Christmas Booze...

A Drummers view of Christmas gigs

Chris...Mas! haha

It's that time of year again, when the big jolly chap with the red nose laughs and spreads good will to all. But that's enough about John, because Christmas is nearly here! About 2 years ago around this time I had just finished making the last of the band replica puppets, and really wanted to make a music video with them. My flat at the time was freshly decorated with a Christmas tree and we had been gigging a lot of festive run-up parties. The weekend before the Booze Brothers had a gig at the Salhouse Lodge near Wroxham, and I had recorded the whole gig on video camera. For once, the audio and the visuals had come out really well.

JP and Mike, enjoying the season...

There was a fairly passable version of us doing the Mud festive classic, 'Lonely This Christmas'. We always dig this song out, as everyone knows it and it's fairly easy to perform while drunk. I do remember once, playing it at a gig in the summer just for a laugh, but that's a story for another day… Armed with the audio we decided to make a Christmas video, fairly basically, in front of the Christmas tree. The results were alright - if you look closely you can see bit of puppeteer arm and head at times, but the tissues and over acting happily mask most of the artistic wobbles!

Just enough Christmas Cheer, and 80s decorations!!

Quite some time later, somewhere around the middle of the year, Mike informed me at a gig that he had written his very own Christmas song, and he and JP had recorded it on a four track. After lots of 'Why didn't you tell me sooner?!' rhetoric, he said he would get a copy of it to me, only his immediate family had heard it and he didn't know what else to do with it.
This seemed like a great opportunity to shoot our very own Christmas song video featuring just Mike and James' puppets.

Keeping it simple, I decorated the living room set with tinsel and (the very same) Christmas tree. I had found some really awesome 1980s ceiling hanging decorations at a car boot sale in August, so I HAD to use those as well. Once I had James and Mike in Christmas hats, I let them rock out to the "Christmas Cheer" song from two angles to make the most of the seasonal set.

Christmas Cheer, with a sprinkling of snow!

I belong to a puppet makers forum called puppetsandstuff run by Shawn Sorrell (http://www.wildjokerdesign.com/puppetsandsuch/ ) and during one thread I was following, someone mentioned that having a few lines of the puppets speaking before or after the song made the video better for the viewer. So, with that in mind, I  wanted a small amount of dialogue at the end to round off the song. I had been getting 'green screen' tips from the same forum and thought, what if I make it snow in the flat? That's pretty Christmasy, then I could use my puppet to fret about the mess. After a few hours of editing and cropping the Booze Brothers Band of Puppets Original Christmas Song was ready for unwrapping. So for your delight and Seasonal Chipperness, I present Mike 'The Chalk' White's "Christmas Cheer".

I would like to thank Michael White and James Phillippo for letting me use their song, it's a really nice edition to the puppet song channel, and a nice way to end a creative year for the Booze Band of Puppets. Merry Christmas to all the band, their long suffering families and all the people out there who have watched our videos and come to see us at gigs.

Lets hope 2013 is just as successful.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of the Booze Brothers Band!

Second Guesting... Martin Returns to Blog!

Scripts, or 'Beer Mats'? Nope, mark the table!

Ok, so second part of my Blog on the writing and I have a confession to make – I care about the scripts a great deal. I know Steve has said on this very Blog that he can’t remember which bits he wrote and which bits I did, I find this as incredible as if I’d said I couldn’t remember who made the puppets. I can still go through each script and highlight exactly which bits I wrote, which jokes are mine and what I was thinking when I wrote it. It is probably for the best that I get the final say on the scripts, Steve is nice enough to take it very well when I cut out lines he wrote and re-work his ideas, I’d sulk for a week if he cut out my favourite joke. It just shows that it helps to be passionate about different parts when your working with another person.

I always knew what feel I wanted for the stories; anything mean or cruel wasn’t going to work with the characters we had, so it needed a softer centre. I’ve often been accused of having a brain that works in a slightly different way to other people, I like maths and logic, but have huge love of words. I tend to follow a string of logic, but end up in illogical situations – this is why my DIY skills are terrible. Even to this day, I refuse to try to sweep my own chimney as, years ago, I saw Paddington Bear try to do it on TV with disasterous results. I remember watching that episode and thinking to myself ‘but that’s exactly how I would do it’. The moral I took from this was ‘never try to do anything that can’t be done by a bear in a duffel coat’ this is a life rule that is yet to let me down.

