Puppet Kaos -

Time to wrap up on these shadow puppets related posts!

In Episode 14: Tofu, Mac and Cheese and Bottle Monster talk about how Soy Milk is made. There’s a dramatization of the whole history and I was originally going to do it using flash animations. Later I decide that it would take me too long. So what’s the alternative? I was going to do paper cutouts and then move them around as puppets, and then an idea hit me: why don’t I do shadow puppets instead? That was definitely an exciting idea for me.

I decide to do this in the style of Chinese shadow puppets. You need three things, essentially. You need a screen, some puppets, and a light source. I already have a lamp (duh) so now all I need is a screen and some puppets.

The Screen:

In Chinese shadow puppetry, the screen is traditionally a thinned layer of animal skin. I guess back then that was the best material they can find. Nowadays it’s probably some synthetic material. Either way, it needs to be semi-transparent. It should be transparent enough to show the shadows and opaque enough so the sticks, rods, and puppeteers controlling the puppets are not showing. Originally I was considering using tracing paper but I couldn’t find any in my local pharmacy. I just decided to go with a piece of paper towel. That’s probably the best choice at my place that’s the right degree of transparency.

Instead of a fancy stage, I was just going to make some kind of frame out of cardboard. After all, this is going to be on video, not in front of a crowd. And then I realized that I should just tape that paper towel between two lamps (apparently I have quite a few lamps in my room due to all the filming I do). Shine a light (or two) behind it and that’s our screen. So, was paper towel a good choice? Yes and no. It was the right degree of transparency I want. It was the right size. It was easy to obtain, and it even has an interesting texture to it. But there is a problem: The puppets tend to get stuck in it. In that case, maybe other kind of paper that offers a smooth surface would’ve been a better choice. The puppets probably would’ve moved a little more if I wasn’t having trouble unsticking them, particularly with the shot in which an arrow or spear was flying across the scene.

I didn’t really try this out, but I think tracing paper would’ve been a much better choice. If that was too transparent, you can always layer it with a piece of paper towel. Maybe printing paper would work, too, but I didn’t try.

The Puppets:

Again, traditionally they are made of leather due to the lack of other durable materials. Since I don’t have leather and I’m not about to go buy any, I use what I use all the time: index cards. I seriously use index cards for everything. I use them to write to-do lists that I carry around in my pocket. I use them to write down directions when I go somewhere. I use them for puppets’ eyes. And then now I am using them to make shadow puppets.

First you want to draw your design on the index card. I use a permanent marker. Now you want your design to be connected and in one piece. Look at this following picture. The face on the left has all the parts connected so it’s one piece. The one on the right is not a good design, because once you cut out all the white parts, the eyes and mouth will fall out.

And a blank face is just not flattering in any way.

Once you have the design, carefully cut out all the white parts with an Xacto knife. I bought mine at a local pharmacy.

Careful not to cut yourself. And if you don’t want to damage your table, put some newspapers in between the index card and the table. (That’s a well-known trick to Taiwanese students who had crafts classes in elementary school. I don’t know if American kids do this since we seem to be more scared of kids cutting themselves or others in class over here.)

And then you want to attach the paper cut out to a stick/rod. I use bamboo skewers… same thing I used for arm rods for the other puppets. In this picture, the paper fastener go through a hole on the paper cut-out and then I tape the paper fastener to the bamboo skewer. Later I decided that these paper fasteners look a little too big, and the purpose for using them is to make the puppets more flexible for motions, but that was kinda lost when they are stuck in the paper towel. I started to leave small tabs on top of the cut-outs so I can just fold that little tab over and tape it to the bamboo skewer. Normally I would probably use a glue gun but someone borrowed it at that moment.

So that’s it. Put the lights behind the screen and then put the puppets in between. Now let the show start!

Related posts:
Episode 14: Tofu
Shadow Puppets: The Best Anti-depressant
Chinese Shadow Puppets

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Though I’m more influenced by Taiwanese puppetry than Chinese puppetry, the shadow puppets thing I did was mostly inspired by one type of Chinese puppetry called Pi Ying Xi (皮影戲). It literally translates to “leather shadow drama”. The puppets are often made of leather, since paper is not as durable and plastic wasn’t available back then. This is a video of what it looks like.

Note that they used colors. Some puppet theatre choose not to use colors and just do it in black and white. They have different feels to them.

This next footage is how the puppets are actually performed behind the scenes… literally.

Next up… how I made my own shadow puppet show in Episode 14 - Tofu. (No, I didn’t use leather.)

