24 November 2006


DAHT - Season Two Beckoneth

pt. 1 of 2

So at this time I would like to review why in god's name I first started this thing. ("This thing" referring to Disembodied Animal Head Theatre.)

I think it's best summed up in a post from 3/2/06: "It's easy for me to comment on what I have planned with The Felties. Carving out the time to do the things that result in an actual product is a bit more difficult."

Sometime at the beginning of this year, it occurred to me that I had be in "pre-production" on The Felties for almost a year. The puppets hadn't even been finished! I was depressed.

Meanwhile, there were some really good puppet shorts popping up online, and it occurred to me that I really didn't know much about doing a "video podcast."

So it was I found myself searching around the house for something vaguely puppetlike to put in front of a camera. I had a two "animal snapper" heads, a flamingo and a giraffe. Cool. A title materialized from the creative ether, carried on gossamer wings by the muse: "Disembodied Animal Head Theatre." What would I do on this show? Something in the public domain that I can easily make fun of ... Ah, Shakspeare! All I needed was a host.

Elsewhere I've explained why the rubber chicken. In short, he amuses me. And thus I come to the point of this blog entry.

Doing this series is fun. And it's educational. Sort of like Bill Nye the Science Guy, or looking at nudie pictures. Going all "Robert Rodriguez" and wearing every hat simultaneously is difficult. The quality suffers, to be sure. I don't have an extra pair of eyes to tell me the top of my head keeps popping up, or that my puppet keeps slipping down out of frame. (I have a monitor now, so expect that to change for the better!)

For season two of this humble little experiment, I will continue to improve the quality of the show and keep pushing out the boundaries of my own understanding. Oh yes, and have fun. I intend to keep having fun.

(And I encourage anyone and everyone to join the party! It doesn't matter if you're using an archaic camera, or posting everything as .wmv files. The important thing is to do something!)

1 comment:

Pamela Moore said...

It's hard to learn anything or make any improvements on your own technical skill if you're inactive in an area. I found that to be true with songwriting. If you don't write any songs, you're never going to figure out how to write a good song.