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Think puppets are just for kids? Not so! Sure, kids DO love puppets, and they ARE frequently used in children’s productions, but simply being popular in one area doesn’t mean they can’t be popular in a large number of areas. Take animation, for example: it’s often seen as kid’s stuff, but one of the most beloved and longest-running sitcoms of all time, a cultural mainstay, the Simpsons, is very much a show created for adults. Likewise, the most well-known puppet production of all time, The Muppets, is a show directly at adults. (Both of these shows appeal to all ages, but that appeal is a testament to the skill of the writers, creators, and performers of the show, not the medium in which they’re presented)
Puppets are an incredibly old art form; in some countries, it’s even believed that puppets were used in plays before actors were! Quite amazingly, puppets, which have been used for 30,000 years, have remained in wide use the whole time, in cultures all across the globe. There are several main kinds of puppets in use today, with the most popular being Finger/Hand Puppets, Marionettes, Shadow Puppets, and Rod Puppets. The most popular example of rod puppets are the Muppets (not every Muppet is a rod puppet, however; while Kermit could be called a rod puppet, owing to the way his hands are controlled, a puppet like Fozzie or Rowlf wouldn’t technically fit that definition; a more accurate name for those are Live Hand puppets, since actors wear the puppet’s hands like gloves, and operate the fingers directly). In addition to these most common types, many cultures have their own unique puppetry styles:
There are many culturally and geographically specific variations on the main types, with some being fairly minor (such as the slight variations of complexity that different countries have made to their shadow puppets and marionettes). And while puppets are often used for entertainment purposes, they have long been used as morality plays, as education, as commentary and political satire. Puppets are uniquely suited to all of these things, and continue to thrive in these areas.  Historically speaking, it’s only fairly recently that puppets have been seen to be strictly for children, and in many ways that’s a North American viewpoint; in Europe, adults regularly flock to puppet-based theatre productions aimed at adults, without blinking an eye. It’s become more common for puppets to be used in the context of children’s entertainment, but that doesn’t mean that children are the only people who enjoy puppetry; in fact, people of all ages have long enjoyed watching a good puppet show.  A very important use of puppets, through the years, has been in education. These days, of course, the highest-profile children’s show to make extensive use of puppets is Sesame Street. There are dozens of other children’s shows making good use of puppets to help children learn, but this use is significantly older than Big Bird or Oscar the Grouch. Some of the earliest uses of puppetry was to education, inform, and even to offer up political commentary and satire. A person takes more careful notice of a puppet than they might do of a human, making puppets an ideal way to educate. Small children are attracted to the relatively simple geometry of a puppet, to the bright colours and exaggerated gestures. And lest you think that this educational value is only for the tots, puppets were used extensively in countries all over the world to teach people of all ages, before the advent of organized schooling. This practice continues in some areas in Africa, to this very day!  If you’re talking about puppetry within the last 60 years, of course, one name comes up often, which is Jim Henson. He created an international phenomenon out of his Muppets, starting with commercials, then expanding to night-time talk shows (Rowlf the Dog was a recurring guest on the James Dean show), and finally moving on to full-blown television shows and movies. Henson’s shadow looms large over the entire art-form, and is a powerful reminder how of popular puppets can be if treated properly, and how impactful and important they can be.  While the Muppets have always been kid-friendly, even when they aren’t specifically targeted at children, there are many uses of puppetry that skew to the “blue,” oftentimes trading (as dotBoom does) on the ruling cultural impression that puppets are indeed for children to gain extra effect. If you expect puppets to be nice and friendly, and they are foul-mouthed and offensive, then that difference will prove all the more shocking, and, more often than not, all the more humorous. Avenue Q, the hit puppet-based musical, which has been lighting up broadway since 2003 (making it the 27th longest running musical in broadway history), and won several Tony awards, including the Tony Award for Best Musical, makes extensive use of that, showing a distorted view of a Sesame Street-esque world, with foul-mouthed and foul-minded characters (who just happen to be puppets) trying to make it through the day. And while we’re on the subject of puppets in theatre, “Audrey II” has served as the man-eating centrepiece of “The Little Shop of Horrors” since 1982, a show which to this day draws cheers of delight from its audiences. Many adult-friendly shows featuring puppets have graced television over the years. Farscape, a popular sci-fi show featured heavy uses of puppets as the aliens on the show, Captain Scarlet was an adult-oriented show by the creators of Thunderbirds, and shows like Greg the Bunny and Puppets Who Kill were both aimed squarely at adult audiences, and there are many other examples. Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson even went so far as to make a film, called Meet the Feebles, which casts a Muppet-esque group of characters in a bleak light indeed, with the entire purpose of the satirical film being to shock you at every possible turn. As you can see, puppets are incredibly versatile, with nearly limitless uses!  Puppets are much more than a one-trick pony; they are incredibly versatile, and can be used quite effectively in any number of areas. Below is a list of just some of the myriad ways in which puppets, designed and built by Hoggworks Studios, can be used to make your project or production stand out, spread your message more effectively, and make it more FUN. In Your Creative Using puppets as visual elements in your branding is powerful, as it serves to set your creative apart from the rest in a visually exciting way. And whether the specific use here is to include puppets in print ads, television spots, on a website, or in any other way, a puppet sets the tone of the creative, making it more visually exciting, and adding a dash of whimsy to it. Even if you don’t want your creative to feature a puppet performance, remember that you can use them as static elements, rather than animation or CG. Puppets photograph fantastically well, and if you want puppets to serve as models, you always have the opportunity later on to promote them to video! Spokesperson or Mascot Another great way to use a puppet is as a spokesperson, or a mascot. These mascots can be the client or company personified, and can take on the visual traits, and characteristics and attitudes of what you want an audience to feel when they think of the client or company. This can be a very powerful branding element, because while you can certainly get a human spokesperson to represent your company, and that person can act the part to a certain extent, she’s going to be limited by the fact that she’s human; this limitation doesn’t exist with puppets, as they can be designed to look exactly the way you need them to be, in every way. And while you might be considering using an animated spokesperson or a CG mascot, a puppet is physically REAL, and can interact with people directly. Also, another tremendous benefit: if your spokesperson ever needs to make public appearances, you could have several copies made, such that it could be in many places at once. Let’s see a HUMAN spokesperson pull that off! Training Videos For most employees, watching training videos is a chore. Who wants to know about the latest procedures for shredding unwanted paper documents? Who wants to lose their lunch hour to a polemic about the importance of keeping your workspace clear? Hardly anybody. But swap out those stodgy corporate communicators for a handful of colorful, comedic puppets, and you’ll hold your employees attention forever; they’ll WANT to watch your training videos, over and over, they’ll be able to quote your training back to you chapter and verse. Think of the efficiency! Music Videos What improves a music video more than puppets? Nothing, that’s what. Puppets are a natural fit for music videos, whether you’re talking about turning your bandmembers into puppets (which is always super-cool), making an all-puppet video of another kind (the puppets could be acting out the lyrics), or simply adding a few puppets to accentuate the visuals of the video. The musicians would love to get to sing with puppets, and your audience would love to see it; it’s just that simple. Many musicians have already taken the plunge, including Weezer, Bjork, Supergrass and Genesis, and done so to great effect, and that’s to say nothing of the dozens of musicians who appeared on the Muppet Show — their musical performances with the Muppets are still circulated widely by fans, to this day. In Video Productions Puppets work well in any kind of video production:
If you’re not sure which of these uses would best suit your needs, don’t worry; this is by no means meant as a complete list of the ways that puppets can be used to enhance your project. There are many more, and there are always new ways to utilize puppets to create a more exciting, dynamic, fun, and memorable experience for your client and your audience. We’d love to start a conversation with you about how we can best utilize our puppets to create the most valuable experience possible for you, and how we can create something new and unique, something that nobody’s ever seen before, something that nobody will ever forget. |
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