so hey everyone norm from tested here and
as you can see we've taken the glass off the display shelves here
in anticipation of prop stores entertainment memorabilia live auction
happening august 26 and 27th and today we're going to take a look
at some of the puppets that are part of this auction
these range from hand puppets from wire controlled puppets to also motion
controlled and electronically controlled puppets
from some great films some even films that adam has worked on
let's take a look at weibo from flubber so brandon today we're looking at some
of the puppets that you guys have as a part of this
amazing option this collection of wide range of
puppets from hand controlled uh stop-motion
and also electronically controlled let's start with this this weibo this is from
flubber yeah yeah this is one of the hero weibo puppets it was a fully motion
controlled puppet you know they put it on a motion control
rig and then it's filled with motors and servos and mechanisms to make
it operate i mean you can see that's the original uh connector pin
yeah with about you know 30 different points of
connection in there um it's been restored
with just a little bit of its original functionality so there are some
uh lights and and and gizmos to play with here do you wanna
oh can i here let me just switch that on for you oh my gosh
that's so cool do that switch you'll get the lights on the front and then if you
just turn each one of those dials oh wow and it's 100 in analog control
how much i'm turning the dial here and so an operator
would be able to puppet this for personality for character
to match the performance yes yeah you can hear how loud it is
obviously you don't get that in the final film but there's so much going on
with it absolutely oh wow the lenses and
it's so much of this because this control box i can see i'm going to turn
this off now is is just four dials right yeah
so the operator has to be able to manipulate it in a way to synchronize
multiple dials at once uh which you can see
some operators for some of the the puppets make it they
they they kind of design the controls for the animation like this
yeah yeah i mean obviously there's a lot of art and puppeteering itself and
it's one thing to have a mechanism that will perform but it's another thing to
have a performer who can perform and can actually use that thing to
bring a character to life and i mean this raptor foot is from the original
jurassic park made at stan winston studios and
obviously the majority of the skin has been stripped off of this but i think
this was actually a costume foot a performer would put this on just
like a shoe and then the dinosaur foot comes out in
front of their toes but you can see the cables are still functional and so
by pulling these levers actually this is on a spring and this is
you remember the shot in the film where the raptor
tapped tapping yes yeah so if i was a better puppeteer i'd make that tap for
you on the floor um and then these just have a basic sort
of curl mechanism that can be used probably for in the walking of the thing
or just for a static shot just to bring it
to life a little bit right and you know again it's like they're always
marrying art and technology so you have to have the technology element of this
that's going to give it the motion but you've also got
to have the art i mean look at the the claw the paintwork on the claw and the
little bit of foam latex skin that remains
it's beautiful i think just the claw is a great piece you know and so totally
totally whole footage and there's also a lot of art in the design of the
articulation the spring work so that you have that bounce back and
it's a collaboration because someone's wearing this
while another operator is animating just the toes
yes yes absolutely wow uh some other characters of course of all different
scales you have stop motion but recognize zero
from uh from nightmare yeah nightmare seems to
be one of those films that that everyone just loves you know and
hasn't hasn't lost an ounce of popularity
um we've always had a lot of interest in the puppets from nightmare specifically
i think this is the first zero we've ever handled and it's neat it's got a
little aluminum mount on the bottom where it would have been put on a rig
and there's just a little piece of string coming through it i think by
pulling that little piece of string puppeteer could make his head nod a
little bit the one sad thing about zero is he has lost his pumpkin nose he's
supposed to have a pumpkin nose a la rudolph
um that's no longer present but it is an original
uh zero puppet from the film as i say has that armature on the bottom
indicating that it was used and mounted at some point which is cool
awesome and this is from labyrinth yes so that's sir didymus
another real fan favorite you know labyrinth as a title
very cold very beloved by kids of the 80s and cergitimus is a super memorable
part of it this this was a puppet head and so there's actually like a silk sock
or stocking that comes out of the bottom of it
puppeteer puts his arms through and just you know old school traditional hand
puppet yeah the jim henson muppets right yup
yup um and then of course creepy but also
