1.) Entrances and Exits
2.) Height and Positioning
3.) Eye Contact
4.) Lip Sync
5.) Believable Movement
The first basic is entrances and exits. This is important because as with everything, you have to be able to enter and exit in some way. You typically do not just appear out of nowhere or just disappear into thin air. The same goes with puppetry. The best way to describe entering and exiting with puppets is to make it look like they are going up or down stairs. So, to enter, a puppet should go up 4 steps. To exit, the puppet should go down 4 steps.
The second basic is height and positioning. This is important because it determines how much of the puppet the audience is able to see. To decide if your puppet is the right height, you should pretend that your puppet has a bellybutton. The location at which your puppet's belly button would be at should be lined up with the stage. This allows the audience to see the appropriate amount of the puppet. It is important to keep your puppet at that height and to not fluctuate around. Let alone, just be at that height. If you aren't high enough, the audience won't be able to see an adequate amount of the puppet. If your puppet is too high, your arm will show. If your arm shows, it takes away from the realism of the puppet. Sure, your arm(s) may get tired holding your arm up for an entire song, but keeping the right height is still important. Just keep your arms steady :)
Eye contact is the third basic in puppetry. You want your puppet to look at the audience. Some puppets have the habit of staring at the ceiling, which causes the audience to wonder what in the world is on the ceiling. Some may even look to see if there is something there that they are supposed to be seeing. On the other hand, if your puppet is looking too far down, it looks a bit awkward. Maybe the puppet is shy and just doesn't want to make eye contact, but in most cases, it just looks off. So, use the tips of your fingertips to gauge where your puppet is looking at.
Fourth is lip sync. This is a very important part of puppetry. In order to make your puppeteering look professional, you should think about how your mouth moves when you talk. Your bottom jaw drops one time for each syllable. Therefore, it is the same for your puppet. You drop your thumb once for each syllable. Obviously, this is not the most natural thing to do an it takes a lot of practice and work. If you move your top fingers, it is called flipping your lid. This doesn't look realistic and it affects eye contact since the top of the puppet's head would be going up and down. The other thing that could happen is known as biting your words. This is when instead of opening your mouth on each syllable you are closing your mouth. It makes the lip sync much more choppy and again, not realistic. However, it isn't impossible to give your puppet good lip sync. Just practice, practice, and practice some more. After practicing awhile, hopefully you will have mastered being able to do accurate lip sync. If you can't master lip sync, don't worry too much about it. There are other parts of a puppet ministry that you could really excel in.
The last basic of puppetry discussed here is believable movement. You want the hand movements as well as any other movements to look like something that a human (or whatever type of puppet) would do. If the puppet stands too still, it can seem more boring. However, the opposite is also true. If the movements are too wild and hectic, it just makes it seem too crazy. Therefore, you want your puppet to move just the right amount.
This post does lack Biblical perspectives, but I still thought it would be important for me to share this information. I figured that if you guys were willing to read through my stories about my puppeteering experiences it might be beneficial for you to know what all goes into puppeteering. So, thanks for taking the time to read this! Can't wait to share more with you tomorrow :)
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To see the rest of the posts from this series please click here
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