Tag Archives: National Media Museum

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

Nearly all puppets complete!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Nearly all the puppets are made for the show (just one tiny mouse and various props and backgrounds to go). The ones in the pictures here are from Chicken Licken and The Enormous Turnip stories. Please see the previous 2 posts to see earlier updates about the “Fairytales of Wit, Wisdom and Witchcraft” show.

What I really need to do now is to get my shadow screen and OHP (overhead projector) out and have a play to see how best to use the puppets and put the show together. I will then be able to see what more things need making and Tim Austin and I will be able to put a script together too. Finding a space to do this in is the tricky part at the moment as we do not have a suitable space of our own.

If you would like to book this show we are putting dates in our diary now so please CLICK HERE to get in touch!

We will be visiting The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford on Saturday the 12th with a drop-in Shadow Puppet making workshop and performances of my suitcase shows. This is part of a family day to celebrate the opening of their (long awaited) new “Sound & Vision” gallery space. CLICK HERE for more details.

I am also talking to a festival about a shadow puppetry commission for next year; I won’t go into detail as a funding bid has to be put together. I’ll let you know all about it later if the funding bid is successful.