Check out this little puppetry gem.  I for one was blown away with it.

This movie short was put out by Director Peter Haynes of New Zealand based Haynesfilm Ltd.

The project was conceived back in the summer of 2005, and the team for Haynesfilm were feeling the crunch of the 48hours film competition they were in.  Eight hours into it, 3am and they still didn’t have anything resembling a storyline or idea.

These film competitions often have a few elements that each short must include, here are theirs.

Character: Bodil DeRezney, Animal Lover
Genre: Action.

Director Peter Haynes remembered the moth eaten old puppet Monkey he had as a child. In a fit of 8am scribblings on a sheet of refill, ‘Jungle Fever’ was born.

It went on to win Audience favourite in its heat, reach the regional finals in Auckland, and then go onto the National finals after being selected as a wildcard winner by Peter Jackson himself.   JF2: Primal Fury’” is a continuation of the story of DK bond, Fighter, Lover, Monkey.

‘JF2: Primal Fury’ was filmed on a Panasonic HVX in 720 mode, using a redrock M2 lens adaptor with Nikon Lenses. It will screen in 12 episodes on Juice TV in New Zealand beginning 7th April. It is totally self funded.

So many times people worry about making a puppet “as professional” as possible. Here is an example of how wonderful film making can make a simple puppet look great. This is a topic that I will be exploring further. For now, enjoy the trailer.

Puppet Buzz contributor Hilary Talbot has just recently switched her blog over to the fabulous “WordPress” template.  I for one think the blog layout looks clean and easy to read.  Great job Hilary!  Be sure to check out some of her other posts at her new blog address Spirits Dancing.  You can also see more of her work at he Flickr site here.  Enjoy.

I recently received an email from Chris Deline about a top five puppet video countdown.  It was posted about here.  I would like to add to that top five another video I stumbled across.  The song is called Heart It Races by the group Architecture In Helsinki from the album Places Like This.   First off I love the song, it is catchy and makes me want to listen to it over and over again. 

Secondly is that it uses some great “living” puppets instead of more traditional hand and rod puppets.  These puppets use the performer’s head mounted on a puppet body, and in this case it uses the performer’s live hands as well.

Overall it is a great video and well deserving of being acknowledged too.  Super job!

Many of the puppeteers that are part of the online community are involved in Christian ministries. For those who fall under this category, the Fellowship of Christian Puppeteers is hosting their annual conference at Winthrop University in South Carolina on July 23-27. Anyone in the area may find this an educational opportunity to refine your puppetry skills, learn new skills or perhaps gain encouragement and inspiration for your ministry as you use this powerful medium. Information and registration is available here.

For those of you who do not already know, Swazzle is a California based puppetry company that specializes in quality live puppet shows.  The members are accomplished puppeteers, puppet builders and artists.  They have collectively a wealth of information that could impress anyone.

Well Swazzle has decided to put out a casting call and started looking for two puppeteers for a new live puppet show that will tour Southern California. The show will be bilingual and performed for Spanish speaking audiences at community events, so at least one puppeteer must be fluent in Spanish.

Auditions will be held on Friday July 13, 2007 at the Madilyn Clark Studios, 10852 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood, CA. For more information, or to schedule an audition please e-mail Sean Johnson, sean@swazzle.com.

Amy Harder over at PuppetryLab.com is doing some great work. Puppetry Lab focuses on puppet performance, and to my knowledge, is really the only site out there that has approached the subject full force. There are a few puppetry blogs and static web pages that have briefly discussed performance or puppetry for television and so forth, but none with the resolute determination of actually providing instruction for solid puppeteering technique and performance skills. Puppetry Lab is slowly but surely doing just that.

Personally, I was excited to read in one of Amy’s recent posts, and I quote,

To date, PuppetryLab has primarily focused on puppetry theory and specific movement techniques. But there is so much more to creating a lifelike, believable character than simply the movement of the puppet. If you have excellent puppetry technique but ignore simple acting basics and neglect character development, your audience will not fully engage in your performance and will quickly lose interest.

Puppetry Lab plans to visit and revisit the two subjects - acting basics and character development - as an ongoing project. Both are very important pieces to a memorable performance, whether you are working with a script or improvising.

One thing that I really appreciate about Puppetry Lab is that the tone of the instruction and the site makes it very clear that when you put a puppet on your hand, you become a performer, an actor. Just as a stage or screen actor perfects their performance skills, studies for a particular part, meditates on how to convey certain emotions in certain scenes, develops his character, etc., so should the puppeteer. It’s a process, and the more work that goes into that process, the better the final result or, in this case, performance.

So, bottom line, check out PuppetryLabs.com! You’ll be glad you did.