I’ve been suffering from
another idea overload just lately, and today was no exception. Ever since I was
a kid and discovered and subsequently fell in love with the work of Jim Henson
I have wanted to work with puppets in some way, (I’ve worked with some Muppets
in my time though). There is a company that makes Muppet style ‘human’ puppets
that look like extras from Sesame Street,
that are the hand and rod type that Henson used for most of the classic series.
These are exactly what I need for the project, should it ever come to fruition.
As the idea involves a certain amount of copyright wobbles, I should possibly
just put it on YouTube as that way I can’t be accused of making money from it
and therefore can’t (in theory) be sued.
Another avenue I would like to
explore is the idea of taking film-making right back to the beginning. I have
always loved silent black and white comedy, and can watch Laurel and Hardy and
Charlie Chaplin again and again. If I can’t find an old cine camera (and film)
then there are programmes available to make your films look like scratchy,
jumpy old flickering films of old. Remembering a scene from Chaplin in which Dan Aykroyd played the film director Max
Sennet, the filming method was brilliant. Sennet just shouted direction and the
actors followed, without microphones it didn’t matter as long as the actors
were quick enough to follow direction. You don’t even really need to write a
script as such, a bullet point list of situations would probably be enough.
This sounds like a great way to work; in fact it makes you wonder how the
talkies managed to catch on if the actors had such an easy job before.
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