Today I present a little treat. A time-lapse video of what happens behind the scenes as I make my shadow puppet videos.

UPDATE: A lot of people seem to be coming here via the video I posted on Youtube. This isn’t a tutorial on how to build a shadow puppet screen (if you read below or have seen the vid, it’s obvious the screen’s not finished yet). However, you can find an actual tutorial for a screen here.

See this weekend my parents came home with a little present; a brand new camera. It’s a video camera (I have a digital still camera, but it allows you to take videos as well) and I wanted to test it out. I had been in the middle of an attempt to make a new shadow puppet video, so instead of continuing on with my old camera, I thought I’d make use of the new one. Since I wasn’t sure of the quality, I thought I’d put both cameras side by side so that I wouldn’t have to redo the footage if the new camera sucked (and it does, but that’s another story). Then I had a brilliant :idea:.

My digital still camera also has settings to allow me to do time-lapse videos. So why not do a little time-lapse of me setting up my new shadow puppet screen as well? Skip to the bottom to see the video; you may want to read some of the explanation below, since the video is fast and you may not necessarily get what’s going on.

So you may remember ages ago me talking about building a mega-big shadow puppet screen. This isn’t it. Well, actually it is in a way. I had damaged my silk on my small wooden frame and discovered that repairing or replacing it is a bitch; what with the tacks holding the silk fairly well, once removed, the tacks do not stay hammered into the frame. Even on a small frame, a tiny scratch in the silk means replacing the whole thing, so it quickly becomes a pain to keep pristine. There goes the giant wooden frame for my mega-screen, because who wants to attempt to repair it constantly!

Plus, I’m having issues with the scale of things. The small screens are great for basic table-top shadow puppetry (man, I so want to invent a term for shadow puppetry. Nana Projects call themselves lanterneers, which works well for them since they work with giant lantern puppets. I love the idea of inventing language) but I need to be able to scale up on occasion. It would be great to have something that works both ways. Especially since I’ve been craving ‘Lior’-like scenes in my videos.

I started developing an idea, something I’ve actually used before. (I thought I had posted on it way back when this blog started, but alas, Google turns up nothing) It’s the idea behind the Torah… a scroll!

I went to Spotlight and picked up 3 metres worth of bisilk. Cut it in half lengthways (ie. 2 pieces of 3m wide X 0.5m long bisilk), one will be for my screen and the other is ’scrap’ for replacement purposes or if I want to make a second screen. Three metres wide is ideal for scale, making a long screen to play in, whilst half a metre is a perfect height to perform behind.

Luckily I had a 1m tall cardboard tube, left over from when I bought a bolt of fabric on sale ($3 for the whole bolt, a blue chiffon, with about 5 metres still on the bolt… pretty good price!), and cut the thing in half.

Taking my bisilk, I got some scrap black cotton fabric that I had lying around, cut it in half (about 30cm wide X 30cm tall per half), and sewed a piece to each end of the bisilk. Now I’ve got my ‘wings’ - backstage area - for my screen. Along each end of this black fabric, I placed a strip of stick-on velcro, and then attached the other half of the velcro to each cardboard tube.

… So as you can see in the time-lapse video below, the shadow puppet screen is rolled out, much like a Torah is; each end of the scroll of fabric is attached to a tube, allowing you to unfurl as much as you need. (The added bonus of the black fabric on either end is that when rolled up for storage, it protects the silk from damage. I hope to make a case for the scroll in the future for additional padding. Plus, this whole thing takes less than five minutes to set up!) In this case, I used probably 1.5m worth of the screen to do the video, but only because the table is that long. Had I my proper stand (yet to be made, but is diagramed at the right) to use, I could have set up the full width. On the other hand, had I a smaller table to work on, I could have also been suitably comfortable with unfurling a smaller amount of the bisilk. 

To explain further with the stand, the idea is that the tubes will slot onto PVC piping, and by moving each stand (a tripod-like apparatus) further apart, you can widen or shorten the length of silk used. This also keeps the whole thing taut - as I discovered recently, without a particular style of stand, the silk at the top gravitates downward, since there is no frame keeping the fabric in place. Luckily I tried upturn chair legs as a ’stand’ and it worked quite well, because the legs hold the tubes in place at the top where gravity and weight affect the silk the most. The actual stand will have a detachable play board at the back, as well as a detachable curtain at the bottom (to hide my legs!), and most likely some apparatus or extra piping for attaching my light.

Of course, the video below isn’t the final video for that particular shadow puppet… seeing as how I haven’t done it yet. I’m struggling to find a good storyline for this puppet, but I’m getting close to an idea - or a good idea anyway. So you’re getting a bit of a preview as to what I’m going to be doing for it; you’ll see a new lighting ‘effect’, the scenery, and yes, even the puppet’s blocking… some of it anyway. Oh yeah, and just in case you’re wondering: no I haven’t finished even hemming the screen yet!

Enjoy!