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!!

Heading in the right direction.

Heading in the right direction...

Booze Bro Band, mostly 'armless

With a room full of disembodied heads, I felt it was time to finish the job with bodies and arms. This was actually more fun than I thought it would be. With JP's dish cloth shirt and the two front men in their black and white suits, all was going well. Martin had given me his pale blue, long sleeve gigging shirt that had finally given up the fight after 10 years. We felt his was the best way to allow it to live on. John has grey/black motor bike t-shirts, so he was easy as well. I had an old 70's style shirt that I like to wear that was sacrificed for the cause of my puppet and another subtle tea towel would be Mike's wardrobe of choice.

I air dry my dishes now, just so JP isn't naked.

After a year of sketching, gluing and sewing, we were all dressed to impress and ready to rock. Then it struck me. Instruments. My merry band of brothers was gonna look pretty silly miming with no guitars.

It sounds really daft at this point, but I hadn't considered that they would need equipment. I did the only logical thing I could think of. I cried. I thought I could start filming, but props would also need to be built. I did the second thing I could think of. I went toy shopping.
I found a saxophone toy on Ebay that was the right scale, but too long. I cut it down and re-assembled it with surprisingly good results after a spray up. I found a mouth organ from a genuine Blues Brothers disguise kit. I also found a toddlers drum kit which with a little modification was perfect.

John, unusually; not with beer

Axes: ready to grind...

Guitars on the other hand, were not coming up at the right size. I ended up scaling photos of the exact guitars until I was happy with the size, printing the pics out, and using the pictures as templates to cut them out of balsa wood. After a few weeks, we were tooled up with guitars, mics, drums and brass. It was show time!

Rockin in the free world. Well, my kitchen at least...

Lookin For a Fox - and a new arm!

I had earmarked a couple of tracks from a gig we did at the Black Swan rooms in North Walsham and one from a performance at the California Tavern in Hemsby. I was planning on doing all the puppeteering, filming and editing myself to see what the results would be like. I would like to say, it came as quite a shock at how difficult it is to hold your arm above your head with a puppet for anything over 2-3 minutes. I have even more respect for Jim Henson, Frank Oz and crew at this point, it was agony. I shot a few different angles and close ups in front of a red curtain backdrop I found on Ebay. Getting the boys to sing to our version of the Clarence Carter track, Lookin' For  A Fox was great fun, and the results were better than I could have hoped for

Kevin 'Helluvahorn' Ellis: Legend in everyone's Lifetime.

The second attempt was a track we had recorded at the Black Swan Rooms with our original Sax player Kev on vocals.

Run around Sue was a favourite of ours when we played with Kev, and he always performed it brilliantly. I tried making more of a set for this, with a mind to getting it to look like an old bar. I would also be experimenting with green screen so I could have better performances from multiple band members. It took a lot longer than I anticipated, but again, watching the rough footage back, it was actually not that bad.
Once I had edited both tracks together, it became apparent that one person per puppet was a must. Working two puppets, one on each hand, always left one character looking slightly lifeless while you concentrate on the other. It's also nice to have them strumming the guitars instead of just bopping around with them. It had it's merits but working on my own was not really an option anymore, I wanted better results.

Martin came over one night to see how I was getting on. Keeping this to ourselves was becoming quite a task, as the footage was making us laugh. He asked me what was next, as I had shot two music videos - what else was I going to do? We decided to make one more music film. Due to the time of year, we shot a Christmas song with audio from our version of the Mud classic Lonely This Christmas we had taken at a gig in the Poachers Pocket, Walcott the year before.

A bit too much Christmas Booze. Here's Mud in your eye!

With Martin performing puppets with me, there was better movement from the characters on screen, and it all felt bait more lively. We found because the audio we were using was taken from live gigs, at the end of the songs either Mark or Chris (or both) would make some silly remark to the audience - a large part of our act as the Booze Brothers Band. The lines were great to get the puppets to lip sync along with, it really brought the puppet characters to life.

Martin had an idea. What if we were to string the music videos together with one liner gags? Write stupid little jokes to get the puppets to speak to each other as a preface to the songs? This seemed like a really good idea as the music videos themselves may have limited appeal for us to keep making alone. Having taken over a year to build the puppets, discarding them once we had shot three 2 minute songs, seemed like a huge waste. We decided not to reveal the look of the puppets to the band yet, but find a way of getting spoken words recorded to use later for our comic interludes. I chose to pretend the original fluffy monsters were the puppets we had decided to made the videos with, and took the idea to the band. Everyone agreed it would be a fun joke and they would record their lines for us to mime over at a later date. I had been traveling around visiting the band individually as I was filming interviews for a third Booze Brothers Band home dvd.

