Problems with a Jim Henson rap
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- čas přidán 18. 03. 2024
- Abigail Thorn, Jordan Harrod and Annie Rauwerda face a question about a puppetry problem.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcast.com
GUESTS:
Abigail Thorn: @PhilosophyTube, / philosophytube
Jordan Harrod: @JordanHarrod, / jordanbharrod
Annie Rauwerda: / depthsofwiki
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2024. - Zábava
When Tom said the puppeteer broke character I was expecting them to cut and then the puppet to slouch, completely change accent, and ask for a cig or something
Same 😂
Gabbo's been a baaaad little boy
Imagine going to meet Tom Scott in person and realizing that there are actually several Tom Scotts, and whenever one is not in front of camera they all just slump.
Headcanon accepted.
He does have that one robot in his likeness, so there is a possibility of that being real.
tom scott vs vsauce would be an epic rap battle
Surely Tom Scott vs Matthew Patrick would be better?
@@randomguy-tg7ok Very Good Point. Thanks.
Try vsauce vs. Veritasium instead...
tom scott vs tomska
Tom talking about epic rap battles is not what I expected to see this morning
Apparently it’s not easy being green
I'm told that Tom's reaction to the puppet is very common - particularly with Muppets. Remember that pretty much everyone under sixty has grown up with the Muppets and Sesame Street, often since we were small children. So when an actor, singer, or other guest is on the set, it's very easy for part of the mind to go, "oh yeah, that's Kermit; I've known Kermit for years." Never mind that their eyes can see some guy crouched down behind the table; the little kid in their head accepts that they're talking to Kermit.
I recently saw a Johnny Carson interview with Jim Henson from the 70s. He goes into it expecting to interview Jim and maybe play along with the puppets. Within a minute or two he's genuinely interviewing Kermit and has almost forgotten that Jim is sat there
What's extra impressive about that is Jim isn't trying to be a ventriloquist at all when he's got Kermit just "sitting" there next to him. He's doing Kermit's voice of course, but it's obvious that he's speaking.
I heard a story once of an interview with Kermit where they just couldn't get the sound quality right.
No matter what they tried Kermit's audio was always far worse than it should have been. As it turns out, everyone on set had just accepted that Kermit was who was speaking, so the audio guys put the mic on him and not on the puppeteer!
Getting a temporary blue screen definitely sounds easier than painting the wall twice. Plus then you've got it for posterity.
If they had the paint handy, maybe not. Idly wondering if they painted a different wall, now have one green, one blue.
Maybe have a room sized LED green screen, blue screen and any other colour screen you want.....
@@thetessellater9163 So 2 things with that LED Blue/Green screen idea.
First, the green light from the LED panel is going to cause a lot of light spill around the edges making it basically impossible to actually get a good key for doing compositing.
And secondly, just put up the image of whatever you're background is going to be on a giant LED panel instead of green. It's what the did for Mandalorian.
i love that abby's a big epic rap battle fan 😭
There's a story out there, when Jim Henson was on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show they started to put a mic on Kermit
the "puppeteer meets reality" bit I like best was when Billy Connolly and Rod Hull were on Parkinson. There was chit chat going on and Emu approached Billy, but then billy talked to Emu saying something like "if you touch me I'll break your neck and his arm."
It's really interesting to watch the Laterals with younger guests. As seen here, they often blow right past some of the cultural significance inherent in the topic but still arrive at the right answer. I'm a bit curious if the logistical challenges of writing for a broader age demographic is considered when drafting these questions? It'd be a bit of a departure from this genre of show, but I'd love a peek behind the curtain at what goes into the writing and research for these!
Museum of the Moving Image is great. Our kids used to love going there. The Kaufman Astoria Studios is next door and they film (filmed?) Sesame Street there.
There used to be one in Waterloo London, and one one of my favourite parts was that you could appear on News at Ten, of course using the magic of green screen.
It’s so cool that Abby was on this and it’s so cool that she knows ERB! I think Walt Disney’s beat in that rap battle is among my favorites ever from ERB- I get shivers.
The entire verse was insane. I thought I read somewhere that Henson/Lee was supposed to be the series finale (or at least a potential one) so the visual of Disney's "empire of joy" - including the company that owned ERB at the time - was a heck of a way to go out.
