Creature! - short documentary on puppets and puppeteers

see I mean next year is a bit be tricky oh no no not for the likes of me absolutely if you design something without performance in mind I've probably done that myself you know been a little naive to what the performance is going to be it's just a really difficult journey to get then from to a performance it's just nice if it's more holistic you got to try and give it that that sentience that's a word that we we use a lot it's something we try try and make sure that most if not all of the charact

ers we've got have something that refers to that to that that sense of awareness of of one's surroundings really humans we do it where you see some somebody's eyes moving around you see they kind of nose twitching you see them kind of you know lick their lips and that might be or sort of hold their nose if there's a smell or you're looking for those little signals I think and obviously with a with a puppet like this I mean we've got there are some basic movements in there so there's movement in

the eyebrows here and the and the ears can move so they they're effectively kind of rods inside you know kind of cables and controls inside how you do that have F if you sort of waggle them quick and kind of go oh it's got It's got ears that move that's great that's lovely you know it's great and it's a puppet and it does that but but how you move that and the speed at which you do that obviously creates um the illusion that those ears are listening or that those eyes are that brow is is opening

up so those eyes are widening but then in the same way as an actor finds their way through a scene you know a properer finds their way through and and is looking for things that that puppet can do that are going to communicate something some emotion some might just be the smallest thing it could be a simp you know that little sense of melancholy you know with that with a with a head down that sense of thought process those kind of melancholic quieter moments I think are for me some of the most

enjoyable um experiences that I've that I've witnessed as as an audience member with with puppetry has been known to move a few old ladies to tears on the street which is bizar but it's a collision of all these things you know the sculpture the puppetry the performance the music um and also whatever's going on for the people that you meet you never know what's happening for people in their lives do you and then they see this thing it's completely unexpected thing and it you know it touches them

in a certain way particularly if they're more open or more vulnerable or or more lost on that day it's bigger than its constituent Parts everything we do is rooted in a kind of picture book World a storybook world and this certainly inspires a sense of wonder in adults and wonders it's something we experienced a lot as a child isn't it but as adults it's not necessarily an emotion that's part of our habitual uh emotional language and so it it bypasses the sort of analytical part of people's brai

ns and it touches them somewhere else I thought it was really interesting in Moscow we had this character out in Moscow and when you when you remove that layer of of the communication aspect so so you obviously we didn't know what people were saying cuz it's speaking in Russian but certainly you you're very much aware of the emotional reaction to this character and again it was a similar thing it was it was it was genuinely seemed to be you know moving people emotionally you could see people's s

ort of eyes were water it watering and and they were sort of just going that was that was a really sort of affirming moment certainly for me walking around with that c to see that nice character quite quite T-Rex es nose quite a stubby he's a big guy though big big big puppet who commissioned that who was who's foolish enough to decide they want their own dragon foolish foolish people there some little ones place called Black Gang Chine down on the aisle of white that was a a company who uh stil

l have that dragon in fact it predates the green one I would say that was an improvement on on the commission Dragon often the commission work we do helps us kind of learn stuff that we then try and bring back into our own stable of characters poetry speaks a universal and eternal language which is to say that it should make sense to any person in any culture at any point in human history because it's non-verbal um so you you can this this work can travel around the world and and resonate really

deeply with people who are you know you don't share the same language you don't share the same cultural touchstones but um because it's this archaic form it's kind of in there with all the sort of uh forgotten the word but it you know it's in there what is the word archetypes yeah it's in there with all the archetypal [Music] stuff [Music] this is very much the start of the season so pretty well everything you witness will have the appearance that we're completely incompetent but by the end of

the season it'll be totally different what's the season uh sort of um early November right up to Christmas time really uh that's probably going to go here I sometimes forget how just how good we are so we having the Penguins yeah we're with so we're with the Penguins they're out with the Snow Lion all right okay yes uh so Duncan is Duncan Taylor [Music] you actually find you move faster than if you try and do that that's good so I'm sure walking the hips swing your hips it's good uh you've got k

ind of vision here um and then you'll see you've got ambient light coming through lra a lra skin so so they've got they've got loads of movement they got so you got to R down there which you can push and pull you can twist it m there are little babies you might find if it's really random busy this seems like a great idea and then you have like 20 kids like hanging on here go where's the baby and you're going oh my God I just want to die I would tend to say stay quite close together not least bec

ause practically it's easy for me to look after you it's also quite a nice image the two of them together pre pandemic it was a very common thing you be in a big space like this like a unit and yeah you might have I mean who's here you know probably at least a dozen people if not more you know and in that way you sort of obviously there were lots of familiar faces that that became the community she' be like oh hello hello how you doing and then that sort of dwindled down a little bit perhaps wit

