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Fraggle Talk Episode 2: "Red and the Big Jump" with Henson Creature Shop Puppet Builders · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

• 0:17
  Hello and welcome to fraggle, talk.
• 0:19
  The Unofficial Fraggle, Rock podcast brought to you by tough
• 0:22
  tix.com. This is the podcast where we
• 0:24
  cover Fraggle. Rock back to the Rock Episode by
• 0:27
  episode along with the talented producers performers.
• 0:30
  Writers and Builders who helped put it together.
• 0:32
  I'm your host. Silly creature Johannes.
• 0:35
  Today, we're talking about episode to read and the big jump
• 0:38
  in which red gets all the fraggles to die from it, a giant
• 0:40
  doozer construction except for Wembley who becomes literally
• 0:44
  Frozen with fear today. We have three very special
• 0:47
  guests, all whom come from a mysterious location.
• 0:50
  We call the Jim Henson Creature Shop.
• 0:52
  First up is a puppet Builder, whose credits include Muppets
• 0:55
  tonight. Muppets from space Turkey,
• 0:57
  Hollow and The Country Bears back to the Rockies.
• 1:00
  Creature Shop. Supervisor, welcome to the
• 1:02
  podcast. Scott Johnson.
• 1:03
  Hello Scott. Hi, how are you doing?
• 1:07
  I'm doing great. How are you?
• 1:09
  I'm great great. Happy to be here.
• 1:12
  Me too. Great.
• 1:14
  Next up, we have a public Builder, who has fabricated
• 1:17
  puppets and effects for Sesame Street Where the Wild Things Are
• 1:20
  The Muppets, the movie, The Muppets, the sitcom and many
• 1:23
  more, we are pleased to welcome back to the Rocks.
• 1:26
  Onset, wrangling supervisor, Alex Jurgen, Zhesan, hello
• 1:30
  Jurgen Joe, thanks for having me on great.
• 1:34
  I'm glad you're here. Last but certainly not least, we
• 1:38
  have a puppet Builder and designer who's worked with
• 1:40
  Henson on iconic projects such as the Muppet Show and my
• 1:43
  daughter The Dark Crystal Labyrinth Sesame Street.
• 1:45
  And so, so many more on the original Fraggle, Rock series,
• 1:49
  she built several original puppets, including red, and
• 1:51
  Wembley. And she's returned to back to
• 1:54
  the rock as the puppet build supervisor and Lead fabricator.
• 1:58
  We are extremely proud. So, welcome, Raleigh, crewson to
• 2:01
  the podcast. Hey Rowley.
• 2:04
  Hi Joe. How are you?
• 2:05
  I'm doing great. I'm so glad you're here.
• 2:09
  What a treat. It's so great that we get well,
• 2:12
  it's the treat. Selfishly that we get people who
• 2:14
  worked on the original Fraggle, Rock on this podcast but it's
• 2:17
  doubly a treat. That people who worked on the
• 2:19
  original Fraggle, Rock are back for back to the Rock.
• 2:22
  So I'm very glad that you're a part of this and a part of that.
• 2:26
  Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
• 2:28
  Fantastic. So for each of you, I'm curious
• 2:32
  how you first heard about back to the Rock and you know what
• 2:37
  your your connection to was, it just through the workshop, was
• 2:40
  it for higher thing? What brought you back to back to
• 2:43
  the Rock, mine was strictly through the workshop.
• 2:47
  I mean I sort of heard, you know, I mean, John tartaglia
• 2:52
  was, you know, doing his little bits from home and, and I was
• 2:56
  watching those. And there were rumors at that
• 2:58
  point about You know, trying to get the whole thing started
• 3:02
  again. I mean and and they're being
• 3:04
  rumors about that for years and years and years and years.
• 3:09
  So it was like is it really going to happen this time and it
• 3:14
  did. Thank God.
• 3:15
  I mean yeah it's terrific and and Raleigh specifically I'm
• 3:18
  sorry, guys will get back to you in a second but Rowley you you
• 3:21
  never really left Fraggle Rock because I know the fraggles had
• 3:24
  kind of made appearances here and there you know red and mokey
• 3:28
  would make a live appearance at a comic Con or, you know, the
• 3:32
  Carnegie Hall, Show a few years back where we had some of the
• 3:34
  fraggles together. Wasn't always you who's working
• 3:37
  on those characters can really I was we refurbed again some of
• 3:44
  the older ones, I built a new traveling Matt I think at one
• 3:51
  point but it was like refurbishing stuff that we had
• 3:56
  you know, taking the old foam out putting new foam in no.
• 4:00
  Come up a lot. I've worked on ones that have
• 4:02
  been in museums, you know, so no.
• 4:04
  I haven't left the rock. That's right.
• 4:08
  Thank goodness, Scott, let's move to you.
• 4:11
  What was your connection to the back to the Rock?
• 4:14
  Again again, just kind of through the shop and like
• 4:17
  probably sadly. Like for four years they've been
• 4:20
  kind of talking about trying to get something going and I'm, and
• 4:23
  then after they had done, you know, once once pandemic started
• 4:27
  it, and we did The Rock on she go.
• 4:30
  Which was, which was a lot of, you know, filmed over Zoom
• 4:34
  calls. I'm sure.