Lloyd & Peter were great, but....Zach? Zach still scares me to this day (he *never* stops smiling O_o )
I also love the quirk that ERB was under contract to Maker Group at the time (heck everyone on YT was - even my wife got a deal with them!) and at the time of the Stan v Jim (v Walt) vid, *Disney owned Maker Group* - so while ERB was ultimately owned by Disney, they had an episode where Walt raps "I'm owning this battle... **realization on face** In fact I own this whole series!" (they filmed an extra long outro for it - for all they knew, this was going to be their LAST vid ;) )
This was a great one! I'm related to someone who worked for Jim Henson for quite a while and is really good with puppets, so the discussion at the end was fun to listen to
One of the best events I have ever attended featured a number of puppeteers as guests and to see them work is, as Abigail rightly says, a beautiful thing.
I can relate to that Santa moment - I've done a fair bit of work with puppets and puppet shows - the one that impacted me the most - The way Big Bird is donned, doffed and stored is honestly the scariest thing I have seen in my life. We did a 2 day run of a Sesame Street show and I had to be in first thing each morning to open up the stage and back of house... I had done the set up the day before but not been there through rehearsals and day 1 show - walking on stage and seeing a silhouette of Big Bird hanging from a fly bar, neck bent at an unnatural angle.... the production companies one rule - no photos of big bird without the actor in the suit - because even as a 30 year old... that was terrifying and bordering on traumatising to see.
That gives Five Nights at Freddy's vibes. 💀
The most important line in that whole battle was probably Disney rapping "In fact, I own this whole series!" since Maker Studios - which ERB was a part of at the time - was owned by Disney, and they threw massive shade on Disney in that episode... :D
That line was good, but Disney's grand entrance is phenomenal. "M-I-C / I drop the mic properly / K-E-Y / Turning profits, I've got the key!"
I'm so glad Tom mentioned that youtube gave out money, because I swore remembering that it happened and for example Sourcefed was one of the channels.
>Sourcefed
Now THERE"S a name I haven't heard in a *solid* minute, holy crap
SciShow and CrashCourse were started by the Green brothers as CZcams originals. And still going strong. A couple of Brady Haran's channels were also funded through that program
Also, the Green brothers pioneered the crowdfunding model used by many popular channels today, because Hank realized that they wouldn't be able to rely on ad revenue after the grant ran out, and so he founded a crowdfunding company that later merged with Patreon.
@@lmpeters What the hell. He basically created an early Patreon AND created Vidcon? What has this man not done??
Jim Henson started out making commercials in the Washington DC area using Muppet-type characters. He got his own show they're called "Sam and friends." Look it up.
I’m laterally like, so excited for this episode 💁♀️
this made me chuckle, like a ridiculous amount, thank you
Re: the youtube money, it’s called the Original Channel Initiative. Crash Course by the vlogbrothers / Complexly came out of the CZcams money, and it was funded through an advance (CZcams took 100% ad revenue until they paid it off, although in Crash Course’s case they forgave the outstanding balance at one point). I don’t think it was considered very successful overall, as most channels in it just stopped the moment the advance funding stopped.
I coincidentally am emerging from a Jim Henson deep dive, but might have to go back under for this rap battle. 😅 It's incredible the extent of Jim Henson's influence on film making and culture even to this day, I'm seeing signs of him everywhere I look.
Have you been watching Defunctland’s series on him? If not, it’s great.
@@jessehammer123 yes, it was actually his series that made me want to learn more about JH's life and work, so I've been reading his biography, rewatching old shows and films, and watching a lot of deep cuts that I'd never seen or heard of before.
@@fugithegreat Ah, cool!
Green screen is a relatively recent thing, it used to be all blue screens 40 or 50 years ago. I visited my dad in the French TV studios and there were no green screen then.
Blue was the historically preferred colour, because it's easier to make chemical process film that responds only to blue than it is to make film that responds only to green; once you're working electronically, any colour works, and green is preferred because it's the one the human eye is most sensitive to, so you're more likely to spot imperfections in the screen that will affect the final result while filming, rather than while in post-production.
And red is out because that's human skin to a camera - having the process remove skin from people is not generally the desired effect…
@@TrueFarnz Talking television only, so video and electronic, the reason I had been given about the blue was that this specific colour did not exist naturally and was very uncommon for human artifacts, so for example there was really very little risk to remove the tie from a politician during an interview.
@@olivier2553 I worked with people who were part of the shift from blue to green - one reason for the shift is that things like the blue in the French flag would also trigger keying to go transparent.
Absolute pain if you have a politician with a flag badge on, for example.
