PuppetVision: The Movie is a documentary about puppets, puppeteers and puppetry around the world. In 2011, we began an exciting project, meeting and interviewing amazing puppeteers and having fascinating discussions with them about their work; what they do, how they do it and why.
We want to use these fantastic interviews, combined with performance footage, rare film clips, and original puppetry sequences to create a fun, accessible documentary that takes you on a globe trotting journey to meet these incredible artists and explore the wonderful work that they do. We want to take the art of puppetry apart, show you how it works and surprise you with what you find.
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Over the past two years we've received an incredible amount of cooperation, support and encouragement from friends, family and the international puppetry community on this project. In 2011/12, Andrew raised $1,600 in seed funding for this film through a previous campaign on IndieGoGo. We've also benefited from lots of generous in-kind support from a variety of organizations and individuals in several different countries.
Nevertheless, PuppetVision: The Movie remains an enormously expensive project. To date we've self-funded the vast majority of its $60,000 budget ourselves, but we need to raise $15,000 to complete the film by September 2014 and share it with as wide an audience as possible throughout the rest of 2014 and 2015.
The PuppetVision Story
PuppetVision: The Movie is inspired by The PuppetVision Blog, one of the Internet's most popular puppetry websites.
The mission of PuppetVision has always been to discover and share great puppetry from all over the world. It began in the early 2000s with a series of small, informal screenings of short puppet films and videos in Toronto, Canada. With the rise of online video and a desire to reach a wider audience, those screenings morphed into The PuppetVision Blog, which launched in November 2004. Over the past decade, the blog has grown to the point where over 70,000 individuals from more than 100 different countries watch, read about and discover puppetry through PuppetVision and its social media channels every year.
With this documentary, we want to take the concept of "PuppetVision" to the next level and we really do need your help to make this happen. There are so many countries (like Japan, Australia and South Africa) that we haven't been able to make it to yet. Your help enables us to interview as many talented and inspiring puppeteers from as many different places as possible and to make the best film possible.
Who We Are
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Andrew is an independent filmmaker and professional puppeteer. He began his career performing Czech-style black light puppetry across Canada and abroad. He has designed, directed and performed puppets throughout North America and in far-flung places across the globe. In addition to writing the PuppetVision Blog, Andrew enjoys sharing his passion for puppetry and film by giving workshops and presentations at schools and conferences internationally.
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Morgan is an actor, writer and producer who loves both people and puppetry. She's previously worked both in front of and behind the camera producing entertainment news as well as written and directed several plays. She thinks that interviewing talented and fascinating artists about their work and what inspires them is just about the best thing ever.
A Quick Look Behind The Scenes
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Morgan in Europe interviewing puppeteer Anne Klinge of Germany's Fusstheater.
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Andrew in Asia with Wayang Kulit Master I Gusti Putu Sudarta of Indonesia's Bau Ganda Sari Theatre.
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Make-up being applied to create a hand puppet during production of an original puppetry sequence created for the film.
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Morgan helping to bring finger puppets to life on set.
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Andrew in Taiwan with (left to right) Interpreter Edy Hung, puppeteer Emma Cho and Master Huang Shih-chin.
What We Need To Make This Happen
Here's where the $15,000 we're raising will go...
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International Travel Expenses - We pride ourselves on traveling cheap. Whenever possible, we take buses or trains instead of planes and stay at hostels and guesthouses (and sometimes on puppeteers' couches) instead of hotels. Although we have funded almost all of the travel expenses on this project by ourselves so far, it's impossible for us to reach all of the international artists we need to without your support.
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Licensing Stock & Archival Footage - We've spent five years researching, scouring libraries and film archives in several different countries for this project. We've found some incredible archival footage of rare, almost-never-before-seen puppetry from the 19th and first half of the 20th century. The rights to use this footage are very expensive and are controlled by a variety of different agencies and institutions. Although many of them are willing to work with us at very reduced rates, licensing is still the single biggest expense we have.
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Post Production - We believe it's very important to finish the film to the highest quality possible. We're editing the film ourselves, but want to engage sound and post production professionals to help mix and composite the final film.
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Film Festival Submissions - The primary goal of this project is to share puppetry and the work of great puppetry artists with as wide an international audience as possible. We're flattered that several international puppetry and animation festivals have expressed interest in screening the documentary - before it's even complete! - but in order for it to reach the widest audience possible around the world we expect to incur over $1,000 in film festival submission fees.