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I was depressed, and shadow puppets brought me out of it.

Okay, okay, I was exaggerating. :-p

The recent episode has a shadow puppet segment and that part was filmed in December. Sometime in December I was feeing quite lethargic for some reason. I still go to work (and work hard cuz there was a lot to be done in that month). I still went hang out with friends; for example, we went to a friend’s concert and a friend’s house to play poker and so on. But for some reason, I just feel like I’m not quite interested in or care about anything, and I feel really low in energy. I just felt apathetic about things, and again, had no motivation and energy to do things… until one night, when I was in bed trying to sleep, an idea hit me:

I am going to make shadow puppets and that would be so awesome!

I was so excited about the idea that I got out of bed to look for my knife (to make shadow puppets, not to kill anyone), but couldn’t find it. Bummer, I guess I’d had to wait till the next day. Despite that, all the energy came back to me instantly. Funny how such a silly idea can do to me!

Anyway, that was sort of a story behind the shadow puppets thing. It was a fun thing to do. I’ll talk about how I made those things soon. (It’s actually quite simple.)

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Merry Christmas, everybody!

Ah, I love Christmas. I like Christmas music. They make me feel happy. I like Christmas decorations. They are festive. I like Christmas specials - mostly the classics like the Charlie Brown one, Rudolph, Frosty and all that old stuff. It’s nice to see all these whimsical things.

I’ve been home with family, and away from my video making equipments. I had a few things written and some voice recorded, but I didn’t have enough time to actually throw together a Christmas video. Maybe I’ll finish it up in January but that’s kind of lame. Or maybe I can save it for next year? We’ll see what happens.

For now, here’s a little video I made last year titled “All I Want for Christmas is U”.

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Some scripts call for things that happen at night. Sometimes I film them in the dark, and sometimes I don’t film them in the dark, but instead make the images darker in editing. So what’s better? Let’s check out my little experiments.

In Episode 12 - Daylight Saving, I experimented with filming in the dark for the power outage scene in the beginning. This is the outcome.

And in Obscure Facts about UCLA You Didn’t Know, we filmed the tunnel scene which takes place at night, but we filmed it in broad day light because we were there in the morning. So I had to take a bright and light picture and make it dark in editing. This is the result.

Now, which one is better? I’d say they each has their own pros and cons.

Pros for filming in the dark
In the first picture, the darkness is authentic because it was indeed filmed in the dark. When we are in the dark, we don’t see colors as well as we do in daylight. This is because we have two kinds of photoreceptors in our eyes, rods and cones. Cones are the ones in charge of gathering color information but cones don’t work well in darkness. Rods are the ones that work better in low light situations but they don’t gather color information. So in the dark, we see shapes and movements, but not so much colors. When this translates to video, it means you’d want to get a dark picture without so much color information. What the camera captured was similar to what our eyes saw in this case.

Pros for filming in the light
In the second picture, this image is done by taking a video in broad daylight and then digitally decreasing the brightness level in a video editor. Since it’s not filmed in the dark, there are more richness in the colors. Now, the richness in colors is good for a better contrast of the foreground characters and the background. This is good if you want to see more clearly what the characters are doing, and it makes the foreground characters stand out more. Sometimes, having some light in the foreground can be used as a trick to emphasize how dark the background (and hence the overall picture) is. This shot below is also filmed in daylight but darkened in the editor. You can see a pretty cool contrast between the foreground and background.

Cons for filming in the dark
If you watch the Daylight Saving video that the first picture is from, you might have noticed that Bottle Monster seems to come in and out of focus a lot. This is because I was filming in the dark and I manually dialed the exposure setting on the camera all the way down to get an even darker picture. This gave the camera’s auto focus mechanism a hard time to focus on Bottle Monster, because his color is similar to the dark background. This doesn’t happen to Mac and Cheese as much because he is yellow and bounces off more light. This problem can probably be solved by using the manual focus setting on the camera, but really, when you are filming in the dark, you simply don’t have as much control over the image because the camera has a harder time sensing lights, and you have a harder time looking at the camera’s LCD screen for what’s being filmed as well.

Cons for filming in the light
Like I mentioned earlier, it’s good for contrast between the foreground and background. However, if you don’t want that much contrast and color, and instead just want everything dark, then filming in the light isn’t a good idea. Also, any shots that’s manipulated in the video editor might come out having an artificial feel. It might not look as natural as a shot that’s actually filmed in the dark.