h with shrinking budgets for for events certainly post pandemic I think I think it's true to say this there's generally been less of this sort of thing where there's lots of people around so this is lovely this is is like this is like sort of harking back to when we first when we first started we go yeah exactly all right um you know where we're headed do you got a rough idea or you [Music] [Music] yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] amongst you has the Heart of a Lion let our Queen [Music] decide 2 on

e work it love youling a for you and a here very good [Music] natural yes of course you the baby I am I love [Music] babies [Music] that funny not so much in this puppet cuz we tend to keep quite a big space around him in some of the smaller puppets where you can get a bit disconnected from the other characters and the other performers a bit like claustrophobia but a slightly different thing about just being cuz you're strapped in and you're stuck in and you just have to get on with it for 45 mi

nutes you know you can communicate if something goes really wrong but it's quite it is quite overwhelming thing for people who are new to it but I've been inside Giant puppets for a lot of years so I guess my my threshold for overwhelming kind of claustrophobia inside a giant puppet is quite a high thresold we were 5 minutes lateer going out yeah yeah yeah yeah it was just I no it was fine because when we got back to that Carousel when we got back to the Carousel and all those people were there

I was like we can't just ignore them and walk out of my way and it's always really bad when you chosen all the other kids haven't chosen that last one I know similar to why any kind of practical effects work it's even if you don't touch him you you your brain the sort of mirror and neurons and that kind of thing in your brain is imagining touching him imagining like the texture and the feel and the weight we were Inland with you guyss with [Music] you maybe it was a [Music] different I just make

a little video my NE sometimes you make something as a maker that's technically really pleasing that you you know as a maker you fall in love with a poet you fall in love with they're great to perform and that when they go out people respond really well but if the Bookers don't see the value in them yeah sometimes work just doesn't sell you we used to make stuff to please us and I think more and more these days we we've got a much better sense of of what was sell of what's commercial like this

guy yeah very much kind to fill that christmy Niche up yeah so the the work's promly based around season so you know it's quite Pagan in some ways and you know rabbits at Easter you know big Mythic white furry creatures at Christmas the man and hoping people celebrate that that change in the seasons with snow lions penguins penguins or a fox and an otter at Spring you know or dragons around St George's day and then you you know you're boming up and down the motorway watching the the trees come i

nto leaf and that kind of vivid green of Summer and the way it fades away to autum and then this time of year can't get this bag on H I'm talking to you it's um well my muppets no panel I then laid round and it folded all the way back to here then it ended up with it ended up with a gap and there's nothing speci no special allowance for the fact that there's I did costume and Technical special effects for my degree swarland pattern make and pattern cut things like that and fabricate I do do the

kind of bodybuilding of um creatures as well but for these guys more of the sewing time wrestling trying to do this by myself last time just like there must be a trick once this all gets a little bit more greasy and it's got a bit more atmosphere and dust on it it just just looks a whole lot nicer yeah yeah in this sort of raw State you get it's it's just isn't it it's like it just needs to be out there really I think with a bit of colorizing and and stuff and and a bit of texturing it'll uh yay

it will come good I'm really glad I didn't Tred to do that alone right wow that's big is it wow I was talking to Duncan about what that might be as a character we were saying like what if your Steward character who could have a big scarf as well it's not the steward that talks it's the bear that talks for the steward so the steward is there for that practical element of looking after the bear but actually the bear is going this is my friend yeah he's coming like I just found nice nice way of so

rt of flipping that round I know mate I know mate glue a bit of that on there just give you a bit of a sense of what goes on that it's amazing isn't it it like what a lovely little that even just that there just seeing him seeing him look down you there that's gorgeous we sort of perform with feet on the ground this is up near what's that you know you're up sort of seven seven and a bit feet once You' got that fluff on the head again that whole head's going to kind of feel a lot bigger L more [M

usic] substantial it's so magical this is like half finished that we've like made but it's still just so to see it IM that's going to be that's going to be great how exciting how genuinely P wly exciting I might have wet my pants or a nice one can't wait to see that like bounding along with that when you've got that elasticity in the neck as well to hold that that that's Michael Crouch doing what he's always loved doing his whole life since he was a little boy that's his happy place oh that's be

autiful this is the this is the juice man you need that stuff I think I think you just you need to we've often made a point of like in the middle of a project you can't even if it's just bits and pieces on the table you just try and jam it all together and just have a look you got to try and see it you've got to try and know where you're headed cuz that's the stuff that will that'll keep you going you know if you got to work through the night which is a pretty painful experience at the best of t

ell us but that's the stuff that kind of just just that's the vi already this is Magic is like this is a bit that kind you go okay yeah that's that's good there's a glimpse [Music] of you