full on horror you got aliens alien queen here
yes i've seen a couple different versions of this pop up which version is
this they did make a few um this is maybe one
of the few that we've seen that that was uh fully mechanized with the cables you
can see the cables that are coming out of the back here
you can see some of the mechanisms that go into the shoulders and then down
in the large arms and also in the small arms
and one of the cable is still attached i think if i operate this bicycle
controller you can see the jaw mechanism does still
work um and and you know there's a number of
cables on the back of this i think originally it had quite a few mechanisms
this is the only one that's still connected obviously you wouldn't want to
manipulate any of the foam latex skins at this point they're very dried and
largely missing from the arms but like the crown
the head the face these are all cast urethane
so they've actually held up quite well and you know when you're
manipulating the jaw there you're not stretching any foam latex or anything so
it's safe to do so and like you're saying they made a few
of these i think a couple were what you'd call like floppy versions or throw
around versions for when it falls down the airlock
but this one has got the the the cables which indicates it's probably used in
close-ups you can see there's like some fishing
line on it where they were obviously just rigging it up to do different
things at different times and obviously it's got the big urethane
tail as well yeah one of the amazing things i love
about creature design is they take the elements of the familiar you know
bipedal design that we all understand how animals that we
see in the real world kind of move and then
can add all sorts of fantastical elements and even grotesque elements
rick baker was a master of that and you guys had a big option with him
you have a creature here from men in black three yeah they made some amazing
stuff for men in black three and a lot of it sadly you never really get to see
in the film you know they do they do things for
those men black movies where they go in the headquarters and they want to be
really well dressed with just a whole bunch of different aliens from
around the galaxy and that's what this guy represents
you know he's just a background alien but a really cool design i mean rick
put together a great team of designers and artists and just kind of let them go
to town on building their own aliens and so this guy he's got the split face
with the exposed brain probably just a few mechanisms maybe
some servos in there just to operate the lips or something
just to give it a little bit of life if it was to appear on camera
but i think they built over 100 different aliens from that film
and some really great stuff a lot of retro stuff
playing on classic aliens and monsters of the 50s and 60s
you know tying into the time travel element of that third movie
um but it's a yeah it's a it's a lovely piece of art really
do you find that collectors when they acquire these pieces try to restore them
to or leave them as it is sometimes i mean it's always a discussion i remember
seeing this piece a few years ago and there was definitely some work that
was undertaken on it you know originally it was not on a
stand so it had to have a custom stand made just to
lock it into a good position that's really the first part of keeping
something safe is making sure it's not just rattling
around in a box and then i know there was some preservation stabilization work
done on the foam latex you know on these little arms for
example so much of the skin is gone if you were to recreate that it would
just be full recreation at that point so i think
the current owner found it more interesting to leave the mechanics
exposed and obviously to me it doesn't really
detract so it's such a small part of it and what that does is just
lets you see that it is a real film puppet yeah you know overall the
aesthetics of it i mean from a few feet away it presents
beautifully yeah and it just allows fans get a direct connection
to not only the visual aesthetics but also the performance of
these characters whether it's electronic controlled hand puppeted
you know manipulated manually in stop motion
or with wires so so cool yeah all part of the ingenuity of filmmaking
right and just figuring out how to get an image on screen especially in the
pre-digital era like a movie like aliens is
it's like okay how are we going to do this we know we need a full-size puppet
but we're also going to have to have miniature not just one miniature we're
going to need a miniature that does this and a separate miniature that can do
that and it really shows you the logistics and
the critical thinking and the thought process that goes into filmmaking and
figuring out especially visual effects you know how
to put an image on the screen right right something that they built to
have to work for a couple months and now decades later you know still can operate
that i mean i can't imagine someone picking this up and not wanting
to pop at this yeah it's just so cool thank you yeah yeah no absolutely thanks
for coming down norm good to see you as always
you