So which one would be a better choice?
This probably depends on what kind of shot we want, but in general, I’m not going to go for either extremes. In the future, I’m going to film something in dimmed lights where the brightness level is higher than that dark picture and lower than the daylight. This will give me a more natural feel to the final product while also giving me some control in terms of brightness and contrast with colors. Since that’s probably enough lights for the camera’s auto focus mechanism, I’m probably not going to use the manual focus. I’m probably not going to be adjusting the exposure either, but instead I’ll adjust the light level as best as I can. Filming in the dark can certainly be tricky, but the ones done well are certainly interesting to look at.

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I attempted a lil bit of the silent movie stuff in Episode 10 - Silent Sneeze. At first I thought, it would be less work, because my script only needs to be about half of the usual length since time is divided between video footage and captions, and also that I don’t really need to do any kind of lip sync. But, as it turned out, it was actually a lot of work that I didn’t think about, or did think about but didn’t think it’d take that much work.

At first, I thought I’d just cut it first, and then I’d adjust the length of video footages and captions to fit the music I picked. After going through some music, I decided on one and then started putting captions in the editors to time things. That is when I decided that that the up and downs of the music should go along with the plot line. This means, although I am not going to change the plot, I’m going to shift things around a lil bit to get the timing right.

And that took a lot more work.

There was a pause in the music. I tried to match this up with the “15 minutes later” part. There was also this part in the music that has a lil bit of a goofy feel to it, so I matched it up with Bobby and Moostifer’s funky song. And then towards the end of music, it starts to build and build before it resolves. I decided that I want this part to coincide with the problem solving process… how they figured out what cause a sneeze and how they had the revelation that Bottle Monster couldn’t have sneezed without a nose. It was more tedious work but I’m glad that I made that effort.

I normally cut together the video before I started adding captions, but in this video, I put in the captions first. This is so I can time them against the music. And when I’m done figuring out where and how fast each caption goes, I started designing the shots. I thought it would just be like an usual episode of Puppet Kaos except now the line isn’t shown until after the motion of talking is shown, but I noticed that I needed to put more thoughts into it. Because the lines aren’t heard immediately when the puppets’ mouths are moving, I need to design each shot more carefully. They need to have motions that’s more distinct. Normally, you’d want continuous smooth motions and transitions, but in this case, you want one distinct motion after another, since they are already broken up by captions in between. For example, one shot should just focus on Bobby and Moostifer singing, one shot should focus on Mac and Cheese typing on the computer, and another shot should focus on Bottle Monster drinking the potion. They all need to be really distinct.

Actually, distinct motions are still important with videos that’s not silent. They are just less chopped up into segments. Hm, maybe it would be a good idea to watch a bunch of good silent films. We can certainly benefit from watching how people try to convey things without the lines being heard immediately. And yes, I do like exaggerated motions. And silent films have a lot of them.

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Here’s a summary of what inspired each episode. It can get quite long so I’m breaking them into two posts. The first part is here.

Episode 6: Dance, Dance, Dance
What inspired this episode? Well, I thought it would be fun to have the puppets dancing. It was nice that I didn’t have to write lines, but it’s also very time-consuming to edit. But it was entertaining to watch nevertheless.

Episode 7: Big Dipper
This was inspired by this little tutorial on how to identify stars and constellations in the night sky. It was fun for me, and I thought, what if I do an episode about the night sky? After some brainstorming, I decided that it’d be fun to bring back Bottle Monster’s mom, Mr. Robottle and iBottle. It was tedious to dig out all footages but for me, the callback is worth it.

Obscure UCLA Facts You Didn’t Know
When Rick email me and told me that he liked my videos, I was pretty happy because I’ve always been a fan of his performances and humor. So I started to drag him into brainstorming with me, hehe. And this was around the time that school was about to start so we thought it’d be interesting to do a video on it. This was the episode that’s not really written. We just improvise things on the spot because improvising is actually very natural to us.

Episode 8: Nobody’s Watching
When I was meeting with Rick we came up with a few ideas for upcoming episodes and some of them don’t work that well with the question-and-answer format. I knew at some point, we’d be changing it up a little bit, so this episode is sort of setting that up. And this is another one of those “if you don’t know what to write, then write about not knowing what to write” cases. This is also kind of similar to the first episode where I just make puppets do what I do as a writer with the brainstorming… except that they have the luxury of dramatizations and I can only write on a piece of paper. Also I thought it would be fun to do one of those previews because it’s fall and every channel is doing it for the new season. And it would be fun to do one of those trailers with that deep announcer voice.

