Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:26:33 -0500
To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] First to use TV monitors


That's fascinating, I had no idea that Burr Tillstrom used monitors. Was
that a technical capability when he started? It's been 10 years since my
college course in the history of broadcast production systems, so I'm just
struggling to remember if they were even using floor monitors in the late
`40s (video tape hadn't even been invented yet and everything had to be
pulled "off the air").

It doesn't surprise me though. You'd think almost any puppeteer who worked
in a TV studio day after day would have grasped the potential of monitors.

One of the things that has always distinguished Conway and (especially)
Henson's early work from Tillstrom's in my mind is that in all of the
footage of Kukla, Fran & Ollie I've seen the puppets are mostly performed
within a conventional puppet theatre so really it's just a somewhat
conventional puppet show, filmed for TV. With Sam & Friends and (to a lesser
extent) the earlier series featuring Conway's Uncle Chichimus there was no
puppet stage and those shows were really the beginning of a new style of
puppetry that was specific to the medium of television.

- Andrew

--

The PuppetVision Blog
"The web's best source for puppet film and video goodness, delivered fresh
to your computer each day."
http://puppetvision.blogspot.com

Machin-X
"...where pixels meet puppets"
http://machin-x.blogspot.com
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