Puppet Kaos -

Wow, haven’t posted a new video for two months! This, of course has a lot to do with Christmas. Before Christmas, we had a lot of work to finish and we couldn’t really go on vacation until we finished them. So yeah, I was working hard, making money instead of putting together videos. And then I went home for Christmas, away from all my video making stuff. And then after I came back from Christmas I was just lazy… not so great of an excuse. Anyway, here is an episode that I wrote, recorded, and filmed before Christmas, but couldn’t finish editing in time. Now that I’ve wrapped it up, enjoy!

In this episode, Mac and Cheese and Bottle Monster answer questions about tofu and soy milk using shadow puppets. It was my first attempt at making and filming shadow puppetry! Did it turn out perfect? No. But it was fun to do nevertheless.

If you can’t see the embedded video,
Click here to watch it on YouTube.
Or download Quicktime movies here:
m4v format (24MB)
mov format (14MB)

The background music is Joy to the World arranged by Christopher Baker. It’s licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic. No, he didn’t write it but he did arrange and produce it. The original Joy to the World is by Isaac Watts and Lowell Mason. And of course, the lyrics is by moi.

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One of my greatest inspiration in my life is Taiwanese puppetry. I grew up watching puppet shows in Taiwan. They not only get me interested in puppetry, they also got me interested in voice acting, music, film making, story telling, performing arts in general and the whole enchilada. Besides my family, this is probably one of the things that’s influenced me the most in my life.

There are a few TV puppetry series going on in Taiwan, and the most popular is Pili (note: the site is in Chinese). It’s an on-going story for more than 1000 episodes. Of course, the story now has little to do with story that’s 200 episodes back, but it’s one continuous story of constant battle between good and evil. While a lot of TV puppetry in the United States is for children (like Sesame Street) or comedy (crank yankers), Taiwanese TV puppetry is serious drama for adults. If you really get into it, it’s actually quite epic.

The newest episodes just came out and they are called Pili Shen Zhou (The Turbulent Homeland). I’d like to share two videos to let you guys know what Taiwanese puppetry looks like today. (Of course, they don’t look like this when I was a kid.)

Here’s the opening theme:

And this would be the end credit song:

If you watch the two videos, you’ll see lots of stunts and effects. I am actually very into this. Sometimes I would rewind the video in the middle of it just to figure out how a shot is done. Of course, I could not figure out all of their tricks, but I’ve figured out a few and attempted to duplicate them in the first puppet video I made: Think, Outside the Box. To be honest, the script is just a 10-minute excuse to get some puppets fighting. I hope to make more of this type of video in the future. Puppets yapping, might be fun. Puppets fighting? Yeah, now that’s bad-ass.

Man, I can go on and on about Taiwanese puppets, but I guess I’ll stop here for now.

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I’ve just installed Comment luv. This WordPress plug-in will grab the title of the most recent post and provide a link to it if you leave a comment with your website/blog if it has an RSS feed. (If you have a blog, then it probably has an RSS feed.) Now, as far as I know, most of my readers aren’t bloggers but the ones that leave comments often are. But either way, I thought it’s a fun and nice plug-in to have on this site!

Now I can check that off my new year resolutions list (which I sort of have).

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2007 has come to an end. Now it’s 2008. This year, I will

1) Keep the website running and updated: They say that an average blogger burn out after 6 months, and if they can keep going after 6 months, it will keep going for quite a while. I started doing serious posting in July 2007 so I’m around the 6 month point. We’ll see what happens.
2) Make a new header for this site (or at least try) that has pictures of puppets
3) Install the Comment Luv plug-in that Bloggrrl recommended
4) Make more puppets (possibly learn how to use a sewing machine?)
5) Make some music for the videos instead of always use Creative Commons stuff

Mark my words.

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