The Not Hotly anticipated first Movie.

We have 2 documentary films we created over the last 14 years, just to keep for us to look back on, because remembering it all is getting harder due to the alcohol intake. When I finished interviewing Mike and Chris, Martin got them to record a few funny lines he had written and we went on our way.

By this point I was on a foam ration. What I was using to make the heads is called reticulated foam, and I was having to order it from America. I decided to only make the heads first (the fun bit) and I would make all the bodies later out of a cheaper material. (Which I would find on good old Norwich City Market!) It would mean living with near life-size decapitated heads of my friends, but once you have one severed head, multiples doesn't really phase you anymore.

'Bossy' and old 'Deep Pockets': Easily recognizable.

I was making these puppets in secrecy, only my family knew what I was planning. They found out because my home was littered with fluff, stuffing and foam, telling them I had taken up sofa butchery seemed pointlessly far fetched. It was handy to have a third party to show the concepts too, they recognized each of the puppets instantly which was encouraging - and somewhat of a relief.

Mike 'The Chalk' White... he's not really this bald in real life!

Next, I did Mike and my brother Martin in puppet head form. That's guitar and Bass guitar player, I enjoyed making these two puppets and I think they came out the best. (Martins puppet always makes me smile!) I found them the easiest to plan, and I only went through 2 sketches to draw a design I was sure looked like them both. Other people would prove to be much more of a challenge.

Martin: The face of Bass.

I started to consider colour as well as shape pairings. They would all have to share screen time together in the music videos, so was there a danger they would clash? In the Muppet Show all the characters are very brightly coloured, but then, they are all monsters and animals. I thought I don't really want the band to look too garish as it was supposed to be more of a real representation. People are mostly creatures of habit, so they tended to wear the same stuff all the time. Particularly in the band.

Every gig we do, we turn up, lift all the gear from the car park (more often than not in the rain) into the venue and set up. Jumping about under the lights for 2 hours and then reverse the process to pack down. This tends to leave you muddy, dusty, sweaty or scuffed, sometimes a combination of all four. Wearing your best shoes and shirt is not really an option. I have it on good authority that both Mark and Chris have only washed their performance suits twice in 14 years (a reason I always turn down a lift from those guys. Small car, 14 years of funk. Drunk or not, you're gonna smell that.) This means that most of the group have a bank of 2 to 3 t-shirts/shirts they wear all the time. Going back and reviewing the old film footage again, I could pick out distinguishing uniforms for everyone. A few artistic tweaks in colour and I thought I could kit everyone out relatively accurately.

Our band has had several members drift through the original core guys over the years. Chris, Mark, Mike, Martin and I are from the original lineup. Chris' brother Tim was a guitar player, and he left to live in Canada and was replaced by JP.

Kevin Ellis: The Man.

John Bacon: The New Man (and Chalk, Rockin)

Kevin Ellis was our sax player for a good number of years and now we are lucky to have John Bacon filling those big sax-shoes. Kevin still plays with us regularly when John is unavailable, and we all have fond memories of Tim being in the band. I began to feel guilty leaving these guys out. I started to worry that using old audio of Kevin on sax would be wrong to show John playing, and vice-versa. Possibly worrying a bit too much, but I know how I would feel if the role was reversed. I would have to make those guys too. I made John and Kevin at the same time, similar structures but they have very different looking puppets, as obviously, they are very different guys.

A 'Young' James Phillippo

JP was another fun puppet to make, his is the only puppet to be made with this shaped head. His features went through several attempts to get what was in my mind, onto the physical face. James is always smiling and I wanted him to have a younger appearance (being the youngest and newest member) I always knew I would fit his puppet up in his trademark red and white lumberjack shirt, and I found a tea towel that was perfect. His finished puppet looks really bright and colourful which makes him look newer than everyone else, which was a great happy accident.

Drummer, brain pre-removed.

My counterpart was a very different prospect. I don't know if you have ever tried any kind of self portrait, but learning to have a sense of humour about yourself is something I found a bit difficult. I ended up making my own puppet design from scratch, and basing it on something I'd seen on the Muppet Show. I wanted to make me a little different from everyone else as you don't really see me much because I'm hidden away behind the drums. I decided that my chinless appearance would benefit from being like Beaker from the Muppet Show. Once I had an old pair of my glasses glued on, the likeness I have to say, was unfortunately, spot on.

JP, Martin, Mark, Steve, Chris, John & Mike. 7 heads are better than none.

