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.