Sunday 27 January 2013

Rounding off the edges...

You will always find us in the kitchen at parties... now it's finished!
 New episodes voices recorded, and the quality was improving. It was time to fix some issues that had been bothering me. I was really happy with the set of the apartment, but I wanted to improve parts of it to polish off some rough corners. The main concern for me was the quality of the kitchen tiles. For speed I had printed out grey squares on A3 paper and covered them with sticky back plastic to add a shine. In my head the idea was great, but in reality, it was rather poor!

Much easier than REAL tiling!
DIY Puppets Style
I hadn't got enough paper or plastic to cover everything I wanted to and the shiny surface didn't look very nice on camera in the end. I needed something simple and practical that was also lightweight and would give me the effect I was after. I remembered when I was at school we had small polystyrene squares that were used for making printing patterns. We would score the squares with a pencil and roll ink onto them.

I thought those squares would be great as kitchen tiles! It took me a lot of poking into corners of the internet but I eventually found a company that could supply them for me. When they arrived I set to tearing the old plastic off and gluing the new tiles on. It looked great, and it wasn't anywhere near as reflective as the old plastic. I also managed to cover more of the wall to give me a little extra depth to film with.

Hanging the pics in the hallway, well done JP.
For the hallway, as seen in the first episode, there are two empty picture frames. We had always planned to put relevant images in these as they became apparent. One was filled with a picture of JP with his pet brick and the other is a rock n roll photo of Kevin Ellis as his was the first puppet video I finished.

While I was in the garage mending the kitchen set I found some more sheets of plywood. It reminded me of the tongue and groove in my house. I thought if I drew lines on it with a fat black marker it could work as a shed. In the Space episode there is mention of a shed for John and we had recorded a skit of John performing 'Duelling Banjos'.

I set to work building a shed set for his puppet to live in. I had some small tools hanging around that were the perfect size along with a children's Builders hat and spanner set. Once I had knocked some nails in to hang them up, the shed set really came to life! With a hanging string sign to complete the look, John's Shed was also finished. 


John, proudly at home in his shed!

Sunday 20 January 2013

Och Aye The Booze Bro Puppets!

Tartan up our logo screen!
Happy Burns Night for
the 25th January!

Here in the Booze Brothers Band camp, we do like a drink. Any excuse for a beer is always a true cause for celebration.

Around this time of year I tend to remember the Christmas/New Year periods from when I was a kid. Martin and I would often spend that holiday with our family at our Grandparents. Our Grandfather Joe was a proud Scotsman, and would rarely let the chance pass to remind us of that! After a few drinks the songs, poems and stories would come out. Sometimes to the chargrin of our 'Londoner' Nan!
Joe Gilmour, our Grandad.

In the setting of their living room surrounded by photos, paintings and various Scottish nick-nacks and hairy highlanders we were entertained and learned about our family Tartan and of course Robert Burns the poet.

Burns Night is annually celebrated in Scotland on or around January 25. It commemorates the life of the bard (poet) Robert Burns, who was born on January 25, 1759. The day also celebrates Burns' contribution to Scottish culture. As far as we could tell though, it seemed to be an excellent excuse to get together and drink!
Our version of a Hunting lodge!
We decided it would be a bit of fun to make a small video to celebrate Burns night and an opportunity to write our own poem. It took a few re-writes, but eventually we had a few lines that weren't too terrible.

As always, we new we could rely on Chris to read it out for us; any excuse to try out an accent! We collected together as much tartan and Scottish looking objects as we could find to decorate an 'open fire' set to deliver our short ditty. We wanted it to have a dark, cosy fire side feel to it and Chris delivered it in a quiet intimate fashion. The Scottish accent wobbled a few times, but I think he did a passable impression! (No offense intended!!)

I don't think we will be winning any poetry awards with our composition, but it was a bit of fun to do. So all that remains is for us to wish you all a cracking Burns Night, don't forget your Neeps, Tatties and Haggis! Remember to open up the good whisky and get yourself a good book of Robert Burns Poems! 

To watch our efforts, click the link here to go to our Youtube channel.

Happy Burns Night on Friday 25th January Everyone!

Happy Burns Night from the Booze Brothers Band Puppets!

