Shadowlight Productions with some kick-ass puppetry
Posted on August 3, 2010 Posted by Mary Robinette Kowal 7 Comments
Yesterday I mentioned Shadowlight puppet theater out of San Fransisco. Well, here’s one of their behind-the-scenes videos which shows just some of the amazing things that they can make happen with shadow and light
What’s particularly cool is the way they use three light sources, which allows for instant scene changes as well as some other pretty nifty tricks. The lights are super-crisp and that allows them to away from the screen. Watch how they use scale to create a sense of perspective in a medium that is inherently two dimensional.
They’ve got other videos on their YouTube channel that are well worth checking out. And if you are in the Bay area when they are mounting a show, do not hesitate. Go see it.
I remember seeing a show on Balinese shadow theater, but this looks much cooler.
They do use elements of Balinese shadow theater but then go in totally different directions.
Neat. I was at a conference in Korea a few months ago, and they had this artist — whose name escapes me — who did this very cool show using nothing but sand laid down on an overhead projector to tell some Korean folk tale by rapidly altering scenes and making subtle changes in the sand to switch from one scene to another. I don’t know if that’s quite puppetry as such, but I had never seen it before and it was really impressive.
You mean like this, Pathetic Earthling? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo
Ok, I don’t know why, but I just find the whole shadow puppetry thing so very, very disturbing. :/ I can’t watch more that a few seconds of it, then I have to turn off the video. Am I the only one? (it could be me – I found the singing orange from Sesame Street totally freaky as a kid – couldn’t even keep me in the room!) The sand deal, though, that I find very cool.
Maybe some would like it better if it were puppets of space aliens. Or cats. With bacon.
I think it looks pretty cool, but I think I might find the process more interesting than the show (at least on the little video). It’s nifty to see what is going on behind the scenes with the lights and object placement and how the masks work so that one can see what one is doing while making shadows.
The character puppets are a little scary, but in a folklore kind of way. It feels like one of those dreams where you can’t quite make out the details. Does that make sense?
Thanks!
Yes, Trevor, thanks! It was a Korean gentleman performing it but while I’m pretty aware of various obscure art forms, I had never seen that before. Very cool indeed.