• 4:36
  Yeah. And and so it was just so
• 4:39
  exciting when when they wanted to do a fully produced and an
• 4:43
  even at that point, I didn't have an idea about how, you
• 4:47
  know, how kind of spectacularly produced it would be, you know,
• 4:50
  like where it's a, you know, it's like a full-on show that's,
• 4:54
  you know, goes above and beyond, you know, certainly kind of
• 4:57
  technically what what the original Did so, but I had
• 5:02
  gotten pulled in through the Creature Shop and thank God, it
• 5:06
  was great. And as the Creature Shop
• 5:08
  supervisor, what was your at, what are your actual duties in
• 5:12
  working on these puppets before before cameras even get turned
• 5:15
  on? Well before it before cameras
• 5:18
  get turned on in New York, Raleigh was taking care of all
• 5:21
  the basically, all of the fraggles.
• 5:23
  And so the bulk of the fraggle build was down there and then in
• 5:27
  Los Angeles, we were doing the gorgs and the Doozers lost
• 5:33
  Angeles. So out here, we had the Robert
• 5:36
  Bennett was was kind of supervising, the bit of the
• 5:40
  doozer, build with John Criswell, and then I was kind of
• 5:45
  taking care of the Gorge. And do you know, refresh,
• 5:48
  refresh in bond pug, org and getting getting Junior gorg up
• 5:53
  and running and we built a full new Junior gorg, and you know,
• 5:58
  with a all new animatronics and that sort of sort of thing.
• 6:02
  And again, John Criswell was heavily involved in doing the
• 6:06
  animatronic work on that. But then once we got up to
• 6:09
  Calgary, we put together a shop of essentially Calgary, Natives.
• 6:17
  You know, they like so we put together a full new kind of, we
• 6:20
  call it the Creature Shop North up there.
• 6:24
  And so once we were up there all the new characters that had to
• 6:28
  be built, you know, that's that's what we took care of up
• 6:31
  there and then just receiving all the, you know, all the
• 6:34
  puppets from New York and from Los Angeles and getting those
• 6:38
  ready to shoot. And then you know and then
• 6:41
  getting those in the hands of Jurgen who then make sure that
• 6:44
  they're you know, they're The last line of defense before they
• 6:48
  hit the camera. And so, you know, like it
• 6:51
  getting them all in the right costumes and checking continuity
• 6:55
  and and all of that business is what we do up there.
• 7:00
  So Jurgen where do you come in on this?
• 7:02
  What are your responsibilities as the onset?
• 7:06
  Ringling supervisor Well, and I Scott said, we're kind of the
• 7:13
  last line of defense, sometimes, describe our job, as where the
• 7:16
  personal assistant to the puppeteers and the puppets.
• 7:20
  So, you know, we were like a mash unit and also a boutique,
• 7:28
  because we're putting the puppets back together.
• 7:31
  We're making sure they look their best.
• 7:34
  We have to keep a constant eye on upcoming scenes and shots.
• 7:38
  There's a Special rigging. We need to do our other props
• 7:44
  that have we haven't located yet or need to find because we've
• 7:46
  got to hook them up to the puppets hands, out of they work.
• 7:50
  So we're right there in the thick of it, amongst the puppet
• 7:54
  tears and crew kind of dodging climbing around through
• 7:57
  equipment, and under scenes, and sets.
• 7:59
  Just making sure all tears are ready to go.
• 8:02
  They've got the puppet, there's comfortable as can be and make
• 8:06
  sure it Deb has like Scott said, continuity.
• 8:09
  Tea and costumes are. Or up to schematic.
• 8:12
  So it's it's never ending. Run around.
• 8:16
  You are not bored on said you were thinking of what's being
• 8:20
  shot and what's going to be shot next.
• 8:24
  So I'm sure that you're also. I mean, I'm probably for all
• 8:26
  three of, you know, you would get a script and then you would
• 8:29
  think. Mmm, how are we gonna do?
• 8:33
  They realize that these are puppets.
• 8:34
  That need to do these things, as someone needs to build this
• 8:37
  thing or that thing were there. Any particular challenges that
• 8:41
  stood? It out to you as something that
• 8:44
  maybe had never been done before or something that was going to
• 8:47
  be a little more elaborate than the writers may be predicted.
• 8:50
  Well certainly in the episode we're talking about 10 to
• 8:55
  there's a lot of water and it's it's the water is a particular
• 9:01
  challenge with the puppets because it's a real Pond and you
• 9:05
  know with a real waterfall behind it and and so just
• 9:09
  getting those puppets in the water.
• 9:11
  Is it is beyond a chore. It's, you know, the puppeteers.
• 9:17
  Are the puppeteers, are beneath the pond, and then they reach up
• 9:22
  through the bottom of the pond into kind of rubber gloves, that
• 9:25
  then have the puppet placed on top.
• 9:28
  So in order to get say, read in the water, there's a team of
• 9:33
  people right around that to to hold that puppet to grab that
• 9:37
  puppet to put the puppet on because the Puppeteer is Really,
• 9:42
  you know, we're near the puppet, you know, they're, they're
• 9:44
  reaching the place, they're reaching through the base of a
• 9:47
  pool, and then up through the water.
• 9:50
  And then, of course, you just have to, you know, the puppet
• 9:53
  itself has to be able to withstand that.
• 9:55
  So they had in New York, they built some, some specific
• 9:58
  puppets that were only intended to get wet and and those puppets
• 10:04
  had to had to take a lot of abuse.
• 10:08
  I'm sure. Did they hold up?
• 10:11
  Yes. Thank you.
• 10:28
  It's of course. Absolutely.
• 10:29
  Circulating water. And then it's chlorinated and
• 10:32
  all the things that you have to do to water features.