The Martins, considering Pooh.

I was aware that I didn’t want anyone to be the butt of too many jokes. Much like the Winnie the Pooh stories, I wanted everyone to be a bit dumb in their own special way and comedy would come from the way these very personal lines of logic intersected. The great thing about the A.A. Milne stories is that only Pooh is aware of his own limitations, everyone else ambles along thinking they are much smarter than him.

JP and Wally

With this in mind, I wanted our stories to come from a logical place – in one episode James wants a pet, sees a brick in a pet shop, buys it and takes it home as a pet – a logical set of steps that brings him to the result of having a pet brick or ‘geometric hampster’. For me, it wouldn’t have worked if he had just found the brick or had it given to him, it had to come from a series of logical-to-him steps that puts him at odds with the rest of the band.

Mark & Chris in space. Totally Logical.

The challenge going forward is to maintain a level of quality and not to mess about with anyone’s characteristics just to wedge in a joke or a plot.

It’s a challenge I’m looking forward to.

A Guest Blogger in our midst.

At last, Martin gets to have his say.  He's funny, and he's here all week - so, enjoy!

It's Snow Joke!! Actually, it's Martin.

The Joy and Pain of Writing. Having let Steve take the heavy lifting of Blog writing, I’ve finally caved to his pressure to come up with some content regarding my part in the puppet project.
For a long time, I’d felt a little on the outside of the project. I have made a few monster-style puppets of questionable quality, but it soon became apparent that my skills were not in the model making department. Steve had spent long nights over many months making fantastic foam likenesses of the band, and I’d fulfilled the role of bloke who makes tea and say ‘wow they look good’ a lot. It was fair to say I hadn’t exactly been pulling my weight.

Creative 'weight pulling'. Hard with no keyboard delete key!

When the question came of what to do with the puppets, I saw a chance to get more involved. I had done a very limited amount of writing, but always subscribed to the idea that everyone has a novel inside them (not a pleasant thought; books can have very sharp corners). Blessed with boundless optimism and a head full of bad puns, creativity started to slowly flow. It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention, it could also be added that convenience is, at the very least, the great uncle of laziness. With this tortured metaphor still hanging in the air, I decided to analyse what we already had at our disposal for inspiration.

Wally the Brick, on holiday.

What a brief search of the house turned up, was a poorly made puppet of a hare and a foam prop brick – so these elements became the centre piece for the first bits of writing.


What wasn’t at first obvious to me, was that sooner or later I was going to have to show these draft scripts to someone else. Much like your own singing; what sounds like perfection in your own home may well turn out to be a bit flat when aired in public, it was scary stuff. Luckily Steve got the gist of the jokes in the first drafts and helped me hone them into a more cohesive story. As time went on, it became clear that his stuff was strong on story, but lighter on laughs, whereas my material tended to aimlessly spin round in endless jokes without ever getting to a point. By passing scripts between ourselves, the right balance was maintained.

Hoagie, one of Martins creations.

The first three scripts came together quite well, up to the point where I was prepared to let the rest of the band read, and then commit them to tape. Luckily, my fears of people being upset about how many lines they had, or anyone being unhappy that their character was a bit dim, never materialised – just as well the band are all good sports!

The Chris 'Not Offended' face.

Happy as I was to see the first three recorded, I’m now determined to make the next scripts of a higher quality. Some of the jokes didn’t work as well as they should have and I feel that another re-write wouldn’t have gone amiss – It’s a learning curve and I’m thrilled to have been given the opportunity to be part of it.

Steve & Martin Gilmour :) Go Team Booze.

Media Tarting & New Episode Starting.

We set to work and created our very own Youtube channel and uploaded all the music videos and our 3 episodes to the internet. At the same time I also put together a puppets web page, blogger account, Pinterest Boards, Twitter and started to cross reference all of these to each other. We wanted to get as much coverage as possible to allow as many people to see it as possible. This is a long task (and one that's ongoing!) but we decided 'little and often' over these formats would be enough to drip new visitors to our creations.

The Booze Brothers YouTube Channel. Subscribe Today!!

Having had some success with our first three episodes, it was time to make more. Both Martin and I had exhausted our immediate funny ideas about the band in the first few brain storming sessions. This was going to require us to dig a bit deeper, creatively speaking, and try to make more coherent stories.

