To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 00:36:43 GMT
Subject: [Puptcrit] Kukla & Ollie lipsync


This is definitely NOT the first time that Burr's stylized mouth movment has had fans and foes, and it will not be the last.

Personally, I am not bothered in the least that Ollie did not match the open mouth and the tighter mouth to match vowels and consonants. The primary purpose was so you knew WHEN Ollie was speaking. Kukla had to work harder, not having any animation in his mouth.

In our grammar school puppet class we always had the speaking marionette move a hand or two, while the others limited their movements; as a result it was clear to the audience which puppet was talking.

In the olden days when I was young, the audience was EXPECTED to use its imagination. And boy, did they ever! They thought they saw the mouths move, they saw the piano player hit the exact keys. Dear ones, they experienced the desired illusion, the artifice of our art. That was why they came.

Even for marionette operas, they did not always have moving mouths--such details got lost over the footlights. Plenty of over-the-hill ingenues depended on the same phenomenon of the footlights on the legitimate stage.

In Los Angeles, Bob Baker was working in the round, and audiences had closer contact with the puppets, so there were more animated eyes, eyebrows and mouths.
It was effective with Birthday show audiences in Beverly Hills homes.
Before that, some Vodvil marionettes had moving mouths, but not all. Some also had stretching necks (as did specialized hand puppets in Punch shows)

TV and film depends on closeups, so animation is more important there, but moving mouths and eyes have been around a long time in European and American puppets, and Chinese hand puppets. It depended on what was NEEDED for the desired effect.

For my friends who had problems with Ollie's mouth sync, they were missing the point, but I love them anyway. Most who complained, also worked marionettes with mouth/eye/eyebrow animation so that element of puppetry was more important to them than to the average audience. Besides, Burr Tillstrom was among the earliest TV pioneers using puppets which appeared on DINKY screens, in black & white which could look pretty fuzzy. Certainly not high definition! And Burr's work grew out of the tradition of parlor entertainment or homegrown vodvil.

HOW MANY on puptcrit first performed in their own living rooms or grade school auditoriums or in classrooms?

When KTLA Los Angeles TV first went on the air (our first regular station), they did a special promotion in the many display windows on Colorado Blvd, Pasadena at Nash's Dept Store. Full-page ads invited anyone to come stand in front of their sidewalk camera and see their image on a bevy of TV sets. After school I went up before the 5pm ending, with my Three Bears hand puppets with fabric-covered tennis ball heads. The camera-man had gotten bored with the people, and for the last 15 minutes the Bears had their 15minutes of fame on TV screens in the heart of Pasadena. That was pretty exciting to see how the puppets looked to an audience, cuz you don't get that information without a monitor.

In early TV, the monitor was necessary right from the start. It enabled the puppeteer to do some self-direction, to gage "eye-contact", to select the angle of the puppet's pose for best legibility onscreen. Before that, a proper puppet show needed a director out front of the proscenium. In rehearsals, mirrors were used to practice some moves, but the invention of a TV screen was a giant improvement. FINALLY the individual puppeteer could see exactly what the audience saw for the first time ever! It really WAS EXCITING!

At first, puppeteers had to get used the the fact they were not getting a mirror image onscreen: The puppet on your right hand appeared at the left side of the screen, meaning your brain had to adjust. Later they came up with reverse images capability on monitors. Burr being a pioneer had to work with simpler technology, and his simpler manipulation worked fine.

Everything we take for granted was NEW once, and recognizing that can add to the appreciation of our puppetry history.

ALAN COOK

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