shadow puppet design process

An opportunity came up that was a good reason to finally make a short video on how I develop shadow puppets. “Shadow Puppet Designer” is such an obscure title, it could use some explanation with visual descriptions.

I used some process footage I’d already shot during the making of Tom Lee’s stage show Sounding the Resonant Path. These small paper puppets were performed live during the show and projected large onto a backdrop behind physical three dimensional puppets.

I make shadow puppets for several different situations, with different productions processes. This one was one of the more complicated projects. Enjoy!

thanks for giving

Since last December we’ve been traveling nearly every week to lead and participate in workshops, to attend film festivals, to see great puppet theater at festivals, to make new work in development workshops, and perform new pieces in puppet slams. This year has been so remarkably full thanks to everyone who has hired us, hosted us, collaborated with us, encouraged us, and cheered us on.

Here’s a small thank you: 13 minutes of real-time puppet prototyping. No tutorial, no time-lapse, no explanations- just me fine tuning a 4 bar linkage mechanism started by Lin Boyle, a repeat participant in the Shadow Puppetry II workshops and a great multi-disciplinary visual and performing artist. I later adapted it for another squirrel puppet for a show at UConn Puppetry Arts, seen at the end.

I added Nutcraker music so you could think of it as a sort of Yule Log video. Or if you really want to get into making mechanized shadow puppets and don’t mind a lot of fussing and redoing, follow along.

awards

Misophonia just got accepted into its 13th competitive film festival. I didn’t know if we’d get into even one when I started this experiment. For me, having our odd little puppet film play on a big or small screen in front of any size audience is the best award possible. But it has also won a few jury awards, and while I think every film I’ve seen at the festivals should win, I’m also really grateful for this recognition.

Most recently Misophonia was Runner Up for Best Animated Short in the excellent 32nd Woods Hole Film Festival on Cape Cod amongst some truly spectacular films. It was also an incredibly supportive festival staff and community that we were so glad to get to know over 4 days.

In Maryland in July at the Puppeteers of America’s National Puppetry Festival, Misophonia was included in the Reel Puppetry Festival (a festival within a festival). There were 150 puppet films entered— I didn’t imagine even 150 puppet films had been made so this was great news. Of these, many were by my all time favorite puppet artists, some utterly astounding and beautiful work with puppets on film. And so it was mind boggling that we won Best Film of the festival. With the greatest humility we accepted this award.

And also surprising and rewarding was Best Sound Design from the Blackbird Film Festival in Cortland, New York. Sound was the aspect of filmmaking I had the least experience with, and given that I’d chosen to make a movie about sounds that fill me with panic and rage, this was not an easy part. It was already difficult to figure out how to weave and layer sounds on each other without making an auditory nightmare for a regular audience, much less people with misophonia. But the sound was the most important part of the film, and this award makes me think people got it, and that is just the best.

Thanks to all the film festivals who have hosted our film, and hosted us! It’s been a fantastic ride!

making misophonia / part 1: loomings

As Misophonia evolved in my head over six years, starting from the image of a particular woman (no spoilers) commuting home from work on a bus, somewhere along the way she became a library worker. This was probably around the time I began working at a library myself, though books and libraries have always been prominent in my life and regularly show up in my imagery.

Before I was a puppetry artist I worked in publishing, illustrating book covers and picture books. My mom is a designer of book interiors. Books as objects are important to us. Libraries have been my refuge since elementary school, and with the film being about silence (and the desire for it) the library stands for an oasis in the middle of Misophonia’s cacophony.

I started working a few nights a week at Cornell University’s Olin and Uris libraries soon after we moved to Ithaca, New York. I worked at the circulation desk under the Uris clock tower which stands high over the town from the top of the hill. You can see it from anywhere downtown, and often hear it. Its 21 dead-hung bells are still played live every day by the Cornell Chimesmasters, and sometimes you can climb the 161 steps to watch them. They ring every 15 minutes to mark the time, and usually two concerts a day are played. On any evening at 6pm you might hear Bach or Bohemian Rhapsody.

As I made a new home in Ithaca, this sound, quite booming in the library reading room beneath the tower, became a familiar part of my evenings of checking out books to students.

The film opens on the woman waiting at a bus stop, a building with LIBRARY written above the door is behind her across the plaza. This is very much Ho Plaza, where the Olin and Uris libraries stand across from each other.

I wanted to show that she was waiting for something, but clearly this character would not have a watch or cell phone to check the time with. This was a good excuse to put in a shot of the clock tower chiming a time announcement. I didn’t have my audio recorder yet when I worked on this part of the soundscape, so the bell sound is from a cathedral in London.

The bus is running a little late as the woman looks up from her book a couple times, checking if she can see it coming. The bus driver is hurrying to make up time in the shots in between.

Like all the buildings in Misophonia, I made the clock tower out of slightly transparent vintage papers I find at Ithaca ReUse. This way a little light from the light box underneath comes through, giving the buildings some glow. I brought the tree line up higher than in real life so I could get movement into the shot with the sway of the branches.

Also borrowed from the library is Moby Dick. Though I made a tiny version of the book seen at the beginning and end of the film, for the close up shots of the interior pages I decided to just use a real book. Olin Library has at least 16 copies of Moby Dick on the shelf. I went through all of them and found most well-read with many pen and pencil marks. I chose the one with the least graffiti and a classic title page.