Pinterest: Great for photos and stuff. Check it out.

Again, over a tea one lunch hour we tried to pin point the exact traits the group had, that would be able to be stretched into more episodes. We sketched out rough character profiles, and after some quite frank smack talk about our fellow band mates, we came up with the following collective points: Being a little over weight. Being totally skint, and needing more gigs. Once we had written down how many characters were built, it suddenly dawned on us how many we had at our disposal. The cast was growing, which brought more possibilities. Another structural point Martin raised was, having two stories happen per episode, that made it flow better. It would also allow us to feature more people in each episode. Two separate stories split between seven 'actors' (very, loosely speaking) was simpler than seven people in one story. Martin also harbored a secret ambition to write an episode set in space. Great Martin, thanks for understanding the limits of my already built scenery!!

Start of the 'Alien Objections' set... Will it fly?

That night I sat and emptied my head onto paper and produced a smattering of passable jokes and concepts. Once typed up I emailed everything to Martin. Several miles away, he was doing exactly the same thing (just, his stuff was better!) We proceeded to read each others work and edit out what we didn't think would be funny, or be able to be achieved. We repeated this process over several evening and lunchtimes until a week of writing had produced 3 more decent episodes. Reading them back was great. Collectively it was becoming difficult to remember who had come up with what, so they really felt like a joint effort. Our new set of episodes would be 'He ain't Heavy', 'Cash Mosh-ine' and 'Alien Objections'. With scripts polished, some new characters rounded up, it was time to rally the troops and get the voices recorded...  Quick, turn on the Booze Signal.

The complete cast so far. Gonna need a bigger garage...

Adding the Extras in there Lads...

Once we had the raw footage cleaned up, edited together and the audio dubbed over, we had half the job finished. I began to make the opening and closing credit screens to top and tail the episodes. I played with several ideas for this, but settled on an edited version of our original Booze Brothers Band logo.

Our Series Logo, with very little extra thought!

I wanted to do a whole 'opening' credits sequence with clips to introduce everyone, but it would have made it far too long. I liked the simplicity of the logo and edited that into the shorts along with all the fades between scene transitions. Martin then pointed out it still didn't quite feel finished. We needed to employ a trick many sit-coms do, a scene setting image to come up that gives a sense of place. We decided there had to be an picture of the outside of the flat and of the exterior of the pub to give a some kind of context.

Where it all happens apparently

Would you go here after dark? I wouldn't...

The Boar & Hare Pub. Seriously, don't ask.

We would also need a simple tune to repeat over these screens as intro setting music  'stingers'. Martin went off to make the music, I set about sorting the exterior imagery.

Martin did a great job of recording disjointed bits of music from our set list on his keyboard: A lilting few bars of The Peter Gunn Theme, along with a purposely wobbly riff of Shake your Tail Feather to name two. You can hear them in the first episode here.

I had a photograph of the outside of my old apartment building in Norwich. I reverse flipped it over and left it at that, I didn't see the need to be too specific about the location of the flat. I was hoping people would just accept it!

I just darkened the same photo for the evening shot and added a few window lights. Along with this I had a similar photo of the pub around the corner from me: The Nelson, on Nelson Street (believe it or not!) in Norwich.

I added our own joke name to the pub building and reversed that image as well. (The Boar & Hare. Long story, and a terrible in-joke with the band... maybe an explanation for another day!)

These would be our scene setting images, giving us a sense of place and Martins tunes fitted brilliantly over the top.

Once these were inserted into the episodes they made it all feel and look much more like a completed project.

They also had the added bonus of padding extra seconds to the length of the shorter episodes. After one last round of footage editing and cutting, we were finished. It was time to hit internet!

But before we uploaded it all to our Youtube channel we wanted to show the band the finished results of our collective efforts.

Do I hear stingers Martin?! No, it's the pizza cutter rattling...

 

 

As luck would have it, we were gigging back at The Black Swan Rooms in North Walsham - the room we first viewed the original puppet film pitch in. We would have the big telly on again while we set up and the band could watch the episodes while we plugged in and sound checked. As we were tuning up with one eye on the screen, people started wandering in, and became quite fascinated with the big TV. Olly the owner of The Black Swan suggested having the dvd playing, muted, on rotation while we gigged that night. Why not we thought, it can't hurt! As the episodes were playing during our first set that night, being viewed by the crowd, they all seemed to love it. In the half time interval, several people came up to us and said how 'like' the band the puppets were and when could they see them online. We started to think, as a project, it was going to be alright after all!  