@@TrueFarnzAlso digital cameras tend to be twice as sensitive to green as to blue - the pixels on the sensor are dedicated to red green and blue in a 25,50,25 ratio, presumably because that matches how our eyes work so produces pictures that look as accurate as possible to our eyes. So given that I guess they'd pick up the shape of the person in front of the green screen best when there's most contrast in the green channel.
@@barneylaurance1865resolution, not contrast, but yes
Abigail is an ERB superfan 😁
Oh what a podcast lineup! Cant wait to listen to this one!
i somehow missed epic rap battles. thankyou for bringing that to my attention, its amazing
I just recently filmed a video on St Patrick's day, and I had to change my green screen to blue, which is actually just a bed sheet, so that I could wear green in that video.
And yet I didn't get the answer until the very end of this highlight. I was thinking more along the lines of mics related to the puppeteers...
I just found it hilarious at the end that the problem they ran into was of course the green which I literally just had run into my own self LOL...
Still editing and unpublished just yet, and I only did it as a lark to one of my videos, but yes I literally stapled a blue bed sheet over top of my normal green muslin cloth for that one specific video so I can wear a green shirt and a green Irish looking hat 😅
Wait, did you think Kermit needed a mic? For the talking that he does? I actually love that.
@@jessehammer123 I'm thinking more a boom mic 2 feet above the heads of the human actors, 4 feet above Kermit's mouth, but 6 feet above the puppeteer's head. Or however the measurements work out.
@@jessehammer123 If I'm not mistaken, Muppeteers do both the motion and the vocals, so they would definitely need to be mic'd up underneath whatever set they are filming on.
I really love this show - deserves way more views!
Have not seen that specific Battle, but guessed the problem right away.
Good chunk of this is just Abigail and Tom reminiscing on their CZcams nostalgia.
Biggest takeaway is that ERB still exists.
Yeah! They don’t put out videos at the same breakneck pace anymore, but they’re still really good. I LOVED Ford vs. Marx, and while I didn’t love King Kong vs. Godzilla, I wasn’t really the target audience for that anyway (and it was still extremely well-constructed).
David Strassman (a ventriloquist) had a short-lived celebrity interview show in the late 90s/early 00s. In one episode he was interviewing Annalise Braakensiek and his dummy (Chuck Wood) wouldn't stop hitting on her, so they got in a fight and David stormed off the set. Chuck then continued the interview on his own.
I wish I could find that interview to watch again. Her reaction was just brilliant.
Working right next door to Birmingham's ATV centre in those days, you took your life in your hands if you wanted a lunchtime drink, Jim looking for extra hands for the crowd scenes!
One thing people forget about puppeteers working beneath the character is the immense amount of arm strength and pain they have to deal with from holding their arm above their heart for hours at a time. Pick up something that ways a pound or half a kilo and then hold it above your head for just 5 minutes to see what I mean.
One of the channels that got that CZcams funding that's still around is the Green brothers' Crash Course. That may be what Tom was thinking of when he was talking about Vsauce.
EHHHHHHHPICRAPBATTLE OF HISSSSTOWEEE !!!.....Tommmm Scott, verses... Vsauce Micheal... BEGIN! 😉🤣🤣🤣
I also love the Princess rap battles too!!! 🤣🤣🤣👌
😎🇬🇧
the look on Abbys face when Tom said Ford vs Marx xD
Tom, are you talking about Randy Feltface?
It's not easy being green-screened.
Need to check out rap battle
Not sure when this was filmed (presumably recently) but that ERB with Jim Henson was 8 years ago...
2:52 Jordan pressed X to doubt
Funny how the one who did not know the Epic Rap Battles of History series was the one to catch on to the answer. 😅😅
And, *this* is the real reason why it's not that easy being green.
Has Tom or anyone else seen the "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" show from early 1950s U.S. TV? The old kinescopes are being restored and posted on CZcams. Kukla and Ollie (Oliver Dragon) were hand puppet characters. They (and others), and the show, were created by Burr Tillstrom. The puppets all interacted with a woman (Fran Allison) who absolutely accepted them as real during the show. This was fostered by Tillstrom, who would not allow anyone to play with the puppets. They were either in character or packed away out of sight. HIghly recommended viewing.
