The Official site of Tally Hall.

by Ken Berman and Frankie Cordero

We wanted the video to take place inside of an automaton machine as if it were in Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum. If you are reading this blog, then Tally Hall has surely already introduced you to Marvin’s. Well, we collected a lot of images of automatons, especially those that were more visibly hand-crafted -like those made by Paul Boyer (check out his work on youtube)…and of course we scoured through all the automatons on display at Marvin’s museum. The world was to be very hand-crafted, meaning that we would exaggerate details so that nothing is exactly straight, perfectly round, uniform in color or surface…as if the artist wasn’t as anal retentive as we would be…ahem. The puppets were also designed with the idea that whoever created this automaton world was making the automaton puppets from a small selection of parts.

We began sketching ideas out in the waning summer sun of August, and we had not finalized the scale and functional details until the leaves fell toward the end of September.

We wanted to play with the perceived scale of the puppets so that someone watching would ask, “How in Sam Hill did they move those tiny confounded puppets?” At one point, we considered making only tiny puppets- our Director of Photography, Marcus Lehmann, suggested we use a small lipstick-sized camera to be able to weave in and out of tight spaces within our small set. Because we wanted a higher quality image for all of you to enjoy, and having larger puppets would give us more articulation and detail, we decided to shoot it on a Panasonic HVX-200A HD Camera. We also wanted the video to have a vintage, grainy Technicolor film look to it, so Marcus used a Letus lens adapter and several 35mm lenses.

We had been talking about the puppets appearing to have a very limited range of style in that all the heads and bodies of all the puppets would share the same shape, the differentiating qualities would be the various features added on (noses, moustache, eyes, hair). We also wanted the puppets to appear pieced together from a small selection of tubes and lathe-turned shapes (just like Zubin, Joe, Rob, Ross and Andrew), artistic but crafty (just like Zubin, Joe, Rob, Ross and Andrew), assembled rather than sculpted (just like Zubin, Joe, Rob, Ross and Andrew).

We made egg-shaped clay sculpts in three sizes. We made rubber molds of the sculpts and the halves were cast in plastic, and glued after the mechanisms were installed. They were painted to appear like they were made out of wood.

The three sizes of eggs were mixed and matched to make various size heads and bodies, so that there would be a range of character sizes.

The egg-halves that formed the bodies were glued on after arm mechanisms and controls were installed. Ultimately, because of timing, a lot of action was reduced in the video, and it seemed to fit the automaton world better that way: more robotic and less organic.

About 18 puppeteers worked on the video in total. Some shots featured 8 or so puppets, some puppets requiring 2 or 3 people each, to perform. Below is a photo from the “la la la” lines of the video:

The trick to performing puppets for video is learning how to make the puppet appear to be looking at the proper place. Unless you got puppet zombies, you need them to seem like they are focusing on particular things. So how is that done? The puppeteers need to perform with a monitor in front of them, obviously out of view of the camera just like the puppeteer. The image on the monitor is exactly what is being filmed at the moment, so the puppeteer can see what he or she is doing, and more importantly see what the puppet appears to be doing. If you ever noticed your drunk friend walking into the wall instead of through the door, well that’s what a puppet in a video would look like if a puppeteer couldn’t watch the monitor and make sure the puppet’s eyes are focused on where it’s going. But their eye focus is only one aspect. We also need to see how the puppet is moving and whether it looks like the subtle movements we might do are being read and interpreted properly – and its pretty hard to see what an 8-inch puppet is looking like if you are operating it from beneath a wooden floor!
Wait, that’s not the only trick! The monitor also shows the action in reverse, as if you are looking in a mirror. So not only do we need to make sure the focus, thought process and action are all right on, but we need to flip the image in our head as we are doing it!

Hopefully you enjoy the video…oh, and the song! We think it shows how much we love the song and how much we enjoyed working with Tally Hall in the video (except in the part where the shooting happens!). We also look forward to checking in to all of your comments, it lets us know the most important thing of all: how Tally Hall’s fans are enjoying it! Thanks all.

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I wonder who coined the phrase it’s like “comparing apples to oranges.”  I think the  world would have been better served if he (or she) had a friend, someone acting as a filter.  

That phrase suggests that you shouldn’t even bother comparing these two objects because they are so different.  But in truth, apples and oranges are more similar than they are different.  They are perfect objects to compare to each other (I’d draw a venn diagram if it didn’t take so much work).  They’re both small, round, have stems, grow on trees, they ripen, are edible, are fruits, have peels, taste sweet, can be cut into slices, and the list could go on and on.   If I looked across a spectrum of all of the random objects I know of in the universe, apples and oranges would basically be overlapping dots.

Even when I look at the picture above, I’m more drawn to the differences in the way they are stacked and from what perspective they were captured, than the few differences between the actual subjects. The real question is:

WHO DID THIS TO US? Maybe it was an amazingly persistent farmer.  Or a comparison-crazed, megalomaniac looking to poison the logic of all future generations.  

I’m open to suggestions on how to revise this pressing issue.  For now, I’ll settle on: it’s like “comparing a walkman™ to the moon.”  Can we all agree on that?