Black Swan Gig, A small step for Booze, a big step for foam.

I want to deviate slightly and talk about our props and extras we have. Props are great fun to make, it was one of the processes I enjoyed the most. The first three episodes would need me to create books, newspapers, company logos, pizza boxes, talking cakes and a 12" Mexican. (?!)

Mixing his sciences, with rude words?

In our second episode, Martin wrote some jokes that revolved around a mix of Pavlovian Psychology and Immanuel Kant Philosophy. He wanted his puppet to be reading a generic book to introduce the scene, but not a real one. I did a quick search on the internet for some images and cobbled together a pretend book jacket to get the point across. This would turn out to be the least weird thing I would have to do.

Generic Pizza 'Bor. Norfolk Speak!

One night after a Booze Brothers Band gig at the California Tavern, we all drove to the Caister Kebab shop for some well earned sustenance. Over a combined order of 3 portions of chips, 4 meat feast 9" pizzas and 2 half pound burgers I remembered that I was going to have to make pizza boxes for a scene in the first episode. I wondered if I could scab a 9" pizza box as a template to use later? As I was trying to get a discarded pizza box off one of the band without loosing any fingers, the owner asked me what I wanted a dirty box for. I explained (as best as I could, trying not to sound like a nutter) what I was hoping to do and he disappeared into the back and came back with 4 brand-new flat packed boxes for me. If I assembled them inside out, they were plain white pizza boxes! All I would have to do is design a simple logo, and stick it to the lids. Another job done!

A growing Empire perhaps?

Discount Dave was another creation of Martins for the third episode, his voice was kindly recorded for us by Voiceoverman in a studio under the supervision of Doc at Radiojingles.com. I threw together a cheap looking logo for his 'Discount Empire' (in the high street, above the kebab shop, in the high street) It's one of our favourite clips so far. We will be using Doc's services again for a new character, Hoagie Hare… (watch this space!)

A 12" Mexican, obvious. Named Paddy, not so much.

Talking of newer characters, The 12' Mexican (that for absolutely no reason whatsoever is now called, Paddy) was really fun to make. He is a foam tube with yellow felt and black buttons for eyes. His awesome hat is a mini sombrero I found by luck on the internet. With the very last piece of my black fluff I had left, I made him a moustache. The fact he doesn't speak at all is a bit of a relief. Who would want to try a Mexican/Irish accent crossover? Yeah, thought not.

He'll be on Page 3, it's where the buns and baps are.

James' pet brick (called Wally) was a rubber brick Martin had in his house for ages, I think he got it one Christmas and had no idea what to do with it. It only features in the 3rd episode so far, but it does feature on the cover of the newspaper Mike is reading; in a rather heavy handed (albeit quick) plot point spoiler.

For the three new episodes we have written, I will be needing to build a lot more props. Magic Hair in a Bottle, a set of logos for two new businesses, a shed set and a whole space ship set. But that's all for another day!

Loving it when a Plan Comes Together...

With the 'flat' scenery hanging from the ceiling in my garage and some incidental outdoor footage shot, I was learning a hard lesson. When I was reading the scripts, the way I wanted to shoot each scene was clear in my head,

Contemplating our next move... get a pencil.

which is fair enough, but the brain doesn't always take into consideration the restrictions of the space and the set build. Sometimes I was behind the camera setting up the angle and sometimes I was in front performing puppets. With the best will in the world I couldn't do everything and expect it to magically look like it did in my head. I needed to make notes.

We had learned that too many puppets on screen at once put too much strain on the width and depth of the scenery. To put it simply; the more puppets to fit on screen, the wider the shot needs to be. That means the walls of the scenery need to be deeper to accommodate the shot and not show the room behind the set boards. I didn't have the room for the scenery to be bigger. We needed to stop and think.

Two Characters is best for our set size. And cake, obviously.

