Con Quest interviews Dr Howard Chilton

Con Quest our Corporate Creatures™ Business News presenter interviews well-known Australian Neonatal Pediatrician, Dr Howard Chilton. This is a promo of the full interview in which Dr Chilton discusses the similarity in behavior between newborn babies and corporate executives. It gives a fascinating insight into human behaviour and explains where it all originates. You can find Dr Chilton's book, 'Baby Onboard' here! You can view all Con's short pieces at Corporate Creatures.
The full interview can be ordered here!

Con Quest reveals Corporate Creatures™

Con Quest, the (CCBN) business news presenter from Corporate Creatures™ has made a great introduction video to the Corporate Creatures website. Here he shows off his wacky interviewing skills in the business world and gives an insight into what we can expect from him in the near future. You can Face Book Con Quest here and Twitter Con Quest here. Check the CC website out here!

Hula Hoops Puppet Ads

The British 'Hula Hoops' are a brand of biscuits are launching a brand new TV advertising campaign in July. This UK £78m brand is launching the Golden Hoop Film Awards campaign to encourage consumer participation and, simply get them to do what they usually do when they pick up a pack of Hula Hoops, to put them on their fingers and play with them! Play with them, like puppets?

The promotion encourages consumers to take inspiration from the TV campaign and have finger fun with Hula Hoops, challenging them to produce a creative short film using only their fingers and Hula Hoops to win a holiday for a family of four to Hollywood. This competition has been designed to engage consumers and generate mass consumer awareness. I believe anyone can enter and you can find their new website, filled with the latest finger puppet entires here!

ABBA - The Last Puppet Video

In 2004, the most expensive music video ever made in Sweden was Abba's The Last Video. Four puppets, manipulated by puppeteers from the Jim Henson company together with some British and local Swedish puppeteers were brought to Stockholm to make this film.

The puppets, miniature caricatures of the original Swedish super group from the seventies ABBA, were trying to get a recording contract in Sweden in 1974. The record boss, however, isn't very impressed by their size. The four original ABBA members also made cameo appearances in this video, which was especially made for the Eurovision Songcontest. You can now watch the 'Making of the Abba's Last Video' here!
(Thanks to PuppeteersUnite)

An Intensive 3 Week Summer TV Puppetry Workshop 2010 in Sydney, Australia

Our first International three-week intensive Puppetry for Television and the Web workshop will take place at the Wesley Institute for the Arts in Sydney from 11 to 30 January 2010.

This puppetry workshop is suitable for film-makers, performers, puppeteers, educators and others interested in learning about puppetry for the screen. The course includes design and construction of puppets, manipulation for the camera, developing scenarios for performance, voice characterisation, and directing short performances. Participants will develop, perform, produce and edit their short scenarios for webcast on a dedicated puppetry ‘You Tube’ channel.

This course examines the art of puppetry in the 20th century and its effectiveness as a medium of communication in our digital age. The history of the puppet on film and television from Burr Tillstrom’s Kukla, Fran and Ollie and Jim Henson’s Muppets to contemporary productions will be explored.

Participants will work with professional puppet builders to design and construct their characters. Specialised puppetry techniques required to perform for the camera will be developed. We will specifically focus on developing characters and will spend time improvising on camera to discover the puppet’s individual personality, voice and movement.

We will explore the art of the puppet effectively interacting with live performers on camera.
An Australian cinematographer will teach camera techniques to capture and enhance the performance on screen. Each group will have an opportunity to edit their short pieces.
The participants will investigate effective television techniques and learn how these differ from developing a production or series for the web.

The workshop is produced by Gary Friedman Productions in association with Wesley Institute for the Arts and is aimed at anyone interested in producing, performing and directing puppetry for television and the internet. We have all the facilities and nearby accommodation available and it'll be a wonderful opportunity to experience an Australian summer. For full information, email me here!

Kiss the Girl

A really cute musical number 'Kiss the Girl' was posted this week on College Humor (never really quite got the spelling of Humour right!) It's sub-titled 'Does sex cause crabs?' and is a great Muppet Show spoof. The puppets in the video were designed and built by James Wojtal, who also performed in the video along with Frankie Cordero and Rei Radilla. You can watch it here!
(Thanks to Andrew at PuppetVision)

African TV Puppetry Workshop 2009 is First Official International UNIMA Project

Internationally acclaimed Kenyan puppetry group "CHAPS" have had their first 'Puppetry for Television and Web Workshop' scheduled for October 2009 accepted as an official pilot project of the UNIMA Commission for International Cooperation in Switzerland. For further details, see here!

