I would not be surprised if your first thought of this blog is that of a blog about Muppets. Well, you’re wrong if you did think that. Muppets may have been the most popular form of puppetry in mainstream media within the last few decades, but there are many different forms of puppetry in cinema.
I’m gonna start at the end and go back to the beginning. I didn’t realise when I came up with Oink! that I had been influenced by another film subconsciously. I recently got told it looked half similar to the animation sequence in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1, the sequence where Hermione tells the story of The Tale of the Three Brothers. The silhouetted look and the shades of lighting is a very unique look for the sequence in question. The director of the sequence was Ben Hibon, and he got the look at the sequence from Asian Shadow Plays and the works of Lotte Reiniger.
Lotte Reiniger is a German film director in the 1930’s who was made notable for her work with silhouette animation. A very different form of animation. She told stories using this method such as fables, fairy tales and other classic stories. She developed more than a dozen short films and all had a very similar and notable look. A quick Google Image search can help you understand her style and tone more clearly. The paper-like aesthetic and stubby approach to characters allowed for more expressive movements which visually made a story more compelling.
The movement of puppets has dated back to ancient times, where cut-outs and strings were easy to make and develop.
China was the main originator of the art form by telling stories about kings and dragons. People used to design costumes and reinact lost stories and popular myths in front of large crowds as a form of entertainment. The shadow puppetry aspect became about through children’s stories who were thought were too innocent to watch the more costumed and graphic plays. This preconception about children becoming more invested in this form of puppetry has evolved over the years. All you need to look at are performances such as Punch and Judy and children’s TV shows such as Basil Brush and Sooty and Sweep.
This brings us back to the Muppets. Puppetry became more known as a form of Children’s Entertainment over a long period of time, and in doing so became a more traditional use of telling stories in Kids films. The Muppets were designed as a way of introducing an interactive and educational way of telling stories to young children. Barney & Friends and Sesame Street further prove this point. Puppetry has always seemed to be a niche genre and is highly underrated.
I hope Oink! inspires others to make more films of its kind, but I do see a bright future for puppets on the big screen.
Watch Oink!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
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