I at last began to see the importance of story boarding. Sitting down with the scripts to the second episode ,with a pencil, I drew (in a square that would represent the screen frame) exactly what I wanted to fit on screen and what angle to shoot from. The sketches became my way of explaining to Martin what I felt I wanted to achieve. He could see what I was planning and I could explain it better.
We could now accurately plan out shot sequences, in a much more efficient way. The drawings also allowed me to figure out what would work and what wouldn't before even setting up the camera. Story boarding  allowed me to edit and cut the scene on paper before we started shooting. It was a real time saver. I showed Martin the plans and then explained that I liked the way sit com editing jumps from person to person speaking. It breaks up the conversation,

Scribblings of a mad man, although I calmed down to shoot it.

and it stops the footage being a continuous, single, front facing shot. This trick allowed much more close ups of the speaking puppets, (what we wanted)  and it would make the whole process much easier. We could set up the required shot of one puppet speaking all their lines for the whole scene. Do the same with the character they were talking to, and cut between them to look like it was all done live in a continuous take.

Eat your heart out Lucas Film.

It would be constructed 'in the edit'. Following my drawings we set the shots up and got through the scenes with startling efficiency. Martin could see the shot I was after and he would know the angle I wanted when I was in front of the camera performing the puppets. Sketching the episodes out also gave me the chance to plan out the green screen dream sequences. Between the two of us we could now both play Director, as the other one performed and vice versa.  Planning all the episodes out on storyboards also brought home another thought. It made me realise that I had an awful  lot of props to make before we began shooting the other episodes!!!

On set with the Martin Booze Puppet, and real Martin of course!

Recording the Dialogue...

The creative process, un-bottled...

We set up a microphone in the middle of a room in Martins house - bought some beers - and got everyone together. We had one read through and then went for it. It's worth pointing out that with the exception of Mike, Mark and Chris, the rest of us had no acting experience whatsoever. We discussed getting everyone to deliver their lines in an 'over the top' fashion, exaggerating their own voices. This was kind of disastrous, as we keep cracking up and no one could deliver the same performance from scene to scene! In hind sight it would have been better to have given the scripts to everyone before hand so they could get familiar with their lines. Collectively we decided to just say the lines in an enthusiastic way and let the puppet characters add the silliness. For this first set of recordings, John was definitely the star. His performance in the second episode is excellent. We think he may have missed his calling in life!
With these three episodes in the can, the sets had been built and we were ready to get to filming. We had lots and lots of other scripting ideas that we continued to hone over the weeks. Repeating the process of writing down ideas and passing them to each other for re-writes. It got to a point where we couldn't remember who had written what,  but the ideas were taking shape.

The Booze Brothers acting up as usual

Once Martin had edited the audio of the episodes together, splicing the best performance lines into order, we took the files into my garage on a laptop and set the camera up. Due to the size of the puppets, and the fact there was only the two of us, getting everyone on screen at once was not only impossible but impractical. The footage looked better when the camera had two puppets on screen together at once. Any more than that and the frame had to be so wide they looked too small. This fortunately played to the strengths of our situation. Working one puppet was actually a two handed job. One to work the mouth and the other had to control the rod for the arm.

Lots of puppets, lots of arm work. Really difficult.

We had written and recorded audio with one scene that required everyone to be on screen at once, we had to be sneaky. I thought if we have two puppets at a time filmed in two halves of the set, it would look like they were all in the same room at once. Watching some test  footage we figured we would be able to get away with it. We then vowed not to write anything else that used too many band members at once! Performing the puppets was also something we hadn't done before. Holding your arm above your head for ages whilst kneeling on a concrete garage floor was uncomfortable to say the least. We began to have a whole new respect for Jim Henson and his team, its very hard work. We got our process down to a simple set of operations. We would get the laptop with the audio file of the current scene ready to play. I would set up the video camera and Martin would get into position so I could line up the shot and press record. I would then join him in shot and we would set the audio running. Whilst looking down at copies of the scripts, arms above our heads, we would mime over the audio coming through the speakers of the lap top.

Two Booze Bro puppets, much more manageable.

After having a few attempts we would give our arms a rest and view the few seconds of footage of that scene to make sure we got it. This was repeated through puppet and scenery changes until we had all the footage done. It would take around 4 hours to shoot one half of every episode in this style. Including breaks for tea, mending puppets and arguing about who should me doing what! Over, quite literally, a month of Sundays we had the three starter episodes done. This was to include some green screen work and some outside location shooting. Filming a puppet in the privacy of you own garage is fine, taking them out into the world was something I found a little odd.

