Step by Step- Making Puppets and Props for Wasted Footage

I'm sure most of you haven't seen Wasted Footage. It was a short lived puppet show that I worked on for most of last year. Like most no budget film projects that involve a team effort it fell apart (people work and have lives) . For me and other fellow (no budget) filmmakers it gets frustrating at times (I just couldn't keep it alive alone and keep building puppets and props). For Wasted Footage I built every puppet and prop, directed, edited, wrote music for.......basically did everything. My brother and his friend helped write/improve while shooting. Wasted Footage was a lot of fun to put together. It gave me a chance to work in every medium, and I had a lot of neat stuff planned for the future. In a way I'm glad it still isn't going on because it gave me a chance to get back to my true love, sculpting. The following pics are the puppet creation and camera prop creation from start to finish.

 Sculpting my brothers puppet.

 Another angle of my brother, still a work in progress.

 Sculpting my puppet.

 Cleaning up my puppets sculpt.

 Side view.

 Other side view.

 You gotta be able to poke fun at yourself so I made sure to add my bald spot.

 This is my brother after the mold was finished. (latex copy with plastic eyes)

 Basically working out how the puppet bodies would be made. I had to sew the bodies together from material around the house, then we went to store and bought kids clothes to dress the puppets in.

 I picked this sweater thingy cause it reminded me of Freddy. (I know, I know, Freddy wears red and green)

 Painting me. (Jesse showed me this neat splatter paint trick)

 Painting my brother.

 Our heads are done and eyes are put in place. Last step is putting on a finish to make us shine.

 And there we are. Finished and ready to shoot............Wait we need cameras to film the show. Like in real life, my puppet was behind the scenes filming, while my brother and his friend were in front of the camera. Since I was using two cameras I made two prop ones for the show. I always liked those big TV studio cameras so I built one of them and a little handy cam for moving shots.

 Quick sketch of a TV studio camera, just so I stay on track while building.

 Making the TV studio camera from cardboard I got from work and some tape. (some hot glue in spots)

 Making the handy cam.

 Shot of the two cameras before paint.

 First coat of paint before I added cartoon detail. TV studio camera uses a dvd rack as a stand.

 Added in cartoony detail. (I always wanted be an animator ......some people think horror is my true love, nope, its cartoons)

 Test shot of me and my cameras before filming.

Ta-Da.........My puppet and cameras in John Tatarelli Jr's Wasted Footage.