@Abigail As someone who has watched that channel for many years and who also knows the names, way to go Abby! That *was* one of the better ones, wasn't it? I always say that my favorite is a tie between that one and Eastern vs. Western Philosophers. Talking to you I feel like I should give a slight edge to the philosophers, ha, but it's honestly hard to pick between the two. Btw, they just dropped Godzilla vs. King Kong the other day and it's really good! It does use a *lot* of Japanese vocabulary in the lyrics tho, so even though I am (or at least was) fluent in it, I still had to go and look up one of the Japanese terms they used, I'm not enough of a kaiju fan to have known already. But overall definitely a very solid addition to their work!
@Tom, Annie, Jordan As someone who's chronically online and rather socially isolated (I'm working on it, no worries), this episode actually made the internet feel like a slightly cozier, slightly smaller space than it normally does, and that was nice. :)
Glad we brought you some companionship. Stay well.
I think two other competitors for the best of the series are Steven Spielberg vs. Alfred Hitchcock and Alexander the Great vs. Ivan the Terrible.
I don't think it's one of the best, but Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates has great verses. The one with Frederick Douglass was quite good, but they could've chosen a different opponent to make it more even.
On the topic of puppets, Tom & team, you should try and get Randy Feltface on the show 😁
Basil Brush, would be awesome, but a bit too mainstream and not youtube enough
For all we know, the Cookie Monster was also in that video :)
Frankly I expected the "maintanance" to be to accommodate real Stan Lee for his cameo.
Philip Defranco was the only one who got that CZcams grant and turned it around to make money at the end of that grant.
Omg, the second she said green screen... it clicked, must be that Kermit doesnt show up against the backgroud... lol
Tom's comment about the puppet reminds me of Hacker T Dog, whose "operator" regularly posts BTS Instas etc and it's very much "right, we've done that, Hacker's a piece of cloth again"
So they're blue casue it's not easy bein green makes since
Isn't that a song from the muppets?
@@Becky_Cooling I believe that was the joke, yeah. Kermit sang it.
@@Becky_Cooling Yes, that’s the joke. :)
I don't remember if CZcams directly funded ERB, but for sure there was a time that the were owned by a production company that was owned/affiliated with Disney. That cameo of an evil Walt Disney on the Jim Henson vs. Stan Lee battle was the last episode of ERB produced under that company. Evil Walt Disney was sort of ERB's last F you to the mouse empire.
jordan was the highlight of this episode. she barely said anything at all but as soon as she heard the words "green screen" she immediately had the answer. i also loved her sort of incredulous "hrmmm" when abby was talking up ERB at 2:48
this parallels Bernadette Banner when she appeared on the show. just getting one light bulb moment after another.
Digital effects... Its the green screen isnt it? Because Kermit is green and wouldnt show up so they had to switch to blue-screen?
It truly isn't easy being green.
Initial thoughts: muppets (hand puppets) aren't built for the movement range and stress of performing "Rap God" and such. So, repairing the puppets, or at least strengthening them (googly eyes and such floaty parts would not play well)? It could also be about drying or hair/appearance styling the muppet because there is way more exertion, thus sweat, happening than usual.
1:00 Kermit: I thought a bit about green/blue-screen CGI about Stan Lee's side. And so, some muppets would need to change colour to work with those. But I dropped the idea as that would not be maintenance, just a one time change.
One more reason it's not easy . . .
Epic Rap Battles should probably have bluescreen in case of someone else who is green appearing on the show - Incredible Hulk, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, green Power Ranger... Funny they had to do it for Kermit the Frog first
SciShow was one of the ones that got CZcams money.
No better puppeteer at present than Nina Conte with Monkey.
Am I the only person who did not get the question? I understood by "special maintenance" that they are updating this video very so often.
Have you ever seen Randy Feltface? Specifically Randy Writes a Novel. (he's an australia puppet stand up comedian) There is a bit [about 18 mins in] where he "throws his voice"? and it's like WOW how did he do that! he didn't move his mouth at all! .................oh right he's not real, the man behind the screen with the microphone just kept talking but stopped moving the puppet mouth. It's soo jarring. [Not Suitable for Children]
Damn I got that in like .01 seconds
who is Jim Henson?
Muppets/Sesame Street creator
I watched the video and now know who Jim Henson is.
Creator of the Muppets. You might know them from, like, Sesame Street.
@@Anzy.99Ah, cool.
Jim Henson was an amazing man gone too soon. In addition to the puppet characters on Sesame Street and, of course, The Muppets, he created a show called Fraggle Rock with the expressed goal of bringing world peace.
I liked Steve Jobs Vs. Bill Gates.
Why would you name your company after your junk?