Story of the Booze Bro Band

Booze Brothers: Getting Bigger by the year!

Welcome to the Story of The Booze (Brothers Band Puppets!)

Over the last 14 years I had shot lots of video footage of our gigs at different weddings, pubs and odd venues. I would watch them back at night when I got home, hoping to have something good to keep - or more recent years - to upload to Youtube for a laugh. After sitting through hours and hours of footage (of the same repeating set list…. yawn) I came to the bitter realization that we weren't the most photogenic of bands any more. The audio was alright, but we possibly looked a little bit on the rough side...

Maybe it was the years of beer slugging and free wedding cake. Perhaps it was that one summer where a mobile hog roast truck magically turned up at all our gigs, and fed us too much pig. Whatever it was, the fact we aren't all 19 years old any more, was looking obvious. I thought about hiring much better looking bunch of younger doubles to mime over the tracks for us. Perhaps just have a really good, old photo come up as the song was playing? As it turns out, I couldn't afford the models and it didn't take long to discover there were no good photos of us anyway; old or new. I needed a better plan.

Younger, thinner days. Well, younger at least.

I've always been a huge fan of Jim Henson and the Muppets since I was small. I used to be glued to Fraggle Rock on a Saturday mornings and Sesame Street when I was off sick from School. I'd recently finished building two replica Ghostbusters Proton Packs for Halloween, surely I could have a go at sewing puppets? I thought fluffy, monster hand puppets would allow me to upload silly visuals to our song tracks and nobody would have to actually look at us! This seemed like a simple, and humane solution. I got to work. I found a website in the USA, project puppet that had starting points for building your own puppets. I poured over their site and over a few weekends, managed to sew a few fluffy monsters. I made a purple puppet, a green tortoise puppet and a spiky haired chap. They looked fun, but hey, didn't really have the air of a band that would play weddings. Well, not the kind of weddings we got booked for!

Fluff and nonsense... and some surprisingly pricey scissors.

Then it gradually dawned on me, these puppets were going to have to look like us, or it wouldn't really work. That was going to prove more difficult. Fortunately this is were the hours and hours of watching footage of the band actually paid off. Well, that, and the fact I'd been staring at them as a band for 14 years - I could try and sketch out basic designs based on their main features and characteristics. Putting pen to paper initially ended with some pretty offensive caricatures of my 'friends' that should probably have been burned, not just confined to a bin. Simplifying people down to a few key features is actually quite difficult, and no where near as easy as I had first thought. Noses, hairlines, daft hats. It's not a huge amount to go on. This wasn't Spitting Image, I only had foam and felt.

Mark or Chris? Which is which: Your call.

I thought then, why not just make our two front men? Chris and Mark dress like the Blues Brothers, all I have to do is make two guys in suits, hats and glasses. When sketching their roughs out, I started thinking of The Muppet Show double act idea. The two grumpy old men on the show Statler and Waldorf, who shout abuse from the wings are shape opposites. One has a round face the other, a long face. The same shape difference is also used in Sesame Street with Burt and Ernie. Sticking to my sketches as closely as I could, I got busy with glue gun, scissors and sponge.

Chris, don't look at me like that!

There is a running joke in our band that stems from a time Chris ordered the wrong size hat. It led to everyone insinuating he had a big head, so it seemed a good idea to have him with the long head design, and make him a tiny hat. This made Marks puppet easier to start, his would be an opposite. Rounder head shape with a larger hat. Placing the features was made simpler once I had the basic character pairing, I decided that doing the puppet characters in pairs would make a lot of the creative decisions for me. It was going really well, but there was a lot to do... More that I bargained for in fact, because I started to get carried away.

Rare, Mark with no shades.

 

In the beginning...

What's the big deal? I hear you ask, why am I looking at this stuff?  

Well, before I launch into a barrage of foam related stories, I feel I owe you some kind of background explanation to all this, as it's not immediately obvious.

The Booze Brother Band in action at Worstead Festival

As you may or may not know, for my hobby I play the drums in a long standing functions/pub band based in Norfolk, England, called The Booze Brothers Band. The beginning of that particular story, is a long, complicated and often contested story by various members of the group. For the sake of this blog, we shall leave that can of worms well and truly sealed and buried in concrete at the bottom of the legends-birthing-lake. It somehow has existed for over 14 years, and that's all we need to worry ourselves with at this point. Over the coming weeks I'm going to take you through how all this came about, the processes, thoughts and really how it happened. It's not top flight comedy gold this stuff, but we shall share regardless....

Welcome to the Story of The Booze... (Brothers Band Puppets!)