Video transcript
Shadow and bunraku paper puppetry - 03. Shadow puppet show set-up and demonstration

[intro sting]

ALICE OSBORNE: Here we are behind the scenes. We've set up our screen. We've got it hanging from the ceiling.

If you're going to film what you're doing, it's good to mark out the edges of the frame, of the camera frame. We've got a simple reading light that we've set up higher than the puppeteers. The puppeteers will be below the light.

Now we can start working on the puppetry. Lights out in the classroom. Thank you.

So first I'll show you each of the puppets that we made earlier. There's our flower and you'll see, the thing about shadow puppetry is that the closer it goes to the light, the bigger it gets, and the further away, the smaller.

A nice way to exit a puppet, a shadow puppet, is to spin it to the side and pull it out like that. We've got our little mouse. We've got our more complicated one that's got moving parts, and then, the professional ones that were bought online.

[muted roar]

[louder roars]

This guy. This is called incidental movement. This robot's joints are quite loose. Without doing anything, just wiggling him around, you can get all sorts of animation.

[whoosh]

Again, our simple ones, just a little. Here's the scenery that I showed you before. You can set that up on a stand if it doesn't have to move, so that nobody has to hold it.

OK, we've got some extra hands on deck now. We'll have a muck around and improvisation with some of the puppets that we've just seen.

Turn it to the side to disappear it. OK, let's swap so I can smell the flowers.

[loud sniffing]

MONSTER: Rarr!

ROBOT: Eep morp.

ALICE OSBORNE: Little bunny might hop along. If the bunny comes back, the weather might change--

[blowing]

--which might make the bunny want to go home. [laughs] If we take this closer in, you can create different effects by playing with the distance from the light. Yeah.

MAN: Quite simple, too.

WOMAN: Nice, very nice.

ALICE OSBORNE: Yeah. What does this one look like? Bunny got caught in a cage.

[laughter]

CAROLYN: Rabbit-proof fence.

ALICE OSBORNE: (laughing) Yeah.

WOMAN: So then you can do scenes. That's good.

ALICE OSBORNE: Thank you. Yeah.

WOMAN: There you go.

ALICE OSBORNE: Thank you.

[cellophane crackling]

All right, maybe we'll start with the mouse-- Oh, start with the flowers and then, the mouse can come in and then, the fire--

WOMAN: Fire comes in.

ALICE OSBORNE: --mouse wants to go the other way. Yeah.

MOUSE: [squeaking]

[laughter]

CAROLYN: Sorry.

ALICE OSBORNE: [laughs] OK, we're ready? What we're doing now is, my fellow puppeteers and I, we are literally just looking at the materials that we've got. We're seeing what would work together. We're creating tiny little scenes, really, from what we have.

We didn't really have any ideas. We're just improvising. 'Oh, let's put this with this or this with that.' Little spurts of stories are starting to take shape as well. Here's the next one we've come up with.

[cellophane crinkling]

That looked like a bushfire that a mouse was escaping from that killed some wildflowers. Let's do the swimmer.

[cellophane crinkling]

Trying to make a bit of--

That looks great, Carolyn. So there we have a few simple techniques. By playing with the distance between the light and the screen, you can create all sorts of different effects.