• 10:36
  And so they actually the chlorine in the water would
• 10:39
  slowly bleach out their hair. But that was about it.
• 10:44
  It's like we would, we would, you know, they survived really
• 10:47
  really well with the exception that you know by the end of the
• 10:51
  series, all their hair was a slightly lighter shade.
• 10:56
  Yeah. When I heard that the water is
• 10:57
  chlorinated that's what we were a little concerned about.
• 11:01
  I mean that that we always had water only fraggles but their
• 11:05
  hair always the the die just you know leached out no matter what
• 11:10
  which is, you know. But when it's wet and it's yeah,
• 11:16
  we also had the problem onset of.
• 11:19
  We would put them in until they the foam and the cloth actually
• 11:24
  soaked up. All the water.
• 11:26
  Their legs would like float up into their face and oh sure.
• 11:31
  So and they just realized we'd sometimes we'd have to tie
• 11:34
  weights onto their body parts to keep them down.
• 11:38
  And then trying to get the puppet off of the poor
• 11:41
  puppeteers hand, which is up through a pond in a rubber
• 11:45
  glove. You're sitting here tugging and
• 11:47
  pulling and it's waterlogged and at the same time, realizing you
• 11:52
  may be pulling and not thinking, it's that bad.
• 11:55
  But meanwhile someone's wrist is being wrenched or wrong way.
• 11:58
  So you had to slowly slide these things off and try not to break
• 12:03
  any bones. Yeah, especially a puppeteer
• 12:05
  that's their livelihood. Did you have a Heated room or
• 12:09
  anything. We had a heated room so that we
• 12:11
  could drive the puppets off. We had several, we had yeah, we
• 12:17
  had several drawing devices. We had kind of a little drying
• 12:20
  pod and then we had actually boot dryers that have tubes for
• 12:26
  sliding boots over. So so as soon as those would you
• 12:30
  know it soon as those would come off set, they would run in like
• 12:34
  and again it was like a episode of er, something very very real
• 12:38
  Running in with these soaked puppet.
• 12:41
  So just like we have to get them drive.
• 12:45
  You see, I'm picturing like one poor intern with a hair dryer.
• 12:49
  Just all day, just on those for what fraggles you're not far off
• 12:54
  there. So Raleigh, did you build all of
• 12:58
  the extra fraggles as well? Or just wasn't where you just
• 13:03
  focusing on the fraggle 5. + waves yelling all the background
• 13:06
  fraggles as well. And we refurbed, all the cave
• 13:10
  creatures and Marjorie as well. So it's a see Marjorie.
• 13:15
  Yes it was a it was a brand-new Marjorie, but the same.
• 13:23
  God see. This is where you go.
• 13:25
  When you get old, your brain goes crazy, one of the Philemon
• 13:31
  got inch. Yes.
• 13:32
  Or the that was the original file and gunge so that's cool.
• 13:37
  Yeah. There are no more materials for
• 13:39
  them. Will have to really hunt for
• 13:42
  more if we can keep going. But also it makes sense because
• 13:46
  they're supposed to look a little trashy, a little gungi,
• 13:49
  you know, they do? Yes.
• 13:50
  Yes. So what can you walk me?
• 13:54
  Very briefly through the process of.
• 13:57
  Okay, we have to build a new fraggle like not, not the
• 13:59
  fraggle five. I know those are very specific
• 14:01
  looks but if you're like we need a fraggle that's going to go in
• 14:03
  the background. Where do you start We did use
• 14:08
  the original patterns a lot of them, because obviously, we kept
• 14:13
  them thinking that. Yeah, maybe someday we'll use
• 14:16
  these again, are will be something else off of it.
• 14:19
  So there were like five or six body shapes and five or six head
• 14:24
  shapes. And so you'd enter, you know,
• 14:27
  interact different heads and bodies together so we basically
• 14:32
  use those, we added a couple more shape.
• 14:35
  Oops to it. And what we did with the
• 14:40
  fleeces, we used some of the we had a role of the original
• 14:45
  fraggle police left in white which we had saved all these
• 14:52
  years Cloud for just this occasion like you knew.
• 14:57
  Yeah, right. We knew and basically Jason
• 15:01
  Weber died, we heighten the colors of the background
• 15:04
  characters. The bit from what they were the
• 15:08
  first time. So they were all little brighter
• 15:12
  and we died, all new fleece and that's basically what we did.
• 15:17
  I mean we did we did new hairstyles, you know, we knew
• 15:21
  that there were going to be crackles and so we work with the
• 15:25
  different groups of fraggles as well.
• 15:29
  This fascinating. What is the hair made out of
• 15:31
  their feathers? Mostly mostly feathers.
• 15:35
  Interesting. That's I love that.
• 15:38
  Is there a difference between the way you built fraggles for
• 15:43
  the original series and the way that you're building them for
• 15:45
  this one? Or is it just exactly the same
• 15:48
  pretty similar? It worked the first time around.
• 15:51
  We didn't change it a whole lot, right?
• 15:55
  Yeah obviously I mean everything has gotten a little more
• 15:58
  sophisticated. To Caden, I think they were
• 16:01
  probably Better Built than the first time because we knew where
• 16:06
  we had made our mistakes. So we were able to kind of help
• 16:10
  that along a little bit sure. But it's basically the same
• 16:14
  materials and saying you know same patterns, I love that.
