Monday, August 25, 2014
Spooky handmade puppets bring this short horror film to life
The Verge: Puppets are just about the creepiest things around, and that's why a new short horror film called "The Mill at Calder's End" looks like it will be a real winner. Hollywood puppeteer and special effects artist Kevin McTurk (who's previously worked on films such as Batman Returns, Jurassic Park, and The Aviator) is leading the project, which was funded on Kickstarter last year. The film's called a "Victorian ghost story," and McTurk says the work is inspired by such literary giants as Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft.
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9 comments:
I love puppets and I think this style of live puppetry with minimal digital effects is amazing. Its a great combination of theatre and film coming together to create a unique work of art. The Kevin McTurk has done some incredible creature effects and this story looks extremely trilling. I can't wait for the finial product to become live and I can see how all the hard work paid off. Puppetry and handcrafted design is definitely loosing attention, while digital design taking over. Its nice to know that places like Jim Henson's creature shop, Spectral Motion, New Deal Studios, and Weta Workshop still exist and continue to produce amazing work.
I love how a traditional form of puppetry is meshing with newer technology to make short film. I feel like more audiences will be open to seeing this work of art since it is closer to works such as claymation movies. Also similar to claymation movies, I wonder how the set had to be manipulated for the puppeteers to fit with their puppets in this smaller scale world. I can understand how pieces of the set can separate so that the camera sees only what is in the shot but what about scenes where there are two puppets and six puppeteers? Although I enjoy what the article had to say about the work and the puppets, I wish it had elaborated more on the complications with the puppets, puppeteers, and the set.
These puppets are incredible. Aside from puppets just being generally dubbed as ‘just about the creepiest things around’, which is an unfair generalization to something really beautiful, these puppets are very beautifully crafted. These puppets probably serve as the button on the creepy in this movie because they were created to look and move as though they have actual real feelings, and then they actually do. Bunraku puppeteers spend insane amounts of time with their puppets, making sure they’ve given them a personality and a fluidity of movement that cannot be picked up automatically. It’s very easy to decide puppets are creepy but I definitely believe it’s an art form worth respecting if only for the hours dedicated in both the construction, like for these hand carved pieces, and in practice. While it’s great that there is something being done with puppets other than Sesame Street, maybe we need to change the vocabulary within our dialogue when commenting on these productions.
It is very exciting to me to see that work is still being done through traditional techniques even though we have so many alternative methods that could be used with the technology available to us today. I think that it's great that we have this technology available, but it's also important to keep handmade construction alive. The combination of old and new can result in really cool work. The puppets in this trailer remind me of the animatronic types of things you sometimes see in theme parks, but the puppeteering sounds really interesting. I think it would be so cool to see it done live so that we could actually watch the puppeteers working, but I do understand why they're edited out of the final video.
I applaud the concept behind this film. Trying to celebrate a film for its use of practical effects over CGI effects is a rare commodity. Far too often even more and more films replace practical effects with computer generated effects and sequences. A prime example is a film series known as The Protector, a martial arts film featruing Tony Ja who is an incredible martial artist skilled in Muy Thai and The Protector has some brilliant cinematography and choreography but all practical life actions sequences. The sequel how ever utilized a great number of computer generated effects and to speak bluntly was god awful. The best excuse that I have heard from various people in the film industry usually excuse the practice with the idea that for the cost and time line you can get greater and more fantastical scenes using CGI. Seeing as James Cameron's Avatar took a timeline exceeding ten years I find this hard to believe. I personally always appreciate a life action practical scene over computer generated. I don't need to make a theatrical release version of star wars episode 4 5 6 versus the "remastered" release now do I?
Hi Everyone
Kevin McTurk here. Thanks so much for your wonderful comments! Great to see that there is an interest in preserving bunraku puppetry and traditional in-camera effects!
While these puppets themselves are excellently crafted, I would like to applaud the puppet handlers. As I was watching the trailer, I found myself astounded by the way that these puppets moved. Obviously, they aren't going to move as smoothly as a real person, but they come pretty close. Gone are the days of robotic puppetry. It's equally as obvious that these handlers are just as talented as Mr. McTurk himself. Acting is difficult in and of itself, and acting for another person is even more so. I look forward to seeing this piece come to life (although, I hope not literally).
This looks beautifully done! I'm not a big horror person, but the features of the puppets are very well done and amazingly human for not being CGI or other forms of computer animation. Even the size of the puppets is really interesting. Puppets I've seen and heard of are either very small (under 1 foot) or very large (actual size). Id love to see how these puppets were operated and how the characters (both human and monster alike) were designed and constructed. While the puppets most certainly lack some human qualities about the way they move, they are still interesting to watch and interact with each other and their surroundings.
I think it's awesome how McTurk is trying to preserve traditional puppetry and is omitting special effects from these short films. While watching the trailer, I was really interested by the weirdly realistic look the puppets had when they were in certain lighting. In some scenes, the puppets were easily distinguishable as puppets, but in other clips they looked almost human. I am interested to see how McTurk deals with making the puppets mouths move, if that's part of the film at all. There must be problems that come with creating puppets and filming them in an engaging way, but I think the trailer does a nice job of showing the puppets in an a way where they do not look lifeless. I think the puppets will look a little less realistic if they have to speak and move their mouths, but I doubt that will take away from the film's dramatic look anyways. It's exciting to see such traditional art forms such as puppetry in new art pieces and I hope that eventually we can see artists such as McTurk working on mainstream films!
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