Episode 9: WordCraft
This post is inspired by the word “lexicon”. I have no idea why I was talking about that word at work with my co-workers, but I was saying that lexicon is a convention for Lexus cars. It was quite a stretch, but then I thought, hey, maybe I can come up with more words like these. So I came up with a bunch. This was also the first episode with materials written by Rick.

Episode 10: Silent Sneeze
I thought it would be fun to do a silent episode. It would be awesome because it’s a new genre to try and I like trying out new things. Also, I figured that I wouldn’t need to write that many lines so I can have the same length episode while not writing that many lines. It turned out to be a lot of work though, because you have to time the lines and actions to the music, and the motions have to be designed better since there’s no sound involved and there’s a delay in when the captions actually show what they are saying. It’s a very good learning experience though. I had to give Bottle Monster an excuse to not be able to sneeze. First I decided that he cheered for his team too hard so he lost his voice (this was around the time for Major League Baseball postseasons), but later I thought, sneezing would be a more interesting excuse and I can involve the fact that Bottle Monster doesn’t have a nose. It was partially inspired by the “Where is my Hairbrush” song from Vegetales that someone once sent me.

Edit: You know, I wrote this post last night and didn’t bother to read it over until today. What I realized is that I give “would be fun” as the reason for writing the story for most (if not all) of the episodes. I guess that’s what it is. It has to be a fun idea for you. That’s how you write, especially with comedy.

Related post:
What inspired me to write each episode (6-10)
Episode 6: Dance, Dance, Dance
Episode 7: Big Dipper
Obscure UCLA Facts You Didn’t Know
Episode 8: Nobody’s Watching
Episode 9: WordCraft
Episode 10: Silent Sneeze

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We’ve reached episode 10! Ten is not that big of a number, but hey, it’s a milestone. Some of you (or maybe most of you) have wondered how I come up with these ideas for the episodes… well, maybe you can get some clues from this post but in general, a good thing to keep in mind, is: If somebody said “dude, it’d be so funny if so and so happens” or you have an idea that goes “hm, I wonder what it would be like if … so on so forth”, don’t just let it slip away. If you think about it some more, it just might develop into a story!

Here’s a summary of what inspired each episode. It can get quite long so I’m breaking them into two posts.

Episode 1: Making a Podcast
Well, this episode is really a set-up for the rest of the episodes. The purpose was to introduce the characters: Mac and Cheese who is the one that’s interested in putting together a podcast, and Bottle Monster who is the one that comes up with different ideas. Mac and Cheese is the sane guy that’s in charge of running the show smoothly, sort of a homage to how Kermit is the one holding the Muppets together, although it was not intentional. Bottle Monster is the whimsical one that has crazy ideas. To a degree, they are both my alter egos. This episode also sets up the format for the subsequent episodes, which is them answering viewer’s questions.

Episode 2: iBottle
This is written when iPhone came out and created buzz everywhere. Now, Bottle Monster’s original character design was that he solves every problem involving bottles somehow, so that was written into the story here. Today’s technology seem to have a tendency to want to integrate everything into a small device, so I was thinking, what if you have this really simple piece of item that can be used for many purposes too? And so, iBottle was born.

Episode 3: Crazy Names
This is the first episode that’s based on a question sent in by a real viewer. Sometimes I use real letters and sometimes I just make them up… whichever is easier to make the episode entertaining. I know I’d talk about why they are named so at some point, and this was a good opportunity. Bottle Monster’s childhood story was inspired by a Japanese folklore Momotaro-san which involves an old couple that picked up a giant peach from the river, cut it open and found a baby inside, and raised the kid who eventually became a hero in Japan. In fact, the Momotaro-san song was actually one of the very first song that I learned how to sing. My grandma’s generation lived through a period where Taiwan was governed by Japan so she taught me some Japanese songs when I was little, but this was the only song I remembered. I can still sing that song today. Ah, she was such a loving person.

Episode 4: Mr. Robottle
I drink a lot of water when I am at work. It not only keeps my hydrated, but also helps me think, so there are often quite a few empty bottles on my desk. One day I thought, hey, why don’t I build a robot out of the bottles? So I did. And then a few weeks later I thought, hey, I could use this guy in one of my episodes! And so it happened.

