Sunday, May 25, 2008

Hand Puppets - Can They Compete In Our Tech Savvy Culture?

Churches, Schools, children's programs, structured settlement buyer many other groups have used puppet programs to educate for years, but with the growth of modern technology, are they still effective?

Modern technology has brought great teaching and learning enhancements that are appealing and attention grabbing. Compare the special effects in films and TV programs today with the ones from ten or twenty years ago. The advances are amazing. The effects are often so realistic; they blur the line car insurance rate quote reality and entertainment. The same is true for today's video games. In most role playing games, you don't just play a part in the game--you become the character and experience the game.

Children and teens are used to that realism in the media they're exposed to. So, again, the question arises: Are puppets still a viable teaching Virginia Lemon Laws in our society?

The answer is yes. Puppets have a universal appeal to all ages. A recent "America's Got Talent" season supports that statement. The winner was a ventriloquist using a variety of hand puppets to entertain millions of persons every week during the competition. I did a You-Tube search on "Terry Fator" and came up with 147 video selections. The first one had almost four million views in a five month period!

Another search on You-Tube using the word "puppet" yielded 61,600 video possibilities. One of the videos, added eight months ago had over 26,000,000 views--that's over 100,000 views every day. Seven out of the initial twenty had over 1,000,000 views every.

When you see the above results and factor in how often TV programs and films use puppets, There's a world full of women out there. Find one now. obvious that puppetry is still effective. Let's examine why puppets have such appeal and teaching ability.

First, as stated above, puppets have a universal appeal. You'll find them in most cultures and societies around the world. When I was part of a traveling puppet ministry, it was fun to watch the expressions of the persons when they entered the church or auditorium. Just seeing the puppet stage often brought a smile to their faces and I could sense the anticipation building as they waited for the program to start. More often than not, it was adults who came to us after the program to ask when we were coming back again.

Second, persons enjoy stories. Most films and TV programs are stories that are acted out for persons to watch. It's becoming common place for newly released films to make millions of dollars the first weekend they run. Why? Marketing efforts portray them as stories that you need to see and experience. Marketers take advantage of persons's enjoyment of stories.

Puppets mesotheleoma benefit from that trait. Puppet plays are simply the process of one or more puppets acting out a story for the audience to enjoy. You can have the puppets act out the play for entertainment purposes or to teach important truths.

that leads to the next reason: Puppet shows allow for audience interaction. If you want to teach a specific truth through the puppets, before the play ask some key questions that the story will answer. In other words, give them something to look for while watching the play. Then, after the story is finished, discuss the answers with the audience. By doing that, the audience isn't simply watching for entertainment purposes. They are actively watching--looking for the answer to your questions. As they watch and begin to relate to the puppets through the story, the truth has a greater chance of impacting them.

Here are four more reasons. Puppets are great visual aids, they add variety to your teaching, they add enjoyment to learning, and are fun to watch.

Puppets are and always will be an effective teaching and entertainment tool. They are already incorporated into our tech savvy culture and will continue to entertain and teach. But, we can learn a lesson from technology. The shows and films that are the highest quality tend to acquire greater numbers of viewers. Puppeteers and puppet teams that maintain high-quality puppetry standards will also draw audiences and have opportunities to share their message. As you use puppets to entertain or instruct, you will assist your audience to comprehend what it means to www.experiencepuppets.comexperience puppets.

About the Author:

Timothy Brown has over 25 years of experience in working puppets and directing puppet teams. He and his wife have ministered with puppets in churches, camps, parks, nursing homes, and a variety of other venues. Along with working puppets, he has also taught a number of puppet training courses.

He has taken the homeequity loans from the training courses and is offering it (some for sale and some for free) to the online community.

For information on the puppet courses available, check out www.ExperiencePuppets.comwww.ExperiencePuppets.com (The first course is a free download.)

For additional topics and helps, check out the puppet blog at www.ExperiencePuppets.com/blogwww.ExperiencePuppets.com/blog


Comments:
Tim...good thoughts there. I built the new Winston the Turtle for Terry Fator. You can see it at http://www.axtell.com/new.html

As far as the Tech Savvy world we live in, we also have developed a wonderful line of Hands-Free Remote Control Puppets for use in churches, stage shows, museums, etc.

Puppets (low tech or high tech) are characters, and as characters they will never stop telling their stories!

Steve Axtell
 
As Steve said, I think there's lots of good thoughts in this post. Puppetry is - I think anyway - as relevant and popular as ever.

For several years I've written a blog about puppetry called PuppetVision about puppetry in film, video and on the internet and over that time I've noticed that the more we see fancy (and often, obviously fake looking) CG effects in movies and TV, the more audiences seems to be captivated by the old fashioned magic of a talented puppeteer bringing an inanimate object to life.
 
I agree with your thoughts, and also think that internet is playing a big role to get attention around puppets and puppetry from the new "screen-generation".
It's true, puppets are all around, but today a lot of people get in touch with puppets (for first time) thanks to internet and thanks to so many bloggers, puppeteers and many others, who create valuable content that are of interest to people.
Sometimes the puppeteers forget that not everyone knows how much valuable puppets are, and that we need as much spreading as possible. And internet is a really good thing for puppetry. It seems obvious, but might it not be, depending on the place where you are.
Sorry for my poor english.
 
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