Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey

I just finished watching this documentary Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey, about the man behind Elmo - Kevin Clash. He never stopped chasing his dream and always would work towards it, taking the initiative and pushing forward with his own creations to learn the art of a puppeteer. If you want to become something, if you have a love for something, you shouldn't give up. You need to work hard to succeed in what you do.

It's really quite fascinating how sucked in and involved you can become with something like Elmo, Sesame Street or The Muppets. These people, these puppeteers are taking a static object and literally bringing it to life. They are bringing them to life in a way that children are transfixed by them, learn from them, look up to them. They are in essence animators. Seeing how involved Kevin Clash is, and how much knowledge he has isn't something that has happened overnight, he has spent his whole life trying to perfect his art and is passing his knowledge on to others.

Something that was mentioned in the documentary and which I found really useful was that every character needs their own specific hook, take Miss Piggy for example, she is a truck driver wanting to be a woman. It's these specific hooks which make the character unique from one another and it gives them their own personality. It makes them become more life-like, more believable. This hook pulls the viewer in and can grab their imagination, you want to create something that people can laugh with, connect with, sympathise with. This can easily be transferred across into animation when creating a character but also with films and games too.

There are tips that Kevin gave to other puppeteers such as no matter what, you should always keep your puppet moving (even if its just small body movements like the head tilting) or else it just becomes static and the believability of life disappears. This is something I will keep in mind when I come to animate a real character, it needs that movement to keep the audience engaged and to keep that connection alive. This is definitely something to watch if you're wanting to be a puppeteer or animator, or anyone who loves puppetry. It really gives an insight to what goes on behind the scenes and how much work one man has put into his dream for it to become a reality.