Episode 5: Amazing Grass
Bottle Monster, Bobby and Moostifer were originally built for the show The Elephant Room put on by LCC Theatre Company. I wrote a sketch called “Accent Elimination for Animals” and part of what Bobby Moostifer did in the sketch was singing to the tune of “Amazing Grace”. The lyrics go as follows: Amazing Grass, how sweet the lawn. It’s the food I like to chew…” When Myha wrote in a letter about losing weight, I thought it would be the perfect chance to introduce the two characters that like to talk about eating grass all the time. The original design was that they are the experts for everything that Mac and Cheese and Bottle Monster go to when they don’t know something, though that device is really not used that often. When you are writing episodes week after week, it’s easy to deviate from your original design, but hey, that’s also part of the fun!

Related posts:
What inspired me to write each episode (6-10)
Episode 1: Making a Podcast
Episode 2: iBottle
Episode 3: Crazy Names
Episode 4: Mr. Robottle
Episode 5: Amazing Grass

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Spoiler about the upcoming episode ahead.

I was writing a script about sneezing (and yes, that’s the next episode of Puppet Kaos), so I started reading about it. Of course, the first stop is Wikipedia. I read about it a little bit and then started reading other sites about sneezing too. And guess what, after reading for a lil bit, I let out a sneeze. Oh wow, I didn’t know you can do that!

The next morning, I was still sneezing. I know many actors can cry on cue, but hm, I wonder if anyone can actually sneeze on cue. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was my mind. But start sneezing when I read about sneezing is just an interesting experience.

So, yeah, check back soon for the upcoming episode about sneezing!

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1) Brainstorm

If you have done anything creative, like writing a story, making a video, putting on a play, etc., you know that everything starts with an idea. Where did I get my ideas? It depends. I might be watching TV or just looking at something in the room and an idea just pops into my head. Sometimes I am having a conversation with someone, and I just randomly have an idea. A good way to come up with an idea is to ask “what if…?” A lot of times in a conversation someone would say “Haha, what if so and so happens, that would be fun.” Sometimes that just can be a good idea for a story! Don’t just let those slip by. Remember them and think of ways to develop them, if you think the idea is interesting enough and worth your time. Also, it helps a lot to brainstorm with a friend and bounce off ideas of each other. (Thanks, Rick!) Save them up because you might have tons of ideas one week but no ideas at all the next.

2) Writing the script

I like to just write on pieces of blank paper, instead of typing it up on my computer. One reason is that I don’t have a printer, but the primary reason is that ideas seem to flow better when I am using pen and paper. I’m guessing that it’s because I type faster than I write using a pen. So when I’m using a pen, I have more time to develop lines in my mind, rather than finishing a sentence fast and then stare at a (relatively) blank screen thinking, “alright, what next?” After I write the script, I would read it over again a few times and make changes to it. I will also time myself to get an idea of how long this is going to be and to find if there are parts that drag on too much.

3) Filming

It’s a good idea to storyboard first, that is, you design what each shot would look like and draw them out on paper. However, I usually don’t have that many different camera angles so I just put numbers or symbols next to the beginning of the lines to tell myself what kind of shot that is. This system works well, because so far it’s sort of an one-man-show and I don’t have that much to communicate with myself. And then with filming, it’s usually done with a tripod with the LCD panel of the camera turned my way so I can watch what I’m performing. I should probably get some kind of TV screen later because it’s not always easy to see the screen, especially if I’m performing behind a piece of prop or say, under a table. (That was a real problem when I filmed Episode 8 - Nobody’s Watching.) I usually do three takes of every line and pick the best take but that’s just a habit. It really wasn’t that necessary because the shots tend to come out pretty similar anyway.

4) Editing

After I film the footages, I captured them onto my computer from the camcorder. I use Adobe Premiere Pro for editing. I first put all the videos in order because I tend to film out of sequence to minimize set-up time for camera and props. I would also do compositions as necessary (such as green screen shots and split screen effects). Finally I look for music and graphics that I might want to use. I often use Creative Commons stuff because they are free, and you don’t need to ask for permissions to use them (the idea is that the license was already there along with the music or graphics). However, you do have to follow the rules indicated in the license, normally non-commercial, attribution and share-alike. So far I’ve been using mostly Kevin MacLeod’s music and pictures on Flickr albums that’s under Creative Commons licenses. After all the editing is done, I render the video out. This would be a huge DV file (.avi) and I will then use Quicktime Pro to compress the video down to a smaller size.

5) Posting

I usually post to Revver first because I am having problems converting to .mov files and need to use their service instead. After that, I upload to Youtube and then write a post here about it, including who’s involved in the production and a few random thoughts I have making the video.

So, that’s how I do it. If you have any thoughts, do leave me a comment. If you are making a podcast too, I’d love to see it and possibly learn how you do it!

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