Tumbling puppets

sor_sc08_sh0110I spent the day, between waiting for the electricity to come back and go again, by cooking, and photographing shots for the latest draft of storyboards for “Sohni”. I photographed scenes as I storyboarded them in drawing initially, then walk around the stage, looking for other interesting ways of telling the story. This gives me material to play with in the edit. I can see how well the shots connect and what more I can gain from each option.Using the actual puppets allows me to work with them with their actual scale, and details. This is close to how it will be shot, so as a sort of test run, it is hugely helpful. Once I get a photographed draft of both stories down, I can scrutinize things further and try adding or removing other shot ideas.It takes a lot of back and forth of putting too much material in, then cutting it down, adjusting it over and over until it feels right. Shots where there is more to see and understand need to slow down a bit, while others need to move faster. On “Sorath” I am also trying to play with ideas that you could not do in a live puppet performance, but with editing and quick cuts, can accomplish in a film. I have a scene where a character falls down. You would not be able to control the poses of the fall well enough to not make it look like a rag doll if it were performed live as far as I can figure. By taking that movement and cutting it into 4 or 5 shots that interconnect, each shot provides a starting pose and moves towards the next pose, before actually cutting to a shot with that pose. It can work at speed. As a series of stills it works well, it will be interesting to see it in motion. These are the kinds of things that are fun to experiment with in telling the story and playing with the medium.