the team want to know, but are afraid to ask. There's also information that the leaders want to convey to the team but aren't sure of the best vehicle to do so. Our formula with Reznick was to have Steve Sticklewood appear "live" on a projection screen located to one side of the speaker's podium. The puppet would interrupt the speaker and ask the tough questions. The back and forth dialogue between speaker and puppet was light-hearted and fun, but all the necessary information got through to the participants. Mission accomplished!

The way the puppet was presented was neat, too. Appearing on the screen somehow legitimized the puppet more than just having him pop up behind a puppet stage. But having the "live" interaction was paramount as well. We achieved this by setting me up in a separate room, nearby the meeting room. I had two monitors to work off of; one monitor showed me the camera on the puppet, the other showed me a camera on the speaker and the projection screen. This way I could have the puppet react to not only what the speaker was saying, but I could also respond to any non-verbal body language, which was really funny too.

I will say this though. Accountants work too much. I didn't get to see anything of Chicago, those folks barely stopped to eat for pete's sake. Aside from a few swell games of Bocce Ball the first night when the meeting finally broke, the trip was all business. Fun business, but business all the same.