Digital Puppetry: A peek behind the scenes

This is the usual set-up for a digital puppetry implementation.  We have two guys inside the booth.  The first is the main puppeteer and the second guy is the tech assistant.

Yes, a single puppeteer can handle the performance but in our experience you really need a second person to handle things that unexpectedly happen.  In a live performance, the puppeteer can’t just go out and fix a loose video cable.

You can also see the reason why we use manual mouth controls. i.e. We don’t use microphone control or even a face cam setup.  Those things look cool, but are not reliable in a real performance scenario.  The booth we’re using here is just a cloth booth for hiding the performers.  During our first attempts we tried to use a sound controlled puppet but there really was no practical way to get a sound free environment.  So in conclusion: the best way to control a puppet;s mouth is to still use the puppeteer’s hands.