The very first thing I did was look at the puppetry performance links sent to us on our brief.
These helped me a lot as I have never designed, created or performed any form of puppetry. I also very limited knowledge of puppets as I've only seen a hand full of productions involving puppets, which includes RWCMDs 2018 production of 'Betty Blue Eyes'.
When looking through the websites and videos there was a few things that stood out to me which really peeked my interest. The first one was the AI from 'Dorian Grey'. Although this topic is quite far from our topic of Animals, It fascinated me how they used the restrictive movements of the puppet to enhance the mechanical life of the robot which lead me to become captivated by the machine. Another performance which caught my attention in a similar way was 'Running wild'. This performance grabbed my attention because while watching you forget that you're watching puppets and become mesmerised by the animals and their movements. The animal that fascinated me the most was the elephant and its movements, this is the puppet which to me seemed the most alive. I took note of this particular performance because this is inspiration for my own puppet and performance.
I prefer the style of Gyre & Gimble puppets to that of Roger Titley. Roger Titley's puppets are white and the puppeteers are usually dressed in black this leaves the puppeteer visible against the puppet where as in the performance of 'Running wild' the puppeteers blend into the puppet becoming one with the animal, leaving you're imagination with just the image of the animal. I struggle to do this with Roger Titley's puppets. Therefore I have established that while designing my puppet I want to focus on colours and textures of the animal I decide on.
This is something to think about in my performance as I could choose to disappear or I could be visible but I feel as though I will need to interact with my puppet in order to make that work.
Another video I found really interesting was from 'Monsters' by the Duda Paiva Company. I found it interesting how the puppeteers use their bodies with the puppets to create really interesting and clever imagery, one of my favourites being this image from the trailer.
This production has really made me think about how I can incorporate my body and movement into that of a puppet.
Due to the Covid 19 outbreak we are doing this project remotely from home. This has been difficult for me to get my head around and has had me dreading this project due to me having no knowledge of puppetry or what it entails. This was also more daunting knowing that this is a group project with guidance from many tutors and second years had me feeling even more anxious on top of knowing that we weren't going to have the outcome we had been excited for. All of this left me feeling unmotivated start this project. However our first conversation with out BA2 group leader Constance went really well, because she explained to us how she was feeling the same as us in terms of emotionally and uncertainty, which is how the majority of the globe is feeling right now, but knowing that she was feeling the same as us but has the skills and knowledge in puppetry which we will need to have over this project and that she will do all she can to help us acquire these skills too. This reassured us that we will be getting everything we can out of this project in the circumstances we are in. The motivation and support began by explaining how this project would work and setting out a schedule for us all to follow, allowing us to regain as much normality and unification throughout our group. We also timetabled meetings everyday to ensure that we all remain on target and that no one is being left behind struggling. She also created a few puppetry video of household items to show us that even with our lack of supplies we can thrive and enjoy this project almost as much as we would of done if we were in university.
The element which gave excitement to dive into this project was Constance briefing us of her idea for our story line. Her initial idea for our final movie is based around animals held in captivity and struggling with there unnatural environment, mirroring what were going through at right now. This gave me alot of inspiration due to being able to express my own feelings through my work as well as the thought of that in years to come we can look back at this movie outcome and remember how we truly felt in thses strange times.
Once given our prompt I jumped straight into my research. Firstly I looked into the types of places these animals are kept; Circus', Zoos, entertainment parks, Farms and as illegal pets. My initial idea was to look into elephants because they're one of the largest animals on earth yet synonymous with animal captivity and cruelty. I was also very inspired by the 'Running wild' production and their beautiful elephant. (Here is a video i found of it performing in a shopping centre in Leeds - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I67KqIrY4U) These are some of the images I came across by doing some quick searches online which I found thought provoking.
Looking at these images really upset me as I don't understand how people can take advantage of these gorgeous gentle giants. I then looked on YouTube into Elephants being rescued and released into sanctuaries as well as other Elephant videos in order to study the type of movement and emotion I will need to convey in our final outcome, (Rescue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egnKCJL4MYo, Sanctuary -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEXPOYNmZfQ) and although these are magnificent creatures I don't feel as though I will be able to communicate enough emotion through my puppets movements unless I focus primarily on the facial features such as eyes, ears mouth and trunks. I also had a look at there skeletons and labelled it while watching video which just confirmed to me that they are very limited to the movement of their lower bodies, just being able to move their legs and tails. Despite this is do love how much emotion they can express from their ears alone and that this could be an interesting thing to look at in puppetry.
I also quickly did this for a few other animals that I wanted to look into such as Tigers and monkeys (RIGHT).
I furthered my research by looking into Pizza - 'The worlds saddest Polar Bear'. I first learnt about Pizza a few years ago when a video of the 3 year old bear in his tiny enclosure in an 'Ocean theme park' inside a Chinese Mall went viral.
