Video transcript
Shadow and bunraku paper puppetry - 02. Ideas for shadow puppet show special effects

ALICE OSBORNE: Here are some other examples of shadow puppets. These were purchased online. So somebody, a professional puppet maker, has made them and sends them out. Slightly more complicated with the mechanism for moving, but you can get a sense of the cut outs. You can add texture by cutting out extra pieces. He's a robot. His joints are all quite loose so he wobbles around quite nicely. Here, again, the simplest one you can make, just a cut out shape on a stick with no moving parts. And here is some scenery from the same package. So you could actually fix that to the bottom of your puppet screen and then move some of the puppets around and, again, it's just a cut out shape.

A good way to think about shadow puppetry for making different visual effects is anything that the light can pass through. So I've got some fabric here that the light shines through. But with things like this you can create atmosphere or you could create techniques for weather, like wind or rain. Here's the raffia that I used for the puppet's hair, and that can create a nice shadow. Anything with cut out parts like doilies, you could use that as scenery. Feathers. And different textured material. So this is really lovely. This creates a nice landscape because it's got these little fluffy bits, which could look like a landscape behind the screen.

So you can experiment with all these sorts of stuff, all sorts of things. So if you gather materials, go to the costume department or the craft department, and gather all sorts of materials and then see what the students come up with just by experimenting behind the screen with what it can do with the light. All these things are great for adding extra layers to your puppetry performance, like weather or atmosphere or mood And landscape as well. I also have this cellophane, which can become a puppet itself. For example, obviously, you could use this as a fire behind the screen.