• 16:18
  Why mess with perfection and those and those and those
• 16:22
  puppets were perfect. You know the fraggles are you
• 16:26
  know I always think like there's a There's a group of Kind of
• 16:30
  Perfect Henson puppets and, you know, and when you think about,
• 16:35
  you know, the, you know, that that Core group of Muppets.
• 16:38
  And and then fraggles I mean, they're a, you know, they're a
• 16:41
  joy to work with and to use and they're lightweight and
• 16:46
  flexible. And again, this this new set
• 16:49
  that Raleigh and everyone there in New York made, we're just, I
• 16:53
  mean really flawless. I mean, they were they were
• 16:56
  Perfection but they were so much fun.
• 16:58
  Build in the first place. I mean, we have a lot of fun
• 17:01
  doing them, you know, back x amount of what at 38, 39 years
• 17:07
  ago, whatever it was. And that's when a lot of us were
• 17:10
  just, you know, learning to build puppets.
• 17:13
  But the thing about the fraggles is that they're all close to
• 17:18
  your hand, all the head shapes are really close to the shape of
• 17:22
  your hand, so you can get a lot of expression out of them.
• 17:26
  And that was, I mean Wembley still my Europe and I got to
• 17:31
  build him but I mean he just has so much movement in that mouth.
• 17:35
  It's really fun because he doesn't have like a crease in
• 17:40
  the back of his of his he goes. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
• 17:47
  Well, let's let's jump into this episode and hopefully y'all will
• 17:52
  have some more really fun stories to tell while we talked
• 17:55
  about it, this episode starts in the Great Hall.
• 17:58
  As you mentioned, there's all this is like a real Pond is real
• 18:02
  waterfall. It's all it looks fake.
• 18:04
  That's so it looks so real, that it must be fake, but it's not,
• 18:07
  it's real. We see a fraggle eating a doozer
• 18:10
  construction and we get this great shot of a row of Doozers
• 18:15
  on the desert, our sitting as it like the in that famous,
• 18:19
  photograph of the construction workers on the skyscraper,
• 18:22
  eating their lunch. I love that moment you.
• 18:26
  You said Scott that you guys created.
• 18:28
  Today, the Doozers in the LA shop was.
• 18:33
  Can you walk me through very briefly what it takes to build a
• 18:35
  doozer. It takes, it takes a lot.
• 18:39
  There's lots of lots of different Doozers.
• 18:42
  The ones we see in this first shot, where they're where
• 18:44
  they're sipping that way. We had essentially dedicated
• 18:48
  sitting Doozers and because they're, you know, they've got a
• 18:52
  little fat bodies and then and then short little arms and legs,
• 18:56
  they're not particularly Isabel a lot of ways because because
• 19:02
  there's such around little things.
• 19:04
  So those seated Doozers that you see there are dedicated Doozers,
• 19:09
  just for sitting. So those those Doozers always
• 19:14
  are sitting their legs are already bent and, you know,
• 19:17
  those are the ones whenever you see a sitting doozer, those are,
• 19:22
  those are the ones and those have a, you know, and again,
• 19:26
  there's just so many different varieties of dark.
• 19:28
  Do sisters that do different things.
• 19:31
  So there and and to, that end different levels of animatronics
• 19:35
  and puppetry that go into it. So, in that seed and seeing, you
• 19:40
  know, you'll see that, you know, the camera goes across them.
• 19:43
  And, you know, I think on those seated ones, most of them only
• 19:48
  have a head that turns left and right and then some of them have
• 19:53
  mouths, but a lot of them, a lot of them, barely have any kind of
• 19:57
  mouth movement, Spend some of that mouth movement gets kind of
• 20:01
  generated onset, you know? Where will we will kind of you
• 20:06
  know we had you know are often set.
• 20:10
  Doozer hero was a guy named Jason Ward and Jason would you
• 20:14
  know jump in there and he had a little box of different servos
• 20:19
  and different little mechanisms where he could kind of customize
• 20:22
  them her shot and then and then to that end I think the end of
• 20:26
  that shot. You see a doozer tap?
• 20:28
  Little hammer and again, we'll do that with, you know, with
• 20:33
  Mana fill and fishing line. And, you know, every way we can
• 20:37
  possibly think of the to get a doozer movie.
• 20:40
  Terrific. Yeah, well, I love it.
• 20:44
  So the Doozers are I mean you have to assume that the tech
• 20:48
  that they're stuffed with to make them move is so much
• 20:50
  simpler than they were in the old days.
• 20:53
  Is it all still big cables or is there's a lot more radio
• 20:57
  control, wireless - it's mostly radio-controlled so they're a
• 21:03
  radio-controlled and then those are controlled offset.
• 21:06
  So the you know, the puppeteers are just off, you know, just off
• 21:11
  camera sometimes and they've all got a station.
• 21:13
  Air controller and and they'll operate that wirelessly.
• 21:18
  So you'll kind of notice, you know, one little thing to kind
• 21:22
  of look for whenever you're looking at the Doozers, all got
• 21:25
  their lunch boxes there. Those lunch boxes are actually
• 21:28
  holding some batteries and and some of the wireless control.
• 21:33
  Ah, Evansville Apollo, but be one of the receivers and things
• 21:39
  are kind of hidden in those box to sitting next to them.
• 21:42
  So that's clever. Yeah, but essentially, the
• 21:46
  actual radio technology is, of course better than it was back
• 21:51
  in the day, but it still operates very, very similarly.
• 21:55
  I mean, it's it's digital now, instead of analog but but it's
• 22:00
  very similar. Yeah.
• 22:01
  Oh that's that's I mean again. Why mess with perfection?
