The Axtell Puppet Video Challenge.
Trust me. Nothing was EVER true to it's name. There were puppets ... there were Axtell puppets ... there were videos ... with puppets Axtell puppets! But of all there was the challenge.
Believe me ... this was a challenge.
Two start off with ... I want to know, how much I admire what Steve Axtell has done with this contest. Yes sure it promotes his company. But what it also does is promotes ventriloquism and puppetry. It gives the common guy a voice to be heard ... to express themselves. And that is amazing.
But this was a challenge in so many ways. First in just the doing. If you have read Ken Groves "Creating a Character" then you know that his Dad made him practise until he was perfect before he could preform in public. Ken took three years before he reached that point. Extrapolating along that time line, I have about two years, three months to go. I am not really ready to begin this. This was/is not a sudden revelation. I knew this going into the contest. And while I understand what Ken is saying and respect him ... I have another teacher. And while I have no illusions that Stephen Seifert can throw his voice, he does play a mean dulcimer., which is another interest of mine. Steve once told me that sometimes to grow , you needed to make a goal ... a giant leap and put everything you have into this effort. That you make the leap is unimportant. It is the stretching and the learning than comes from it. These two opposing philosophies definitely created a ethical dilemma for me. Even by going through this I still feel a share of guilt.
The next challenge came in the script. I had the concept. One chunk after another. I knew where I wanted to go this. The simple concept of one person is profiting from the work of two. I had it all worked out. But it seemed so angry. I had worked and reworked the chunks. But there was so much anger. I didn't like it. It didn't have the relationship I was striving to put together with my character, Cluck Cluck. So I started all over again, to remold it, reshape it true.
But the other challenge of the script was a time constraint. Five minutes. As I reworked the script to fit the tone, time became the task master. Choosing my words so carefully. Brevity. Not a thing I'm generally known for. So that was a challenge in its self. However, while checking on something, I made an important discover. Had I not discovered it, I would of been sunk to the water. The five minute time limit ... was a typo. The real time limit was half that. Two and a half minutes. Two and a half minutes. I almost produced a haggis. Literally. I had to cut so much. Jokes ... little nuisances that stripped it bare. Oh I understood. I do not have any idea how many entries they get ... but winning ones were numbered in the thirties. So if there were just thirty videos, at five minutes ... those poor judges would be subjected to over four hours of a collection of such amateur ... matter. Still a huge hurtle to manage.
One bit I was working on used the location of Chick Filet. It was perfect as it is closed on Sundays. I simply went after work. Had the drive through all to myself. Scoped it out the first week and took some pictures. Then next week I came back and filmed Cluck Cluck using my Zoom 3 microphone. While it is primarily used for sound recording it can record video. Due to it's flip style shape, it is excellent to record in tight quarters. I got it all done, quite pleased with myself, talked it over with my friend Danny at work. He expressed his surprise that they would allow me to use a trademarked chain. I suddenly remembered the rules about owning everything in my film. By the next Sunday, I had photoshoped the sign and had reshot my footage.
The next challenge was unexpected. I had practiced getting the patter down. Had it down right to the second. I went into this with a certain assurance. I edited it together in Pinnacle and then viewed it. I was devastated. When it was played on the larger screen I saw all the lip movement. Not just quivers. It was bad. I now had a week to prepare, practise and reshoot.
I spent the week doing mirror work and practising before the camera. Then I spent a day and a half filming, and editing. Got it in shape uploaded a version I could live with if not happy with, and started to fill out my entry form. It was then that I noticed that though on my computer it was two and a half minutes ... on YouTube, it was a minute long. Back once again, I sniped a frame here ... a few more there. And at last I could l put my film up and enter.
After a day of waiting, I found out that my entry was excepted. My task is done. I charged myself to come up with an entry that would at least be admittance. I have no further hopes on this work. Any dreams I might have is to do better next year.