Sunday 13 January 2013

Bacon Really is the centre of the universe!

John Bacon, always delivering the goods!



















As I mentioned before, John wasn't able to make it on the night of the vocal recordings so he came to Martins house the week after to drop his lines in. As expected, John read his lines with gusto and delivered a great performance without any need to have people to bounce off. He even began ad-libbing a few lines to add to his part - some funny words and phrases. Martin had also asked John to bring his banjo.

Fueling Banjos - John recording the licks.
John's Shed Logo for his section on the web.
Centre of the universe John Bacon and John Bacon!
In our first three episodes the 'stinger' tunes between the scenes were all made by Martin on his computer. John had offered to record some live banjo licks to add to the mix. John has always been an exceptional banjo player, but he doesn't get the chance to play it in the band as there is no call for it. Some would say there is no call for him to play the fiddle in the band either - but that doesn't seem to stop him!

A mic was set up and John began playing many small riffs and tunes for us in 10 to 20 second long blasts. He also regaled us with stories and facts about his banjo and playing style in-between the tunes, it was a very loud and fascinating hour!
Once he had recorded a few he was happy with we briefed him about what we wanted to do next. We were looking to add more content to our channel, so we felt a 'Johns Shed' skit would be great. We could get his puppet to build or explain anything we wanted and use it as regular content. I had spent a few nights building a replica banjo for his puppet and had brought it to show him. John was thrilled and said that doing a few run throughs of the Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith classic 'Dueling Banjos' would be great to use.

In John's Shed Video, all the dialogue for this is made up by John on the spot, we really loved the line "Don't Touch anything!" so it will be staying and used again for future skits. It took John a few goes to nail the song and warm his banjo up, it had been in his roof for over a year and he claimed to be a bit rusty. We didn't notice any problems with his playing as he rattled through it all so quickly! But watch til the end of the video for the outtake! ;)

Sunday 6 January 2013

The Prat Pack Return

''Don't panic, I've brought beers!" was the first thing I heard as I entered the front door of Martin's house. Mark, Chris and JP were standing in the lounge around a Microphone, as Mike handed out bottles of lager. Martin was hunched over the computer trying to set some levels for the audio we would try to capture, in-between the lulls of anarchy.
Scripts and Creating juice

The new scripts had been emailed out before hand, but only Mike had read them through; also he'd prepared and brought his own props! Now the band had lived with the results of our first few efforts, they had all brought their 'A' Game with them for the new episodes. There was definitely a competitive edge in their eyes, they all wanted to be the best actor.

After many a run through, we got it nailed. The scripts came alive and I could see in my head their respective puppets delivering these lines; it was going to be alright. These definitely had the potential to be better than the first three we had made. The acting was improving, or the writing was proving easier to act! With a few gaffs, coughs and crack ups re-recorded it was all in the can. (unlike the a fore mentioned beers). The only person missing was saxophonist John, he had been unable to make it on the night, but we weren't worried about him. He had been a stand out performer last time, so we knew he could deliver his performance at a later date. We had other plans for him anyway….

Over acting & over drinking. Oscar performances all round.

It had been a while since we had uploaded any new content to our Youtube Channel. It would take a while to film and edit these new three episodes and get them online. We thought it would be great to film some smaller videos that added to the puppet universe, perhaps fill out the characters with their own small sections. Making content to self circulate around the web is really difficult. For a potential scene that takes place in John's Shed, I had to build a new set I wanted to get cracking on it.

If you can tap into something that is already trending, it becomes an easier climb to get your name out there. The moustache growing for Men's Health awareness - Movember - seemed like a nice thing to do. I decided to record a video that explained the rules as stipulated by movember.com and put it out for people to reference to make sure they were doing it properly.
Spiffing 'stash - shame I can't grown one for real!

I cut out a black card moustache, stuck it to my puppet and just read the rules in front of the tongue-and-groove in my lounge. With a vignette filter laid over in the edit, it looked rather old school! I up loaded it to the puppet channel and went to bed. In the morning it had got more over night hits than any of the other videos in such a short space of time! The great thing about it is that I can use it year on year, re-trending it as it comes around. In the same way, Christmas videos come back and become popular every year.