In February 2014, Emmy Award winning puppeteer Noel MacNeal (who has worked on Sesame Street, The Muppets and Bear in the Big Blue House) came to Sydney from Brooklyn USA to teach 2 one-week master classes on puppetry for film and television. Kay was really excited to attend!

Over the 6 day workshops at Carriageworks, participants worked with a range of moving mouth puppets and learned about principles in lip-sync and eye focus (while getting used to working with a TV monitor where what you see on the screen is the reverse of what you are doing – this was a challenge in itself!). There were also exercises in developing puppet choreography and staging, which included creating music videos (with props!) and short variety acts.

The course also included a day where the participants were invited to ‘play’ with some of the amazing puppets from Erth like their dragon, dinosaurs and Australian animals, all of which explored skills in full body puppets and bunraku-style operating techniques.

All in all it was a fantastic masterclass - it was amazing to have Noel share his extensive knowledge and experience in puppetry and children’s television, and we were also very thankful to Erth and Carriageworks for making this all happen – we hope Noel will visit Australia again soon!

In August-September 2013, puppeteer Kay Yasugi was involved in devising and creating a new music video for the Aussie music duo Ginger and the Ghost, for their new song “The Mark of Hearts. 

Arms were sprayed in glitter. Bodies were wrapped in branches. Hands were transformed into botanical critters. And everything, in the end, was covered in confetti and colour bombs. The result was an imaginative, other-worldly and slightly psychedelic clip that I hope you will enjoy.

In March 2013, puppeteer Kay Yasugi worked on a short film with a difference.

It involved operating a very realistic ferret puppet – who ends up biting a police officer in the ‘nether regions’. The film is thus appropriately titled ‘The 8 Inch Pinch' and was directed by Scott Walker, produced by Sarah Nichols and stars Toby Truslove as the unfortunate police officer. As bizarre as this all sounds, the film is actually based on a true story of a Queensland constable who was given an assignment to transport an illegal ferret (ferrets are illegal in Queensland) to a wildlife facility – only to be attacked while driving in his police car. (In case you are wondering, the police officer is okay).

Here is the trailer: