American Cinematographer - December 2011 - 12

Short Takes
Kermit the Frog, Animal, Fozzie Bear and Gonzo are among the Muppets who make mayhem in OK Go’s version of The Muppet Show theme song.

Muppet Mania By Iain Stasukevich

Chicago-based rock band OK Go is known as much for its whimsical, cleverly designed music videos as it is for its music. The band’s latest single is a cover ofThe Muppet Show theme song, a cut from the Muppet-themed Green Album. When the musicians enlist Jim Henson’s lovable creatures to help them with the video, all hell breaks loose. The collaboration was actually a match made in heaven, according to the video’s director, Kirk Thatcher. “I’ve never met four guys who embody the Muppets’ freewheeling, creative fun and incredibly craftsman-like approach to execution more than band members Tim [Nordwind], Dan [Konopka], Andy [Ross] and Damian [Kulash],” he observes. Thatcher is actually a Henson veteran: in 1986, Henson hired him as a character designer. The video’s cinematographer, Craig Kief, had also worked with the Muppets before, on a project for pop singer Tiffany Thornton. The filmmakers were presented with some heavy specs for a two-day shoot. There were 14 sets on three stages at Delphino Studios in Sylmar, Calif. On the second day, Kief and Thatcher were joined by 2nd-unit director/visual-effects supervisor Christopher Alender and cinematographer Mateo Londono. The Muppets and production company Soapbox Films were coming off four days of production on another Muppet project, so all the infrastructure was in place. The key Muppet performers,
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including Steve Whitmire (Kermit), Eric Jacobson (Piggy and Fozzie), Bill Barretta (Rowlf and Dr. Teeth) and Dave Goelz (Gonzo), live in different parts of the country, so their in-person meetings often means weeks of concentrated work on a variety of projects. Kief confirms that working with puppets necessitates some unusual departures from the way he typically shoots. “The puppets like to be shot with wide lenses, up close,” he notes. This is partly because the puppets are very small — Kermit is about 18" — and the wide-lens perspective helps to make their movements feel larger and more alive. Composition is maintained using the lower frame line as reference. Handheld work is often avoided, as are vertical camera moves. “Muppets tend to walk in groups of three and five,” Thatcher observes. “Then they’ll line up and talk to each other, so many of our shots are proscenium-oriented from the waist up. The hardest thing to do with a Muppet is an extreme close-up, because you don’t want the audience to discern that the eyes are made of felt. And over-the-shoulders are difficult because a lot of them don’t have shoulders.” In addition, the characters’ distinctive facial features discourage camera operators from cutting their close-ups off at the forehead. When working, Muppet performers are most comfortable standing, with their puppets raised over their heads. All Muppet sets therefore had to be constructed with 3'-high “puppeted” floors assembled from 4'x8' steel-deck sections that could be removed at any time. This also meant that Kief needed to position his camera, a

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Photos by Craig Kief and Chris Alender. Images courtesy of Disney.

American Cinematographer - December 2011

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