Category Archives: Arts Funding

“The Secret Keeper” – Work on the new shadow puppet series begins.

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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The Secret Keeper

The Secret Keeper – Show Logo

Tim Austin and I have got a lot of initial groundwork done for our new shadow puppet series.

We have come up with a name: “The Secret Keeper”.  This is a reference to the main character who has a library of books relating to “crime”.

We have worked out who the different groups of people will be in the world and what they are like.

We have come up with images for what most of the main characters will look like and ideas about a general look for some of the groups.

I have also come up with a design for a front facing shadow puppet face with moving facial features.

We will make close up head puppets of the main characters with different expressions and accessories etc, facing in different directions. We can then cut between these different puppets for dialogue scenes to create a filmed “multi-camera” look – a unique approach for shadow puppetry.

I have also set up a new Instagram account just for the show.  This will post pictures of the images I am using for inspiration amongst other things.  CLICK HERE for the Instagram account @5ecret_keeper. We will be launching a Facebook page and a twitter account too in the run up to production.

Our current aim is to prepare and shoot a “Pilot” episode as an example piece. This will demonstrate the potential of the series as we look for funding for the show.

Tim is in the process of story-boarding the plot of the series, setting out events and story-lines that will stretch out episode by episode. This is an extremely complicated process!

Dystopian Future/ Sci-Fi/Steam punk/Shadow Puppet Murder Mystery Series

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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I recently did a poll to find out what sort of content people would be most interested in if I was to start a subscription service on my blog.

The top two results were shadow puppet shows and “meet the puppet” videos.

The “meet the puppet” videos will be about puppets from my existing shows (how I made them, where the ideas came from etc).

The big news is that we’re going to be jumping in with both feet into the world of online shadow-puppet serials! (Is that a thing? If not,… It is now!!)

We plan to make a series of episodes with a continuing story and characters so people keep coming back for more.

After much discussion, we have decided to create a brand new story and characters using a script written by Rough Magic Theatre’s Tim Austin.  We did discuss adapting some of Tim’s existing material for a shadow puppetry series but needed to consider both what would be most popular as a setting and what is practical for myself and Tim to do in terms of voices/accents.  We considered a period setting in America initially, but this would involve a lot of research to get costumes and settings accurate to the time and place.

We are instead going to look at a murder mystery set in the future in a steampunk style.  Electricity and the internet will have gone and society will have fractured into lots of clans with different ideals, appearances and ways of life.  The central character who will be solving the mysteries will be a librarian, (knowledge from books becomes of key importance to all the different groups who are trying to rebuild society through rediscovering skills from the past.)

We will also be creating content on the making process for the series at the same time.  We will be attempting to make shadow puppetry that will be designed for the internet and a filmed medium rather than simply recording a live puppetry performance, so we will be experimenting with new techniques and ways of doing things. The show will be very different from our usual way of working/style of performance!

We are aiming for a long running serial with around 12 10-minute episodes.

So tell all your friends and watch this space,………..!