PURE IMAGINATION - featuring the muppets, josh groban, and lindsey stirling (2015)

OBJECTIVE

How fun! The Muppets!?!? Lindsey Stirling!?!? Josh Groban!?!? It was SUPER fun. And that was really the main part of our mission. Have fun. Tell the story. Dan and Bobby wrote up a beautiful story. It was the kind of treatment where you forget about the moments prior and you don’t really know how you got there because you’re just so overwhelmed with joy. Having said that, there are a lot of considerations when shooting with The Muppets, so we had to be very conscious of the unique cadence and be ready to work with the best of the best when it comes to puppeteering. We came in with an open mind and placed our emphasis on the narrative.

APPROACH

We were incredibly honored to work with a large portion of the Muppets production team. Most of our meetings were all about story and the script, as it should be. Occasionally we made some light suggestions to keep the scope at a realistic and achievable level. The best advice I think I got from their producer was, “However long you think that will take to shoot normally, the Muppets will take 3 times as long.” The set ups were intricate with monitoring. Every puppeteer had 1, maybe even two monitors just for him/her. We had about 20-30 8’x4’ sheets of steel deck, so we could elevate sets and get the puppeteers under the “ground level” of the camera. It was a challenge, but a blast. The Muppets really do come alive. Lindsey and Josh were also great. All we had to do is give them a stage to perform in. Their talents came across on camera very quickly. This was my third video with Lindsey. Very thankful she brought me along on it!

Production Company

Muppets Provided by

Executive Producer

 

Head of Production

Directors

 

Producer

Consulting Producer

Muppet Writer

Muppet Workshop Supervisor

Production Manager

Director of Photography

Production Designer

Editor

Sound Mixer

Everdream

Soapbox FIlms

James Khabushani

RJ Collins

Jerad Anderson

Bobby Moser

Dan Carr

Nick Erickson

Bill Baretta

Jim Lewis

Jane Gootnick

Tyler Zelinsky

Logan Triplett

Alec Contestabile

Dan Carr

Jackie Zhou

NOTES

  • 2 day stage shoot.

  • Filmed at Youtube Space LA.