Evolution of a mime

Evolutionofamime
Originally uploaded by scrapsflippy.

Just because the horse I'm beating on doesn't quite feel dead enough yet ...

Here is a pictoral history of Mimey.

Mimey is a mime, but he's no pansy. He has a short fuse, but is a very loyal friend. As a mime, he does not speak out loud (although his silence is often communicated to the audience with subtitles). This leads to Mimey being misunderstood, which then fuels his short temper. Mimey lives with Pupsumoto, his best friend.

(More on Pupsumoto next time.)

All about the puppets - Mimey

Mimey Expressions
Originally uploaded by scrapsflippy.

I built Mimey one day as a gift for my wife. I had all this felt, pipe cleaners, etc. left over from the International Day of Puppetry. (In an historic display of "puppet nerdism" I thought it's be "cool" for me and some of my puppeteer friends to sit around and build puppets all day.) I gave Mimey to Pamela and she loved him.

Since he's a mime, Pam doesn't have to worry about lip sync. She thought this was really funny. Later that night, she called me into the living room from my home office and sang a duet with Mimey. "Sun and Moon" from Miss Saigon. Pamela sang Kim's part, and when it came time for Mimey to sing his part...

Pamela's so damn cute, it really was roll on the floor funny.

The next evening, our neighbors (who absolutely hated us for some unknown reason) yelled at our dogs. Pamela ran to the back window with Mimey and let Mimey give them a (silent) tongue-lashing.

So Pamela has pretty much cemented the character. An absolutely ridiculous mime with a very short fuse, who is completely and totally dedicated to being a mime.

The picture above is Mimey as built by Russ Walko. Compare to my earlier prototype and gift to my wife (see below entry.)

The Felties

GENESIS

I am digging deep into my personal journals for this entry. I guess I was inspired a bit by Michelle Zacharia's blog (found via Andrew over at Puppetvision.) Michelle is working on a shadow puppet project, and her blog reveals a deep and personal passion for what she's doing. So I've decided to pluck up my courage and get personal.

So here are some of my early thoughts about The Felties.

* * *

1/04/05

Treat Felties as a web-comic. Same type of humor, site-gag & "punchy" verbal humor. NOT puppetry sketches. Serialized comedy.

This means HIGH FREQUENCY of "webisodes." But -- short webisodes. I DON'T want people to have to download FOREVER.

1/18/05

BUILD IT LOUD!

2/1/05

The overall look of the project

• Primary and secondary colors (felt squares - duh!)
• Any patterns are simple patterns; "kindergarten" simple.
• SIMPLICITY - I want people to see it and think "I could've done that.!"
• Not "cartoony" but simple. Like Picasso's drawing of a bull. Minimalist - but minimalist like a circus poster. Simple, but ALIVE and QUICK AND EASY TO GRASP.
• No real attempt to be "edgy" or "hip." Just letting the property BE what it wants to be -- letting it evolve naturally.

The look of the website

• All of the above plus: No need for bells & whistles (i.e. Flash animation). Those can come later if needed.
• IMPORTANT: I have limitations as a web designer. I need to use my limitations to my advantage. This is a SIMPLE idea, and doesn't require much in the way of presentation -- the CONTENT is KING.

2/1/05

WEBISODES

Should be short. 2-3 minutes.

Low bandwidth - download/stream QUICK.

* * *

That's enough self-indulgence for now.

NEW MEDIA REVOLUTION pt. 2

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

One author who I constantly refer to (for inspiration if nothing else) is Rick Schmidt. His books Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices and Extreme DV at Used-Car Prices are both textbooks and manifestoes written by a doer, not a talker.

In Extreme DV there is a chapter entitled "Guerilla Promotion: A Quicktime Movie Player at Every Web Site." Although this chapter is more about launching an independent film into festivals and ancillary markets (video stores, cable TV, etc.) it got me thinking about the posibillity of skipping all that nonsense and just taking your production straight to the audience.

There's a subheading in that chapter: "Your Own Internet Six-Plex Movie Theater." Imagine that! If, like I pointed out in part one of this mini-manifesto, The experience of going to the movies is getting smaller, and the experience of watching television is getting smaller, then why not? Why not become the Loews or AMC of the internet? What's required? Is it even doable? What do you need - a powerful enough server, a PayPal account, and content.