This video was posted was just months after Arturo, the previous worlds saddest polar bear had died in captivity where he had spent all 30 years of his life alone.(Arturo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blBf9epGi94) This video of Pizza was posted to urge people to help him avoid the same fate as
Arturo. This video blowing up meant People had to listen, even British charities tried to help Pizza escape. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-37404925)
Although the Chinese company didn't surrender Pizza and therefore he remained under their control but luckily they listened to the outcry and moved him back to the zoo where he was born. (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/05/wildlife-watch-pizza-the-polar-bear-chinese-mall-aquarium/).
Although the enclosure is still unnaturally small and he would most likely be better off in another location the fact he's now living with his Mother and having interaction with another polar ear he looks visibly less stressed. Because Pizza never truly left inhumane captivation I had to do more research on YouTube into how they act in the wild and I found a few videos of just general movement of polar bears. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi-33aj12xw I also looked for playful videos as well as I feel that's how Pizza would react if he was introduced to the natural world and these are two of my favourites https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB7gS5IcD84 & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut0yruwNdJM
My favourite being the second video as the reactions of the bears caught in that video are true reactions which although its sad to see how happy they are in snow compared to the hot temperatures I feel as though they are well looked after and happy because they get to interact with other bears as well as experience the natural world even right down to hunting for their own fish. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u471hCeSCS8
These Images are how I imagine polar bear happiness so I've collected them here for inspiration. The next thing I did was look into polar bear skeletons once again to see how they move.
Another animal I wanted to look into, who are very often are locked up and used for entertainment, are brown bears. I didn't however, want to use time looking into brown bears straight after the polar bear due to how similar they are. I did however find these videos of bears being released into sanctuaries which I've found very useful due to being able to see their real reactions in the moment, my favourite being when Rocco the bear falls into a water tank and is clearly very confused but also very excited. These innocent, native yet bouncy movements are the ones which will bring the emotion to my puppet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dov_ujlXFrE
I decided to try with my limited knowledge look into how I could create a basic skeleton inside the body of Rocco the bear. Although I manged to very basically do this, I have no idea how I could produce this or how I would manoeuvre it to produce a puppet.
In between researching I saw this image appear on my social media and I had to save it to remind me that were collectively feeling like these animals and why this is an important route to take with our project.
The next animal I was really interesting in looking into was big cats. Tigers are currently a very popular subject in the world due to everyone watching 'Tiger king' on Netflix during isolation. I however want to look into big cats because I really enjoy how they move as creatures. Especially in the videos where they are released from cages as you can clearly see they are weary when leave the cage however once they're out they bolt. I firstly looked into cheetahs because I think they have stunning body movement, so I found this slow motion video of a Cheetah running - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4nd9GF1dRg Which I used to make drawings and trying to understand body shape better.
I think this has really helped me understand the movement of limbs, where as yesterday I just drew out animals and body down their body shape which although helped me break down their body It didn't help with the movement of the animal and therefore the puppet will have.
Break down of dolphin body shape. I decided that this body shape would be a similar one to start my experimenting with. Using toilet rolls I attempted to created the tubular shape of the dolphins body.
I really like the shape I have created with these toilet rolls however I don't feel as though I have achieved the movement that I was intending for. After Comparing my 'Dolphin' movement to that of the real dolphin I've noticed that the real dolphin has much more exaggerated movement in its tail/lower body rather than in its upper body where in mine its the other way around.
I tried to alter this by reversing the body of the dolphin and moving it in the opposite direction different to how I built it. This is defiantly better than previously however it still not as fluid as I would have hoped for.
I think this is due to how I'm holding either end of the model with my hands. However there is string inside of the body but when I attempt to use this instead of my hands it has hardly any movement. Therefore the only way it can operate is by using my hands but this does create an incorrect movement to it - i find it almost snake like.
I don't think that I will be creating a water mammal unless they also land welling such as a seal or otter, I'm unsure of why but these animal movements just happen to spark my interest more so than the movement of whales or dolphins, despite whales and dolphins being amount my favourite animals.
Even though I'm unsure of water mammals, purely for research purposes I'm putting the link to the story of 'Hvaldmir's story'. Hvaldmir is a beluga whale who was spotted in the Norwegian sea with a camera strapped to him, he is believed to be one of the many wild whales/dolphins who have supposedly been captured off the cost of Russian sea. Hvaldmir however was set free from his restraints and now lives around the small costal town of Hammerfest in Norway and has regular interactions with people.
In our meeting this morning with Jess and Dik we got onto the topic of how usually animals are caged up for our entertainment however now that were all locked up the animals are actually taking back the land and being released from cages to explore places such as zoos and aquariums. Once again when i logged onto social media this is the first video that appeared so I had to save it on here.
During my continued research I found this video of collected recordings which show animals being released from captivity and I fell in love with the bear from 0:15 - 0:18 and his movements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UEzmlNfBK8
So I decided to draw out these three seconds in order to visualise it