Later on the bus ride, the woman opens to Chapter 1: Loomings. If you look quickly enough you can catch one line bracketed in pencil: …[it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off]— then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

The mark was in the book when I found it, but it couldn’t be more perfectly tuned to the mood this commuter would be in later on her bus ride, or to her escape at the end. It was a lucky library synchronicity.

The Providence Children’s Film Festival in February was the first time Evgeni and I saw Misophonia on a big screen in a theater. It was a big crowd of parents with fully engaged kids who gave commentary and audible reactions to all the films- the best way we could possibly have first experienced our first film festival film. There were outbursts of “Gross!” at the first slurp of the coffee drinker- which I couldn’t have been more pleased by.

What I didn’t expect, and should have, were the cries of distress when the library book is taken under the waves at the end of the film. “But the book will get wet!” lamented one girl behind us. “It’s probably a special water proof book,” her mother reasoned. As a library worker I’m surprised I didn’t worry about this myself- but then my magical thinking usually supersedes all else when it comes to puppetry.

I can assure everyone that Olin Library’s copy of Moby Dick PS2384 M6 1947 is perfectly fine. No library books were harmed in the making of this film.

Here’s a clip of the clock tower and book from Misophonia:

three years of shadows

December 2022 marks three years of making shadow and paper puppet films on the multiplane at The Stringpullers Puppet Company studio. For this anniversary I've edited together 22 minutes of trailers for nine of our projects. It will stream in our studio at Artist Alley on the weekend of December 2, 2022, and be available here for the month of December. Thanks to all the people who've helped, inspired us, and cheered us on along the way! It's been a wonderful ride so far, and there’s so much more to explore!

laurels

For the first time we are entering the strange and new (to us) world of film festivals with Misophonia, the 9 minute paper and shadow puppet film we made with Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams. It’s a funny thing to make a puppet movie, then wonder- who would want to see it? So far we’ve had some luck. It’s first official film festival was Silence is Golden in New Belgrade, Serbia, where it won a Special Mention. So far in 2023 it will be screened at the Providence Children’s Film Festival in Rhode Island, Snowtown Film Festival in northern NY, Puppet Festival Mississauga in Ontario, the Underexposed Film Festival in South Carolina, and the Blackbird Film Festival in central New York.

Robin & Wriggler

“…sometimes disguises are necessary, but never hide your heart.” -Coleman Barks

I spent a week at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Puppetry Conference in a workshop called Video Anarchy led by puppet film pros Tim Lagasse and Martin Robinson. Myself and four other puppetry artists cooperatively filmed and edited our movies in five full and fast paced days. I took advantage of using the O’Neill grounds for a backdrop and as a training ground to learn our new Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera.

I had the great honor of seeing my puppets performed by Martin and Tim, as well as veteran puppeteers Gavin Cummins and Leila Ghaznavi, with production support from Geoffrey Jones and Joe DeTullio. The music is from Dvorak's String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 51, B. 92 IV. Finale by the Stamitz Quartet.

This is a first draft, I’ll continue editing and color correcting this summer, and perhaps start a sequel.

Misophonia

Handmade Puppet Dreams selected myself and 7 other puppetry artists to develop short puppet films in 2021 with a special micro-commission deployed during the pandemic. In addition to financial support from the Green Feather Foundation, HPD producers Alex Griffin, Jessica Simon and executive producer Heather Henson offered us film workshops and critique sessions on our works in progress. In January 2022 I’ll be writing here about the inspiration and techniques we used and learned.

Our film, Misophonia, had a public screening on the Handmade Puppet Dreams facebook page on December 18, 2021 with the 7 other films:

Above All | Dir. Sifiso Mabena, 5min

Being and Becoming | Dir. Charlotte Lily Gaspard, 7min

Doe and Yeti | Dir. Dan Luce, 8min

Handwritten | Dir. Jaime Sunwoo, 9min

Judy: Union Maid | Dir. The Boxcutter Collective, 10min

Misophonia | Dir. Linda Wingerter, 9min

Ramkali | Dir. Adnan Hussain, 11min

Story Retriever | Dir. Chamindika Wanduragala, 6min

Quilt of Stars at LACMA

We just made our fourth shadow film, Quilt of Stars, this time for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

To complement LACMA’s month of cozy quilts in February, I used shadow puppets and paper collage to tell a story of a family passing down the art of sewing through a quilt of clothing scraps, as a way of connecting and remembering. It’s my longest film yet at 13 minutes and I got lots of help, with original music by Travis Knapp accompanied by Annie Sumi, and production support from the tech wiz’s in the family, my mom Judy Wingerter, and my husband Evgeni. Lots of photos of the process are on my Instagram @pollysonic.

We also had financial support from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County’s Specific Opportunity Stipend.

There is at least one family quilt in my own family, and we all sew. But the teaching of quilting is a stand-in for the teaching of puppetry that passed from my grandfather to me. And so the film is dedicated to him, David A. Bogdan.

Quilt of Stars debuts on LACMA’s youTube channel on Sunday, February 14 at 12:30 PT / 3:30 ET as part of their Andell Family Sunday series. Find it through this link. More to come on a zoom artist talk right after the viewing.

Some stills from the film and a short trailer below.