The very same technology that the "Hollywood Establishment" and the MPAA fears -- the same technology that makes video piracy possible -- is going to make some smart entrepreneur very very wealthy when he realizes one very simple thing: There is no end of content out there. I forget the exact figure but the order of magnitude of short and feature-length films that get made in Los Angeles alone numbers well into the thousands each year. It's a buyer's market.

For me and my scrappy little puppet show, all this means one thing: I don't need to ask anyone's permission. I can bootstrap this thing, shoot it, edit it, and distribute it. There are no external stops anymore!

I can have my own television network!

(So can you!)

Very interesting posts recently over on Seth Godin's blog.

To an artist, point "C" on Seth's graph is very familiar. It's the up all night, throwing stuff across the room, avoiding your landlord part of the creative cycle right before the big breakthrough that pushes your game to a whole new level.

I think about Walt Disney. How the man "hit the wall" so often, usually after some big breakthrough. The temptation is to do more of the same. Bigger! Better! Snow White II: Double the Dwarfs, Double the Action!!! This is what was expected of him after the huge success of his animated short "Three Little Pigs." So the story goes. Walt was asked "So, when can we expect the follow-up to Three Little Pigs?" Walt's response: "Never. You can't top pigs with pigs."

From an artist's standpoint, the safe thing to do is to try and top pigs with pigs. The brilliant thing is to top pigs with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

I only hope I can be so brave.

NEW MEDIA REVOLUTION pt. 1

GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME

I knew the day would come.

The iPod Video. This is monumental; for me, my industry, and my puppet show "The Felties."

May I elaborate?

I've recently discovered a fellow by the name of Seth Godin. If you don't know who he is, you should. According to his website, he's "a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change." I've gotten to know him as a brilliant mind concerned with where marketing, entrepreneurship, and our entire system of commerce is heading. I agree with practically everything the man says (I disagree when it comes to Ringo's talent as a drummer.)

One point of disagreement seemed rather nitpicky until Steve Jobs unveiled iPod video a couple of weeks back.

Quick - read this.

Seth says "Big computers are silly. They use lots of power and are not nearly as efficient as properly networked Dell boxes (at least that’s the way it works at Yahoo and Google). Big boom boxes are replaced by tiny ipod shuffles. (Yeah, I know big-screen tvs are the big thing. Can’t be right all the time)." [emphasis added.]

True enough, TV screens are getting bigger and bigger. At the same time, however, DVD sales and home entertainment system sales are going up while your local multiplex is hurting for box-office money. It's not that TVs are getting bigger ... it's that the experience of "going to the movies" is getting smaller. At the same time, the experience of watching television is also getting smaller. Sorry, Mr. Godin. You're wrong; you are right all the time! ;-)

According to Arbitron/Edison Media Research in their "Internet and Multimedia 2005: The On-Demand Media Consumer" report, "One in four Americans say they have ever viewed video over the Internet." The audience size of Internet video consumers weekly is over 20 million strong and growing! That's incredible!

And it's like a huge blinking neon sign to bootstrappers like me: independent content producers who have been looking for a way to buck the "system" and get their product out to the consumer!

MORE TO COME!

I hate to keep ragging on independent film makers, but here's another casting notice I ran across:

"[Title deleted] is about a soldier who pushes through his self-hatred for being gay by hooking up with a boy before leaving for Iraq."

Wow ... how incredibly deep. He overcomes his homophobia ... by hooking up with a boy.

Oscar caliber stuff.

(This fellow is Stan, one of The Felties.)

The Felties is an upcoming webseries featuring a cast of rowdy characters who live an a cartoon-like universe of gentle anarchy and barely-contained chaos. Short, punchy episodes will be uploaded weekly to the site. This entire project is being "bootstrapped" which is to say produced on a very tight budget.

The puppets are in production right now, being built by the very talented puppeteer Russ Walko. I worked with Russ on a pilot not too long ago for a children's show called "Uncle Grizly". He built the puppets for that one too. (If you visit the site and watch the trailer, Russ is performing the pink naked mole rat "Lon" and I'm performing the green and yellow banana slug "Pupps".) Uncle Grizly retores my faith in the future of children's television entertainment.

