- Everything okay?
- Good god, I'm fine.
How are you, Ziffy?
- Feeling great.
- Good, good, why don't you just keep yourself,
you know, tangled here, alright?
Just keep them together.
Now we have a nice new alien that's being performed
magically by this wonderful performer here.
And this character will then tend to come up,
hi, and look over your set.
Pay attention to your monitor.
Your monitor is your reference.
It's your framing, as we discussed earlier.
Again, you go back to your lighting.
We keep our eye focus down.
Our playing field is in that direction.
So you always want to keep that your eyes are here.
If you're looking up, it makes our eyes look up,
and what are you looking at, okay?
Now, one of the things is, what we do is puppet blocks.
This set is actually perfect for that, is that we have
a high rock here, so gives us chance to get this puppeteer
to keep her head down, keep the character up,
this is where the challenge is in,
and using this block,
and always move close to the set, because the closer you are
to the set, the closer you are from being seen.
No different than a live show.
Think of it as a stage, alright?
The closer they are here, the better off we are.
Less chance of seeing that head.
So, sometimes if you have that situation in your design,
you want to make sure that there's a rock not too far away,
and keep her head out of the shot.
So this is where our lighting comes into play.
As we talked about, our key light,
our fill light, our back light.
Our back light is helping our secondary cast back here.
That secondary cast gets to work off their monitor
and be conscious of the set.
Now they're kinda really pretty much locked in,
so when you design a scene, and they can't move in,
with a set like this, you get a chance
to let these characters go down behind the set, okay?
They get to use their performers, and then when we're ready,
and Pilot walks in, they can sneakily come up.
Now, we're gonna set the stage here.
Pilot's gonna walk in like he came out of a scene.
He may talk to you, and then,
with a couple of beats of dialogue from our director,
you guys will then come up behind him, he won't see you.
Alright?
So you want to wait till he moves to frame,
into center, okay?
- [Male Puppeteer] Okay.
- We'll do a little rehearsal here,
so that when you guys are working
out there with multiple puppeteers,
your camera crew gets to know what's going on,
and your performers get to know what's going on.
So, what we'll wind up doing is
at the top of our scene,
Pilot walks in, plays to camera one.
Alright?
As he's talking, not knowing where he is,
'kay, a beat, you guys notice that,
and we'll use, you characters come up.
Nice turn, ah-ight?
And that's where they get a chance
to have a little character development.
Keep the eyes down.
Now one of the things on your monitors
for you back puppeteers is use it as reference.
So if Pilot's here, focus on him.
You have an eye sight line here.
His eye sight line is to that camera.
Your eye sight line is to the character.
When you're doing multiple performances
and you have other characters,
you want to create a real world.
Pilot's the only one that's gonna talk to the audience.
These characters are gonna focus on him.
So that gives you a chance of setting up a multiple scene,
and understanding how to perform it.
Alright, we good back here, gang?
Alright, let's get, - [Puppeteers] Yeah.
- [Bill] Have we got all our cameras in place?
Alright?
- Bah.
- Alright, how are you?
- [Female Puppeteer] Good.
- You're good?
Okay, now what you wanna do is make sure you stay close,
and always stay to the set, okay?
The farther you move away, greater chance we get to see you.
Alright, so you always wanna be conscious as a performer
to understand your surroundings on set,
because when your character has a tendency
of moving into place, he needs to know,
the more characters you have, the more chaos you have,
and you wanna make sure that everyone understands
where they're gonna be.
Any questions?
- [Male Puppeteer] Let's do it.
- Okay, you good?
Alright.
Okay, so we will get Pilot over here,
and we'll get ready for the top of our scene.
Alright, our director over there will say action, alright?
Okay.
Ah-ight?
- [Director] Alright, action.
(humming)
- Oh, strange land and a strange place.
I'm not quite sure where I am.
This time machine just dropped me off exactly
where I can't make up my mind where I am.
It's strange.
I could be on an alien land.
I could be lost forever.
I coulda had a three hour tour.
Who knew?
It doesn't matter where I am, but you never know.
There could be strange creatures
out there - [Ziffy] Hello.
- that could devour me for lunch.
- Hey.
- Ho, look, it's someone that's actually a salad.
- Hey. - Talk about lunch.
We could have him as a salad.
- I'm a Zifid.
- You're a Zifid?
- This is Planet Zifors, welcome.
- Oh, so that's where I am.
Hmm, I was kinda wondering.
Hey, you folks out there.
Did you see this on your road map?
See what happens when you don't use your cellphone
and use the GPS at the same time?
You drive right off the world.
Okay, so Zifid, are you a tossed salad
or a stationary salad?
- There's nothing salad about me.
I am the emperor of the Zifid people.
- Great, we're totally alone with a salad planet.
So, can I ask you a question?
- Of course.
- How do you get outta here?
- Um, there's only one way out.
- Tada.
That's a dramatic look if I've ever seen one.
- Death. - What is that?
- Death is your only way out, little bear.
- To camera frame.
Now this was your chance with the cue.
You gotta read your script, buddy.
- Oh yeah, sorry, I wasn't paying attention.
- Kay, to our folks out there,
- The only way out...
- we went through an awkward moment here, ready?
We'll try it again.
- Okay.
The only way out is death.
Death.
Death. - This is what?
What is it?
The only way out is what?
- Death. - Ooh.
- Is back.
- Death.
- [Director] Death.
- Oh, death, I was wondering, maybe I just need
somebody to talk salad for me.
- You refer to me as salad
one more time,
I will
destroy you.
- Well, there's no destroying on this show.
We kinda have to keep the sets.
They could be used for another webcast.
- That's a good point.
- Yeah, thanks.
- What do you think?
- Oh, well, you see, one of the things that the folks want
to learn out there is that in our character development
and in our world, it's how we work in multiple places.
Yes, my back is to the audience, but at that point,
the three camera shoot took care of him.
Outside of that, I get to talk to you.
When I have just a unruly sense of timing,
I'll go back to the guy that looks like a salad.
- He did it again.
- Yeah, salad. - He called me a salad.
- Okay, let's end this scene.
Thank you for sharing this interesting planet
where salads roam free.
(Zifid groans)
Okay, bye.
- Thank you.
- [Director] Bow, and goodbye.