Shadow Puppets
 

Hi everyone,

I was having a conversation with a friend about shadow puppetry in film and I told him there was a recent movie (that means within the last ten years) that has a scene that uses shadow puppetry. I mean a scene within a larger movie--not that the entire movie is shadow puppetry. He disagrees. I am sure I've seen one. I've thought it could be Disney's "Mulan" or Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride," but I'm not sure. I even thought it might have been in "Kill Bill." Anyone know what I'm thinking of?????

Thanks,
John

Hi John, there is a beautiful shadow puppetry sequence depicting Vlad's army in battle at the beginning of Coppola's movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Thanks for the response, Ragandbone. I actually thought of that one too and even checked it. It is actually not puppetry, but live action shown in silhouette. I can relate to why you thought of that one though and it wouldn't have been out of place in that film given all the unusual use of the camara in that movie (I'm thinkinbg particularily of the street scene in London where Dracula first sees Mina--they used a hand-cranked camara from the silent movie era for that and ran color film through it).

Actually the movie turned out to be Corpse Bride. I haven made sure, but an internet searched revealed that Emily's backstory is told through use of shadow puppetry.

Thanks again!

John

That's the one...
 

I know of (One of Deb's favorite movies, Mainly because under all the blood bath is a love story.)

There's a music video by the metal band Mastadon that is almost entirely made up of shadow puppetry (Dont recall the name of the song, but the video had great imagery)

I would love to know where you got the extra info, I have a lot of books, and bookmarked puppet sites, but I haven't really updated any of them in years. The credits for Dracula list the puppetry team, although the term broadens within the medium of film, including animatronic and robotic puppeteering, and even 3d. In my recollection of the film, though, the action was shown through a scrim, which is traditional, but it sounds like you are saying the the light was in front of the puppets, and then the shadows cast behind were filmed?

I used to be a puppeteer, and helped create a couple of shows that used rod, glove, and shadow puppets, and also plain old object manipulation.