• 22:04
  You did it right the first time? So many of the little Rod
• 22:09
  Doozers. They all do you did have okay,
• 22:13
  there were some. Yeah, there's some of the,
• 22:15
  there's some and, and sometimes, you know, again in this one,
• 22:19
  they're all seated, but whenever there's standing boozers,
• 22:22
  there's fully animatronic ones, that are operated totally
• 22:26
  remotely, but then there's some that are Rod puppets, that just
• 22:30
  stand and those are operated off about of a stick from underneath
• 22:34
  camera. So sometimes if you'll steal one
• 22:36
  right at the bottom of the frame, those are, those are
• 22:40
  awesome. Done with kind of a rod puppet.
• 22:44
  Sure. Yeah, so with new water coming
• 22:48
  into the Fraggle. Rock the Doozers have more
• 22:50
  power, which means they can do more construction work.
• 22:53
  That's why they're building this humongous doozer towers.
• 22:56
  That the architect user says must be 1,000 users tall and we
• 23:02
  get this shot of pogie Fraggle. Walking in the background, we
• 23:05
  see just his little fraggle legs passing by do all of the
• 23:09
  fraggles have lower halves, I've always wondered or is this just
• 23:13
  like He grabbed some looks like pokies feet.
• 23:16
  They all do, I don't know why that tickles me.
• 23:20
  It just does. Luckily the shop and over on the
• 23:26
  Eastside day they made them all with little connectors so you
• 23:29
  could take them off. So, for that seeing, we
• 23:32
  literally just took it, pogies legs off, and we just shove
• 23:36
  some, some aluminum, Armature wire and bend them into shape
• 23:40
  and then made handles. And so, someone could literally
• 23:42
  just walk him Mm across. Wow.
• 23:45
  And then afterwards take the rods out, pop his legs back on.
• 23:48
  He's ready to go. Wow the I think my doctor did
• 23:52
  that to me on my last checkup, so the fraggle five show up in
• 23:58
  this next B. Red tells everyone don't eat
• 24:02
  this doozer Towers because she wants to to dive off of the top.
• 24:07
  Now, this is our first shot of the fraggle five with we'll talk
• 24:12
  about Mochi and Can. But for the, for the other 4,
• 24:16
  are there any differences at all between the original designs and
• 24:21
  what we are seeing here, Nothing really?
• 24:27
  No, they're pretty same other than.
• 24:30
  Okay, right. Okay.
• 24:32
  So let's talk about monkey for a second.
• 24:33
  What happens? What happened there?
• 24:36
  I don't mean to say it, like there's something went wrong,
• 24:38
  but did you just come out here from above?
• 24:41
  We want to do redesign who redesigned it.
• 24:46
  How was she built an approved and all that?
• 24:51
  She was with, we knew from above that, they did want a slightly
• 24:58
  new look for her. They thought she looked a little
• 25:01
  too old for the rest of them and they wanted to kind of brighten
• 25:05
  her up and make her look more. Like she was one of the group of
• 25:09
  them and not so much like you know, the way older sister or
• 25:13
  you know the mom mom sure. Yeah.
• 25:19
  And Who I Jason Weber. Did some design drawings for her
• 25:29
  mostly costume wise looks why she we knew that her hair was
• 25:35
  going to change, but that was through a lot of Lala, it was
• 25:40
  Hallie and you know everybody in l.a.
• 25:42
  Lisa in an l.a. deciding what to do with the hair.
• 25:46
  So we would do a hairstyle, send it to them.
• 25:50
  They Tiana, we could do and they would go, could you do more?
• 25:58
  So it eventually we got to where she looked her head was
• 26:02
  basically the same. They liked their, you know, all
• 26:06
  the puppets because they're so close the hand.
• 26:09
  They all sort of take on the shape of their puppeteers hand
• 26:14
  in a way. So there was one particular
• 26:17
  Mochi that they really wanted us to copy.
• 26:22
  It's the same pattern. It's just whoever's been in
• 26:25
  heard the most, that makes her look like she looks.
• 26:29
  So we struck a little with that and then you guys changed her
• 26:33
  body when she got there, right? We did a little bit of length
• 26:40
  changes and, and primarily though, that wasn't, that was
• 26:45
  more, just a in fitting, you know, just just a really
• 26:49
  customize it so that That said that Donna's performance was you
• 26:53
  know the sort of puppet fit her as well as it could.
• 26:56
  And yeah. And was it Jason Weber who
• 27:01
  designed the necklace with all the Baubles and doodads that are
• 27:05
  hanging? Actually I think there were must
• 27:09
  have been where five people in the shop that had a hand in that
• 27:12
  because we kept again, that was a big deal to write the everyone
• 27:19
  above that, that look exactly, right.
• 27:22
  So we kept sending necklaces. Yet another necklace and I think
• 27:31
  you guys ended up even modifying it some more when it got there,
• 27:34
  right? Until the very moment that she
• 27:38
  shopped for the first time. Like like up until you know
• 27:41
  literally five minutes before she goes on camera.
• 27:45
  Yep they're working with Jeff. Let's lose this bottle cap.
• 27:49
  Let's let's put this key on there like so yeah, it was a
• 27:54
  ongoing. Yep.
• 27:55
  And then once she got to set it, I was always kind of a
• 27:59
  checkpoint at some point because everything is made up of little
• 28:02
  wires and intricate little hooks and some sewing the it was very
• 28:06
  delicate but very beautiful and it would catch on every chunk of
• 28:10
  fur and we get ready to film. And one of her crystals would be
• 28:15
  flipped up sideways and hanging off.
