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Puppetry Performance Workshop For Stage & Screen: For Drama, Theatre & Acting
Students – 2-4 hours
1-30 students
Maximum 30 participants
These puppetry performance masterclasses are hands-on workshops that provide a practical, intensive study of puppetry arts for stage and screen, with a focus on Muppet-style puppetry.
Students learn puppet lip sync, eye focus, walking, arm movement, emotion, character voices, and stage craft. Each student is provided with a professional workshop puppet to use in the session and will learn eye focus using little puppet “hand eyes”.
Students will learn the puppetry arts practice that informs:
- TV shows like Sesame Street, The Muppets, Fraggle Rock and Dark Crystal.
- Characters such Grogu from The Mandalorian, Bobby from Sweet Tooth, and Thing from Wednesday.
- Stage puppets for theatre such as Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, Olaf from Frozen The Musical, the puppets from the Bluey stage show, and Avenue Q.
Includes:
- a short puppet show demonstrating how the puppets look when performed, viewed from both the audience perspective and from backstage, watching the puppeteers in action.
- an educational talk about different styles of puppetry.
- an educational talk about Muppet-style puppetry and how the puppets work.
- a hands-on puppetry performance workshop.
- a performance of skits from students to demonstrate what they have learnt.
- a demonstration of monitor puppetry.
- an explanation about “how” and “why” monitors are used for film and TV puppetry.
- how to use a monitor to perform a puppet within a camera frame.
- how to make a puppet seem real on camera using eye focus, walking and lip sync, all while keeping human/puppeteer heads and arms out of the shot.
- how to frame a single puppet and work with more than one puppet in a frame, in conversation.
- performing a group puppet dance choreography, recorded on video.
- Q&A session.
For costs, visit Rate Card #8 – Higher Education (University, TAFE, College).
Monitor Puppetry For Film & TV: For students of Film & Television, Screen
Production, Video Production, New Media – 2-3 hours
1-30 students
Maximum 30 participants
Larrikin Puppets provides higher education students of film, television and screen production a rare opportunity to learn the basic techniques that bring Muppet-style puppet characters to the screen.
This interactive, practical workshop is led by professional film and television puppeteers Brett Hansen and Elissa Jenkins who were formally trained in the USA by Jim Henson puppeteers from Sesame Street and The Muppets.
Brett and Elissa regularly perform puppetry for television, music videos, corporate videos and online. Most industry professionals do not know what’s involved in filming puppetry. It’s harder than it looks – and most people don’t know how it works!
Students will learn the puppetry media arts practice that informs:
- TV shows like Sesame Street, The Muppets, Fraggle Rock and Dark Crystal.
- Characters such Grogu from The Mandalorian, Bobby from Sweet Tooth, and Thing from Wednesday.
Students will learn the unique and challenging skill of monitor puppetry for Film and TV including:
- a demonstration of monitor puppetry.
- a presentation of clips of puppets in film and tv.
- an explanation about “how” and “why” monitors are used for film and TV puppetry.
- how to use a monitor to perform a puppet within a camera frame.
- how to make a puppet seem real on camera using eye focus, walking and lip sync, all while keeping human/puppeteer heads and arms out of the shot.
- how to frame a single puppet and work with more than one puppet in a frame, in conversation.
- performing a group puppet dance choreography, recorded on video.
- Q&A session.
For costs, visit Rate Card #8 – Higher Education (University, TAFE, College).
