Wednesday 13 April 2016

OUIL406 Visual Communication - The Muppet Show

The Muppet Show is one of the most successful TV shows of all time. Three movies were made in Hensons lifetime, The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan. The Muppet Show ran for 5 series, with 120 episodes from 1976 to 1981.

Henson created another innovation starting with The Muppet Show - all productions would be platformed up so humans and puppets could interact convincingly without restricting puppet movement.

Muppets performed by Jim Henson:
. Kermit The Frog
. Rowlf The Dog
. The Swedish Chef
. Waldorf
. Andy Pig
. Link Hogthrob
. The Muppet Newsman
. Beautiful Day Monster
. Mahna Mahna



Jim Henson is most identified with Kermit the Frog, with some saying the Kermit was like Jims alter-ego. Even though Kermit's just a puppet, the relationship between him as a character and Jim is beautiful. I was watching a documentary on youtube about Jim Henson and someone said 'Kermit was Jim's soul, when you heard Kermit talk that was from Jim's heart'

'All you have to do is look at Kermit the Frog and thats Jim Hensons'

'He was a little frog growing up in a small town swamp and he had a dream of making millions of people happy. So he gathered up his friends and went to Hollywood and then he shared that dream with other people and it got bigger the more he shared it with." - Heather Henson 

That last quote from Heather Henson is such a beautiful interpretation of Kermit and her father, I think it'll be really important to include Kermit in my work, it seems like Henson was really connected to him as a character and Kermit was one of Henson's earliest characters, who is still going today. 

Kermit was originally built out of Jim's mothers coat, with ping pong balls for eyes. 





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