Category Archives: Music/Sound effects

Scenery taking shape and a visit to the Sound & Vision gallery at the National Science and Media Museum

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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  • Projected image on our wall of Goldilocks puppet with hand-painted coloured back-drop
  • Projection on our wall of the 3 bears cottage from hand-painted transparency
  • Both painted transparencies encased in laminating plastic with coloured “shadow” behind.

I wanted a coloured background for the scenery on “Goldilocks…” and potentially some of the other stories in our new show (“Fairytales of Wit, Wisdom & Witchcraft“) and wanted to avoid using felt pens ( as I hadn’t been happy with the way they looked on the scenery for our Alice in Wonderland show previously).

I also didn’t want to go down the Ai/digital artwork printed out onto transparencies route. We had used period artwork which was out of copyright for our “Seven Songs of Love” show but this show would not be suitable for artwork of that type.

I thought I’d like to try glass paints, but was unsure if that would work and might have the problem of puppets sticking to it.

Then, I had a brainwave that I could try laminating the painted transparency so that the paint was encased and would be protected and not stick to the puppets.

The photos above show what I’ve got so far. I tried them out on the overhead projector and found that they look fine as they are (I wasn’t sure if I’d need to go in with a black pen to do outlines but they seem fine as is).

I was reminded of the hand painted magic lantern slides from the National Science and Media museum in Bradford.  They, and some Indonesian shadow puppets and silhouette cutouts by Lotte Reiniger, are now on public display in the new “Sound & Vision” gallery. You can access my previous posts about Lotte Reiniger here: (Animation at National Media Museum, Bradford and Nice but Naughty?).

The magic lantern pre-dates photography and cinema though photography was used to produce lantern slides (which were then hand coloured later on). CLICK HERE for the Wikipedia entry and HERE for info on the museum collection.

While I was doing my shadow puppet workshop and performances for the museum’s family day it was brought to my attention that there would be a screening of Lotte Reiniger’s masterpiece “The Adventures of Prince Ahmed” and accompanying workshops on Saturday 25th July.

This is the oldest surviving full length animated feature film (pre-dating Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” by 11 years) with a new original score by Chris Davies.

Chris was originally commissioned by the museum to create the score (which is part recorded and partly performed live) for the Bradford animation festival in 2014.  You can find out more by clicking HERE. Below is a video extract from this first performance:

So, I (obviously), made a point of going along and also had time to go round the Sound and Vision gallery in the morning with my kids.

For those who haven’t already seen it, below is a little tour of the new gallery by Al, from “Al & Kai’s Faboo News”:

The “Faboo News” patreon page has had an overhaul and you can now access lots of fun activities/resources for FREE, why not take a look by clicking HERE

“The Snow Queen” at Upfront Puppet Theatre

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Last year as a Christmas treat we took ourselves off to Upfront Puppet Theatre again for their show “The Snow Queen”.

I had seen some of the puppets from this on display in a cabinet on a previous visit, (CLICK HERE for the previous post) but had not actually seen the show before.

My kids are both big fans of Disney’s “Frozen” films and I thought it would be interesting for them to see this puppet play which was closer to the original “Snow Queen” story. I had some very fond memories of film and TV adaptations of this story from my childhood so having seen John’s adaptation of Pinocchio (a very faithful adaptation of the original Pinocchio story), I was interested to see what he would do with this traditional tale.

I was extremely impressed with this show. The music was hugely atmospheric (particularly the jarring, uncanny music for the appearances of the Snow Queen) and helped to make the performance very exciting and immersive.

A screen at the front of the stage was used with front projections of snow and trees etc. at various points in the show. This was particularly effective for the sequence where Gerda was travelling in a carriage and we could see the carriage through the screen but an illusion of movement was created by the moving projections as well.

I was also impressed with the way the mechanism for showing the boat travelling on the river which worked very nicely with no technical hitches to distract from the story telling.

As always the show made excellent use of the turntable mechanism on the stage for scene changes and artful and dramatic use of the good old smoke machine as well. John’s puppets and sets were very well made too with excellent use of textures (reflective eyes for the Snow Queen etc.)

The show used a combination of rod and string puppets (with rod puppets appearing from the pit at the front of the stage and marionettes for the main staging further back) and achieved various transitions by having multiple puppet versions of the characters, e.g. Gerda on foot and Gerda mounted on the deer. Others however, were achieved through sheer skill (Kai mounting the Snow Queen’s sleigh and flying away).

Unusually for one of Upfront’s shows the puppeteers were on view (dressed in black so as not to distract from the puppets). I say unusually as the current stage has a bridge where the puppeteers can perform out of sight, (though of course for their cabaret puppets from Stanelli’s Super Circus they do perform in view as well.

John explained afterwards that the reason for this is that it is one of their older productions from when they had a smaller theatre space in one of the barn buildings and the puppets sets etc. had shorter strings for this reason.

I wondered when I was watching it if the reason the production was so excellent and well polished in terms of the performance was because the shorter strings gave better control, but on reflection it must have been at least partially that is because they have performed it a lot more times than some of the newer productions that were, perhaps, still being perfected.

My two kids (age 3 and 5) were totally absorbed from beginning to end and Miranda, (as seems to be her habit when reaching the end of a live show that she has enjoyed) said that she wanted to watch it again as soon as we reached the end. Anthony also gave it high praise, though I sadly can’t remember his exact words.

To sum up, I would say that this show was very effective dramatically and technically and made for mesmerising, spectacular viewing. I would recommend anyone who hasn’t seen it before to do so the very next time it is being shown and indeed I would recommend a visit to any show or exhibition here as the visitor experience is excellent with lovely toilets (including baby change facilities) and fantastic food in the vegetarian cafe. A real treat.