An extra Muppet with the puppets! :)

The first time I did it was for James' dream sequence in the third episode. I took his puppet with me to a real Booze Brothers Band gig at the California Tavern. The pub is a great venue right on the cliff above the beach, and I turned up early to be able to film before everyone else arrived to set up for the gig. I was lucky in that the weather was sunny and it hadn't actually rained for a day or two. Armed with my video camera, stand, JP puppet and his pet brick, I walked to a quiet part of the beach. All I wanted to shoot was JP walking on the beach carrying the brick with the sea in the background. Even though there was no one around, I felt a bit stupid, but I started setting up. All was going well, and I was getting ready to press record on the camera when out of nowhere a couple walking their dog came into shot. I waited until they had passed (they both gave me an odd look) and I reset my shot.

JP before the dog attack. The brick was safe the whole time.

 
This time the dog came back, and decided he wanted to play with James the puppet. It was touch an go, but I nearly lost him to an over zealous spaniel. Again, I set the camera rolling and I managed to get the footage with no more incidents to poor JP or his brick. Martin and I would shoot in the woods around the corner from where we work over a lunch hour and on another occasion, in a children's play area. We decided that this wasn't something we would encourage in future, only in the garage from now on - unless it was absolutely necessary.

Me and Martin - Not Helping much.

Over a cup of tea (the way all creative processes work best) Martin and I threw ideas around for scripts to make these small 3-4 minute episodes work. We scribbled down wacky stuff, old silly gags and not much else. We ended up putting each other off.


Our idea was to get a small decent joke, deliver it in the best way possible and then end with a full song video. This would give us our time quota. We read that anything on the internet longer than 4 - 6 mins, people tend to switch off (unless it's super-awesome, which was a bit of a stretch for your first work!). We wanted the first episode to introduce everyone's character, to show off the puppets. As there where so many, we felt a song at the start with opening credits seemed the simplest and quickest means to get this to work. But that meant we couldn't end on a song as well. Two would make it all too long. The music videos we had shot so far, seemed to stand fine as they were. So perhaps the songs should be separate from the episodes? That would mean writing more dialogue to perform, making our task more difficult. It was time to split up. Martin suggested writing ideas down for episodes and then swapping notes and working on each others material. We could repeat this process until we had something we both liked. I really went for this idea as I could leave him to it, and I could get on with building the sets. I would let him worry about the scripts!

A Flat wall... Literally

Not very Blues, but it's home!

We decided that we would present the band as all living together in a flat in Norfolk (like the 1960's Monkeys TV show) It would be a simple apartment that would utillise a hallway, a front room and a kitchen. We felt all house bound activity could be done in this format, to keep the sets to a minimum. We also chose to add a Pub setting, giving us another area to populate with the band. With three possible locations (Front room, Kitchen, Pub) we could split the puppets up and accommodate several small stories and jokes per episode. I somehow had to make this all work in my small single garage, and still have room to set up lights and a camera to film the action. It would be a squeeze! Armed with some ply board, a few left over tins of paint and wall paper, I constructed two double sided boards that could be hung from the ceiling and spun around. One side would construct the lounge/sitting room the other the hallway and kitchen. Due to the height of the puppets I wouldn't need to worry about ceilings or floors. I hoped tables, pictures and props would disguise any gaps or corners.

The Boar & Hare Pub, great location for beers.

Home Sweet Foam!

The only picture I knew I wanted to put on the walls was a few fake Gold discs and a copy of the cover of Kevin Ellis' Bands first record: Red Hot and Blue. Because it's awesome. With that finished, I added a few horse brasses to the white painted walls of my garage and ta-dah, I had a pub interior. Sorted. It was time to report back to Martin and see if he had written all the scripts!

The first drafts of scripts we had, were almost done. Martin had taken the many scraps and snippets of ideas and crafted 3 complete 3min (ish) episodes. Over the course of a week we swapped the work between us, editing the others writing and handing it back again. Most of the gags and laughs came from Martins' head, I ended up tweaking the dialogue to fit how I saw the video would play out. We had an introductory episode, featuring everyone in the band. Then two other episodes that introduced John as a tutor figure and another on James simply wanting a pet. It was time to call in the guys and record the audio!!

