{"id":4617,"date":"2020-09-10T01:46:37","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T01:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/?p=4617"},"modified":"2020-09-23T02:16:54","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T06:16:54","slug":"creating-live-cinema-with-puppets-and-shadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/2020\/09\/10\/creating-live-cinema-with-puppets-and-shadow\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating live cinema with puppets and shadow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With puppets, projectors and live performances, Manual Cinema creates surreal movies as the audience watches the process unfold. Video shot and edited by Eric Krupke<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The black silhouette of a girl\u2019s profile appears. Her eyelash blinks up, down. A white tear escapes. Her hand brushes it away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huddled around an overhead projector, Julia Miller and Drew Dir are manipulating paper cutouts of eyelashes, a tear and a young girl\u2019s hand. Miller and Dir are two of the artistic directors of Manual Cinema, which combines projections with puppets and live performance to create a surreal cinematic experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDrew\u2019s the tear and the head, and I\u2019m the mouth and the hand,\u201d Miller told Art Beat before a recent performance of their show \u201cLula del Ray\u201d at Artisphere, an arts venue in Arlington, Virginia. \u201cIt\u2019s this dialogue that we\u2019re trying to accomplish together, this single action or series of actions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calling Manual Cinema \u201cshadow puppetry\u201d doesn\u2019t do it justice. The final product is projected on the largest screen, above the human and puppet action. If you never looked down, it would be like watching a film, which is exactly their intention. But the layered theatrical process of creating the film in real time is also visible on the stage below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPuppet by puppet, we animate every single frame to make it look like it\u2019s a movie,\u201d said Sarah Fornace, another co-artistic director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The puppeteers cluster around the glow of three overhead projectors. They lift and lower black paper flaps to block the light from the bulbs, cutting between the projectors like cameras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actors use the light cast from the projectors to create shadows on a smaller second screen. Since shadows can\u2019t reveal facial expressions, the dip of a chin or the shrug of a shoulder convey the character\u2019s emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we were all really interested in nonverbal storytelling because it gives the audience more space to put themselves into the story,\u201d Miller said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s just something that\u2019s an exciting challenge for us: to try and tell, through silhouette and music, these really detailed stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysis:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Movies are composed of various forms, it can come from big studios with astonishing computer effects, and it can also come from people who make live movies by lights and movements of objects. Many have the experience of forming silhouettes of certain shapes like puppy with their hands as kids, this form of movie can be traced back to hundreds of years ago before the real “movies” were born. In the movie theaters, there were many occasions when kids place their hands through the projector’s lights and form silhouettes on the screen, it recalled a subtle memory of many people’s childhood for movies and cinematic experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With puppets, projectors and live performances, Manual Cinema creates surreal movies as the audience watches the process unfold. Video shot and edited by Eric Krupke The black silhouette of a girl\u2019s profile appears. Her eyelash blinks up, down. A white tear escapes. Her hand brushes it away. Huddled around an overhead projector, Julia Miller and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":4618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4617"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5928,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4617\/revisions\/5928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}