The two-week intense workshop, which will be conducted by African-Australian puppeteer, Gary Friedman, is due to take place during the International Puppetry Festival in Nairobi in October 2009. The workshop is aimed to give the already existing group of over four hundred East African puppeteers, who were trained by Friedman in the nineteen-nineties in 'Puppetry for Development' work, further skills to take their messages into the multi-media, via television and the internet.

I recorded a short film on CHAPS 'Puppets Against Corruption' project in the early nineteen-nineties which you can view here!

Spitting Image arrives in Africa!

How can we ever forget the Spitting Image hit in the eighties "I've never met a nice South African"? Spitting Image was the very successful British puppet satire television series, produced by renowned cartoonists Peter Fluck and Roger Law, which ran on the ITV network from 1984 to 1996. I loved the show and always wanted to introduce the concept to South Africa during those dark Apartheid years in the eighties, when I performed my own satire 'Puns en Doedie' (Puppets Against Apartheid) in the streets. It would never have been allowed in South Africa. It was, however, taken up at the time by Australia as 'Rubbery Figures' in various forms from 1984 to 1990 and even in France Les Guignols de l'info (English: News Puppets) is a satirical latex puppet show broadcast on Canal+, which soon gained a rival series on French TV, Le Bébête Show, starring François Mitterrand as Kermit the Frog.

Well, like it or not, two decades later, the renowned television concept is finally hitting Africa. Both South Africa and Kenya are currently launching their own versions of this political hit puppetry series. In Kenya The XYZ Show has just released a pilot trailer, which you can view on You Tube, although their website doesn't seem to be working. The official series is scheduled to launch on Kenyan Television on 26 May 2009.

The South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC) who commissioned political satirist and cartoonist, Jonathan Shapiro to produce a new television series 'Z News' are still sitting with the pilot seventeen months later. The pilot of Z News was produced for the SABC in December 2007. The pilot is still buried deep in SABC bureaucracy and no decisions have yet been made as to it's screening. Is this a sign of 'the return of censorship suffered under Apartheid'? Let's hope a decision is made soon! You can also find 'Z News' on Face Book here!

UNIMA - 80 years old and still growing

Eighty years ago, on 20th May 1929 a group of like minded people from Bulgaria, France, Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria, Romania and the Soviet Union came together in Prague to form an organisation dedicated to the art of the puppet.
UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette) in a short time built itself up from a small circle of friends into a world organisation. It is notable, from the point of view of cultural history, that UNIMA was the first international theatre body.

Over the past eighty years, UNIMA has had a rich and varied history, which took the organisation through Second World War, where many of its activities were taken underground in Europe, through the cold war into a completely new era. The strength of UNIMA was and will continue to be rooted in the fact that it was always able to rise above these problems.

During the eighties and nineties, there was an explosion of new Centres and members in all the continents beyond Europe, and these new Centres have resulted in new territorial groupings, for example the Asian, African and American Commissions, intended to facilitate communications and deal with new responsibilities. After forty years in Prague UNIMA changed its base for the first time: the General Secretariat moved to Warsaw, Poland, where it remained for eight years until 1980, when the headquarters were transferred to Charleville-Mézières, France. Charleville was already the site of a world festival and soon became the home not only of UNIMA but also of the Institute International de la Marionnette.

Since 1929, when UNIMA was founded, the world has changed and so has UNIMA itself. It is now a recognized and a respected world organisation. The spectrum of UNIMA activities has expanded to a great extent. The significance of this is associated with the far greater importance which attaches to puppetry now.

The puppet can nowadays be found in every genre of the contemporary performing arts including the mass media. In theatre, film, television, the world-wide web, celebration, ritual, education, and healing, like all art, a means of bringing peoples closer together and of fighting intolerance and violence.

UNIMA's long tradition does not stand in the way of its role as a dynamic force. It must, however, always remember the humanist ideals of universal friendship and understanding contained in the statement that introduces its constitution. UNIMA is responsible not only to its members but to all whose lives have been enriched by the spirit and beauty of the puppet. Viva UNIMA and viva the Power of the Puppet!

Con Quest introduces Limmud-Oz Festival

I discovered this short film today in which CCBN presenter, Con Quest, introduces Limmud-Oz 2009 - a festival of Jewish Learning and Culture, taking place at the University of New South Wales in Sydney from 6-8 June 2009. It looked like a good commercial, so I thought I'd share it with you. If you want to know more information, check out their website here!
Corporate Creatures Business News presenter, Con Quest, can be seen here!