• 28:17
  And there's it's okay because it looks beautiful, it looks
• 28:22
  beautiful. But and then God forbid, you
• 28:25
  know, you get ready to take her. On set.
• 28:28
  And it's like, with something's wrong with the necklace.
• 28:31
  And it's like, oh my God, the bottle caps missing.
• 28:34
  And so we be running around quick, does anyone have a bottle
• 28:37
  cap? I can of soda.
• 28:38
  We can use it keeps us on our toes and like as someone who
• 28:45
  like I am a fan of things and therefore I collect things very
• 28:49
  easily. I really related to that of like
• 28:52
  you know Mochi has obviously found these things and she's
• 28:54
  collected them and she wants to display them around her neck.
• 28:57
  And yeah, that's like, it's like me and a graphic t-shirt or me
• 29:01
  and like, honestly, like right next to me, I have a series of
• 29:05
  small Fraggle, Rock toys that I can't get rid of.
• 29:07
  So, you know, like like if I could wear those around my neck,
• 29:10
  I would. So, next up, we have a, our
• 29:15
  first song of the episode. This one is hip hip hooray from
• 29:18
  the episode Beginnings which was the first episode of the
• 29:21
  original Fraggle Rock, which is so cool to see all these old
• 29:25
  songs popping back up on the new series.
• 29:27
  He's but doubly cool that it's one from the original pilot
• 29:31
  during the song. Red is singing and jumping and
• 29:35
  flipping around and stuff. I have to, I mean, I can't tell
• 29:40
  what's CGI and what's not, so please explain to me how you
• 29:44
  guys did that. It was it?
• 29:46
  I made. It is a big combination.
• 29:50
  I mean, that was, that was red and all of her forms but I mean,
• 29:54
  you know, there was a there was a lot of jumping behind rocks.
• 29:57
  Then, you know, moments moments where, you know, she would jump
• 30:01
  behind a rock and then, you know, appear over here and then,
• 30:06
  you know, in post, they would put in a little did moment of
• 30:09
  digital read, that was a leap up and grab onto a train car, but
• 30:15
  it, but it's a big combination. I, you know, I think you're Goin
• 30:19
  could talk a little bit more about some of the, you know, is
• 30:22
  it with the full body elements that that might have been done
• 30:25
  on blue-screen? Yeah, we would there would be
• 30:29
  like certain times during shooting schedule where we would
• 30:33
  dedicate just blue screen shots and and you'd be frankly
• 30:39
  flipping through all your notes because suddenly, oh my gosh,
• 30:42
  we've got to go back to this episode episode, 22 film, part
• 30:46
  of red flipping around, but we're already on episode 8.
• 30:51
  So we've got to go back and make sure we get this right?
• 30:54
  But yeah, like Scott said we had we had belief.
• 30:57
  Real most for Red's one was dedicated just for swimming and
• 31:01
  we had to move would call hero Reds.
• 31:05
  And then we had a another read, that was like, a stunt that we
• 31:09
  could use for growing and tying and swinging around.
• 31:12
  So, yeah, we had, we had two puppeteers.
• 31:15
  One would start on one end and then one could pop up at the
• 31:18
  other end and then they could use a bit of computer animation
• 31:23
  to start one part of the sequence.
• 31:26
  And then we would go to Blue. Screen film her hanging from the
• 31:29
  side. With her full body back.
• 31:31
  Legs waving her mouth screaming back to CG and then the second
• 31:36
  Puppeteer finishes up on the other side of the cavern, you
• 31:39
  guys just amazing it. I mean, it all looks so amazing
• 31:46
  with all of that stuff, you know?
• 31:48
  I mean you got it's just it makes what we did years and
• 31:54
  years ago look like and no Cakewalk.
• 32:00
  It all looks fabulous, but but I think about when I see things
• 32:05
  like this. I think about, how would you
• 32:07
  have tried to do this, you know, back in the 80s, the original
• 32:10
  with the original run and back, then, there was so much.
• 32:14
  I mean a lot, but there was, there was as much CG as there is
• 32:17
  here. There was chroma key back on the
• 32:20
  old show. And when we watch that now, it's
• 32:22
  got so much charm to it. Like, yeah, we knew it wasn't
• 32:25
  real. I mean, just like we can kind of
• 32:27
  now, See the seams around CGI in anything but you know, there is
• 32:33
  that charm to it of just like I'm picturing, you know, Gobo
• 32:37
  surfing on a giant leaf and it's like he's going past like a
• 32:41
  moving background and you know that that they're just holding
• 32:43
  that puppets. Still.
• 32:45
  And going we make it look like it's moving.
• 32:49
  But still like I like that old stuff.
• 32:51
  I like the way that you guys did it back, then it was, it felt
• 32:54
  real and fun like almost like we were in on the Auction process.
• 32:59
  I wanted to make a shout-out to the Calgary props Department,
• 33:03
  who, you know, where we work closely with them during that
• 33:07
  song. There's one line that boober
• 33:10
  says, and now it's time for tea and our Wrangler Department.
• 33:16
  We were sitting there going, this is a great opportunity for
• 33:18
  a little prop gag and so we were like and so I went to to the guy
• 33:24
  who does boober Frank. I said, can we do you mind if we
• 33:28
  just have him? Holding a cup of tea and holding
• 33:30
  it up with his pinky out and he was like, sure, sure, go for it.