Anyway, I'll be posting more about The Felties in the coming days. For now, enjoy the "work in progress" Stan!

As long as I live in Los Angeles, I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing ads like this one, recently posted on www.lacasting.com:

"INGA & HELGA / Co-Star / Female / Caucasian / 18-28
Characters will play strip poker and end up in just a thong before the big twist ending. Need to be attractive, slim or fit with decent to nice breast.

"Must have nice breats without any visible implant scars. Should speak perfect English and be able to fake a swedish accent. Short will play at many festivals and director has feature coming in the spring. Gig only pays 100 dollars and will shoot in one day, possible two."

How would YOU like to expose yourself for some horny film school graduate for only $50 a day?

There seems to be a constant stream of projects like these going on in L.A. How do they get funding? Horny venture capitalists? Maybe the filmmakers sell their souls to Beelzebub.

I'm not against nudity in film (or on stage for that matter.) But just because you can go there doesn't mean you should. Like any other story telling device, there is artful use and gratuitous use. Artful is the bathtub scene in English Patient. Gratuitous is anything with "National Lampoon" in the title.

(And to think, there will be hundreds of women who submit their headshots and resumes for a shot at Inga and Helga. How sad.)

Babies love They Might Be Giants.

(Me serenading my sister-in-law's 7 month old.)

I am in a play in Los Angeles called "Director's Cut", a horror show hell-bent on scaring the bejeebus out of the audience. During rehearsal the other night, a train of thought reappeared like a ghost from the milky darkness of my memory regarding the difference between "angry" and "creepy" and why it is so many attempts to scare an audience fail miserably.

It all goes back to a trip I took through one of the haunted houses back in St. Louis. Not a "real" haunted house, but one of those walk-through jobs filled with all manner of creepiness, and the occasional angry actor. There were some truly chilling moments.

The one that stands out in memory ran like this ... you enter a room. It's a small theater - or perhaps a chapel. It's hard to tell because it's dark and dusty, filled with cobwebs. Before you step two feet into the space, you are aware of twenty or so people - or corpses - sitting in rows facing forward. All of them perfectly still. You know you must walk down the center aisle to exit this space and continue on through the maze. But it's so quiet, and so still ... and you are surrounded by bodies. The rational part of your mind knows that they're just mannequins and perhaps an actor or two. But one thing is for certain: at any moment one of them could reach out and grab you as you walk past them. You're frozen in place.

Well, at least I was. So were the people I went with. Looking back from the front of the theater/chapel (I eventually made it through the aisle of doom) I noticed the same reaction from the people behind us just entering the space.

Why? What made that so scary?

At other times during the haunted house experience, my party ran into actors who just kind of got in our faces and screamed. It was laughable. It was simple anger, and anger is not scary. Sure, it signals that whole "fight or flight thing" but you know where you stand. Your'e gonna have to turn tail or kick some tail.

What made the theater/chapel so scary is you don't know where you stand. It's a mystery. It allows your imagination to dredge up the worst possible scenarios for you to chew on as you tenderly step down the aisle. Think about it: when you've been the most frightened, the most scared it was the mystery of the whole thing. Not knowing turned on those dark thoughts you suppress in every day life. I'm not just talking about when you watched The Ring. I'm talking about your first trip to the dentist. Sleeping alone in the dark. Feeling sick, but not knowing what illness has infected your body.

Sort of a corollary to this is when the everyday and ordinary person, place or thing is turned slightly askew. On some level you know it's not right, but you can't quite grasp what it is. This turns on the mystery but on more of a subconcious level. It's like when the folks who scare up that "generic" halloween music throw in lots of subsonics. It's there, you can feel it, but you can't quite hear it.

Creepiness works because it engages our imagination and our memories. It makes us do part of the work. Mere anger is easy to tune-out. Heck, raise your hand if you've ever successfully ignored an angry boss/parent/teacher.

(In the interest of encouraging better theater and, by extension better haunted houses, I strongly recommend The Empty Space by Peter Brook.)