At Home with the Booze Brothers Band Puppets!

How much Booze?

Booze in the Kitchen, dangerously near the cooker!

Armed with our small batch of audio, we filmed a few jokes and visual gags in my flat, using the existing furniture as background. The puppets themselves are about 14 to 17 inches high, and are mostly head. Certain 'real world' items look fine next to the puppets, such as cups, plates or anything head related like hats and glasses. The scale of tables and background scenery only works if you can get the camera low and the puppet at a decent distance to allow the background to look normal. Not easy, but we ventured on.

Chris and Mike, acting up

We ended up shooting much of it in front of the red curtain back drop, to make the puppets the main focus. It worked really nicely, again, the puppets came to life with their counterparts voice coming from their mouths. Mike in particular had recorded his lines with vigor, having lots of amateur dramatics experience, his puppet really shone! At this point we only had Mike and Chris talking on tape. Martin and I did our lines live and from a few recordings we had done.

It was at this point, Martin had another idea. What about if we wrote a set of proper scripts, and treat the band as a small sit-com? Our banter and brotherhood within the band was certainly daft, and our various 'in jokes' could be stretched too, possibly for 3 to 4 minute episodes.

Martin, having a great idea and making a point - again...

We could have sets that were to scale, record the whole story with everyone around a microphone and have small 'web-isode''  to upload. It would be much more interesting than just music videos, and everyone could be involved. An interesting idea, but it was slightly running away from were we were at the time.

Jake and Elwood from the back: How I always see them!

A slow reveal. Of characters, not intelligence obviously.

I'd never written anything like that, but Martin had written a funny rock opera during his time at university. Why not have a go at a daft situation comedy based around a struggling band of odd characters? We would have to let the cat out of the bag to the guys in order to see who would want to do it. Perhaps we should get them onboard with the basic Booze Brothers replica puppets first, before we ask them to full scale character act themselves for other peoples amusement. They still hadn't seen any of this yet, it could still all back fire!


We collected all the footage together and shot some introductory scenes with several 'slow reveal' shots of the two front men puppets walking from a lift, through an under ground garage and opening a door. Through the door would then walk all the puppets one by one, being introduced by a title with their name. It then cut to a gag, a music video, a gag, another music video and some closing credits. Everyone would be able to get a look and a feel for their puppet clone for the first time, and afterwards they could decide if they wanted to be a part of our Situation Comedy concept.


Martin and I decided that we really wanted everyone to be involved. The best way would be to 'wow' them into wanting to take part.

After a phone call to Oliver Smith at the Black Swan rooms, we hired his function room with a massive TV and set chairs up for an audience of band members, friends and family to showcase our hard work.

The Premier venue: right next to the bar!!

I sat to the side of the TV, watching everyone's faces instead of the screen. I wanted to get a first look response and reaction from them as it happened. I suddenly realised I was really nervous. What if people took offense to their puppet representative? What if they didn't find it funny? Chucking away a year of crafting and sewing is one thing, but wrecking fourteen years of friendship and band camaraderie is something else altogether!

As it began to play out everyone sat quietly… until the first puppet came on screen, then they all erupted into laughter. As each character appeared on screen, the rest of the band would laugh and shout at how accurate a depiction it was... until their own likeness appeared, and then the laughing rolls were reversed.

Mark 'Elwood' Folds

Once the film ended, everyone was in stitches - I think the copious amounts of beer had a small helping hand in that. Due to demand, I set it running again and everyone was thankfully; impressed.


 Once it had calmed down I produced all the puppets from the gigantic box I had hidden at the back of the room so I could get a photo of everyone with their own puppet. Olly ran off with his puppet into the Black Swan pub to show his regulars, I think it may have even pulled a pint. Martin and I canvased an opinion from everyone about the Episode concept, being an obvious bunch of performing divas, they all agreed. If we could produce the scripts, they would perform them. Having never done it before, where do you start? Martin didn't know either.


This could be the worlds shortest idea!

Chris 'Jake' Wilson

Mike 'The Chalk' White

James 'JP' Phillippo

Martin 'The Governor' Gilmour

John 'Biffa' Bacon

Kevin 'Helluvahorn' Ellis

Olly 'DJ Voice / Saturn' Smith

The Booze Brothers Band of Puppets full cast!!