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!!

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.