• 33:34
  So, I ran to the props Department who were not prepared
• 33:37
  for this. Did not know, we were going to
• 33:38
  come up with this and thank goodness.
• 33:41
  They, they caught on and they caught the bug and it's like,
• 33:45
  guys, we got like ten minutes. Can you make me a fraggle eyes
• 33:48
  teacup, and they did it. And it's like, you know how my
• 33:52
  work pedal with a piece of wire wrapped in Vine to make it look
• 33:56
  like the handle and they had some plates.
• 33:58
  There's like Shut it down, half size, and rough it up.
• 34:01
  And so sure enough when boober pops up that had just been made
• 34:05
  before we shot it. So and that's one of the joys of
• 34:08
  being on set and wrangling. Instead, you just, you get an
• 34:11
  idea of just the top of your head, and it's like, just go for
• 34:14
  it. Go, go.
• 34:15
  So that is one of my, my problem was that song, and thanks the
• 34:20
  props department for coming in and taking over.
• 34:24
  Well done. So in the song We also we also
• 34:29
  We talked about the the fraggles that are in the pond these
• 34:32
  waterproof fraggles I do. I do want to ask though the the
• 34:37
  difference in building material, I assume between a regular
• 34:42
  fraggle puppet and a waterproof fraggle puppet.
• 34:44
  They basically what is it? That makes it a fraggle
• 34:46
  waterproof. We basically I mean it's all the
• 34:50
  same materials it's just the way that we did glue them together
• 34:55
  but we also stitch them because it's got foam.
• 34:58
  So So we stitch them together. There was no, a lot of times
• 35:02
  we'll put a piece of boning at the top of the body.
• 35:04
  There was no boning up there so that the glove could get in and
• 35:08
  out easier. I mean it's hard.
• 35:12
  It's, it's like you're going was saying, I mean they're they're
• 35:15
  just stuck in there, it takes a lot to get them back out of
• 35:20
  there. But I mean, basically, they I
• 35:23
  mean, we use the same fleece we use feathers.
• 35:26
  It was pretty much pretty similar.
• 35:29
  Okay, but interesting and good news, I like to say is that you
• 35:32
  gave us two different ways. So we actually had one puppet to
• 35:37
  wigs. You know, they were in separate
• 35:38
  bags. One was the swimming only wig.
• 35:41
  And then we had the hero wig. So when they weren't swimming,
• 35:45
  we still need we needed every character, we could get on set.
• 35:48
  We just pop off the swim wig store it away and then put their
• 35:52
  pretty weight on so that it. So at least we still had a
• 35:56
  workable usable puppet, right? And and and red was fun because
• 36:01
  her pigtails were magnets. So you had to provide thinking
• 36:05
  about whoa, I didn't know that attack.
• 36:11
  Yeah, wow, yeah, there's that's fascinating but a click in there
• 36:16
  so that must have gone wrong a hundred times on set of, she
• 36:20
  just runs up against a rock and the pops off know.
• 36:23
  No. No, they were perfect.
• 36:24
  And in fact how wonderful Bo's got messed up or Tangled or
• 36:28
  untied. We just run back when we pull
• 36:31
  that one out, run back, grab the other one and pop it in.
• 36:34
  So no, it was perfect. Those things he'll never fall
• 36:37
  out. That's not it's amazing.
• 36:39
  Wow. So meanwhile Gobo was actually
• 36:44
  heading up to Doc's Workshop, to get traveling.
• 36:46
  Matt's latest package. We get our first glimpse of
• 36:49
  Sprocket in this moment for this episode Are was sprocket built.
• 36:54
  Was that in New Yorkers MLA? I was New York and those were
• 36:58
  original sprockets. Yep.
• 37:00
  Now. That's cool.
• 37:01
  They were just, we just took all the fun out of them and redid
• 37:05
  the insides rework, the mechs a bit and they're basically you're
• 37:12
  seeing the original sprocket. I love that.
• 37:16
  I love that so much. Is there any difference at all
• 37:20
  like on the of the guts of sprocket?
• 37:22
  Any additions any updates to the to the max?
• 37:27
  No. Unless you did something in
• 37:30
  Calgary? I mean we had people look at
• 37:34
  them to make sure that they were functioning, all right.
• 37:37
  But now they were they were the same Max and everything not
• 37:40
  great. In this scene, doc has been
• 37:44
  collecting water samples and she accidentally picked up a crab
• 37:47
  along the way. So we also get this cool crab
• 37:49
  puppet. So tell me about that.
• 37:51
  Where did this thing come from? That was a, we made that one in
• 37:55
  Los Angeles. And again, they wanted it to
• 37:58
  look as as realistic as it could.
• 38:00
  You know, not not not a super pump 84, you know, not a
• 38:05
  cartoony version of a crab. So we had a guy out here, Jasper
• 38:11
  Anderson and that the crab was primarily 3D printed, so all the
• 38:17
  parts were 3D printed parts and then joint it all together and
• 38:21
  then the little legs were On just a really, really light,
• 38:24
  piano wire. So that, you know, you just hold
• 38:28
  it and a little vibration of your hand with just get all the
• 38:30
  little legs going. And then there was a on each
• 38:34
  Rod, there was a little mechanism to make the little
• 38:37
  Pinchers pinch. So it was, it was quite a nice
• 38:41
  little puppet. And again, that one was fairly
• 38:44
  complicated because it also had to do quite a bit, you know,
• 38:47
  like, by the time it ends up on, you know, it pinches sprockets
• 38:50
  nose and and ends up on Air, and she carries it and then it's in.
• 38:55
  It's it's little tank. So it was rigged.
• 38:58
  Several different ways on set and then the actual puppet
• 39:01
  itself was was modular to accommodate that.
• 39:05
  So the, so it could be rotted from different points and it
• 39:09
  too. Is there a lot of magnets on
• 39:11
  that little crab better, that allowed for the shell to pop off
• 39:16
  and the rod to be placed another, another location Well,
• 39:21
  3D printing puppets. I'll I never would have thought
• 39:23
  of it but you're right, that's perfect.
• 39:25
  When you're when you're creating something from scratch.
• 39:28
  Now, at one point when we ran the script, like, you know, they
• 39:31
  were saying, oh we really want that crab on the sprockets knows
• 39:34
  when it pinches him and we quickly realized, okay, he's
• 39:38
  going to be flailing around. Nope.
• 39:40
  Nope, he's going to knock anything.
• 39:41
  And we suddenly realized, we can't use this 3D crap because
• 39:44
  it's, you know, we've only got so many parts.
• 39:46
  So we actually had to go back contact Jasper find out what
• 39:51
  crab he had modeled it from and then try to find one online and
• 39:56
  then so So we got a plastic one and then we had to paint it to
• 40:00
  look like his crab. And then we had to like drill
• 40:03
  holes into its cause to have wires that we clamp onto a
• 40:07
  sprocket snows. So luck and luckily Jasper, you
• 40:11
  know, was glad to help out so thank goodness.
• 40:14
  He kept his notes. Wow, that's terrific.
• 40:18
  So much that goes into such a little, a little puppet or not.
• 40:23
  Really a puppet by the end. I guess it's still puppet if
• 40:26
  it's clamping the Plastic version.
• 40:29
  I don't know what I'm talking about.
• 40:30
  Okay, let's move on. Um, we get our traveling Matt
• 40:33
  segment here, he's digging through some trashy.
• 40:36
  Find some bubble wrap. That will be important later in
• 40:38
  the episode, but let's talk about Matt 40 seconds.
• 40:42
  You mentioned. This one was rebuilt from
• 40:45
  scratch. This is not a restuffed Matt.
• 40:47
  Like some of the other puppets know, that was one of the.
• 40:51
  That was one of the ones they used for PR.
• 40:53
  This one was basically. Built from the same.
• 40:59
  I mean, these were all new puppets but we had died enough
• 41:04
  of their fleece, you know, years ago that they're all, they all
• 41:08
  use you know the police that was 38 years old, right?
• 41:12
  Yeah. It were all new puppets.
• 41:15
  They weren't sure made that, you know the old puppets Matt is
• 41:20
  throughout this season. Seems to be more seems to have
• 41:26
  more that he cannot I do and I don't know if that has anything
• 41:29
  to do with the build or if it's just the performance.
• 41:32
  But I feel like we see more of Matt.
• 41:34
  We see, you know, there's a scene in another episode where
• 41:36
  he's like, I'm his hands and knees crying.
• 41:38
  There's scenes where he's surfing on, you know, on the
• 41:42
  cafeteria tray. Things like that, was there
• 41:45
  anything that you had to do to these to these mats to make them
• 41:49
  more flexible in terms of performance?
• 41:55
  No, no. I mean not really?
• 41:57
  See the one thing that I know that we did more than they did
• 42:00
  on the original. Well, it was that we did send
• 42:06
  along quite a kid. You know, we had we had a
• 42:09
  animatronic skeleton that we could essentially put it inside
• 42:13
  the puppet. So in this bit, you know, they
• 42:16
  like you, you see him, you know, playing in the in the recycling
• 42:20
  bin and and then the the trash crap comes and picks that up and
• 42:26
  dumps him men. And you'll notice in that shot,
• 42:29
  it's a, you know, a continuous shot, and you'll see him alive
• 42:32
  in that, in that thing. And it lifts him up and it dumps
• 42:35
  him and that actually was a remote-controlled animatronic
• 42:39
  core that we stuffed into him to allow for that.
• 42:43
  So you know it's like I think on the original show they didn't go
• 42:47
  quite that far with any of those guys and I you know, my
• 42:51
  understanding is that, you know, on the original show that a lot
• 42:54
  of those were, you know, Improvisational you know, like
• 42:58
  where they would it was very improvisational having a lot of
• 43:03
  traveling that shoots. Yeah, it was whatever worked at
• 43:10
  the time and said that, but this would be.
• 43:14
  So these were quite a bit more planned out.
• 43:17
  So and then some of those shots to we have the advantage, you
• 43:21
  know, technically impose they can, they can remove rods, you
• 43:26
  know, where where they Couldn't back in the day and, you know,
• 43:30
  on some occasions full full Puppeteer arms so that you can
• 43:34
  kind of pull back a little bit further and and just get more of
• 43:38
  that performance on camera without worrying about seeing
• 43:41
  something that you shouldn't. So back at Fraggle Rock, we got
• 43:47
  a next song, it's floop, bloop and whoop where red is showing
• 43:51
  off her new game. Bloop bloop and whoop during the
• 43:55
  song, we got our first Glimpse at A fan favorite fraggle from
• 43:58
  the original series its large. Marvin.
• 44:02
  I know, I sound like a broken record.
• 44:03
  Was this an original large? Marvin puppet?
• 44:05
  That was had the the foam replaced or did you hit still
• 44:08
  have the old patterns for large? Marvin because he is such a
• 44:11
  unique looking puppet, you know, there's no way that you do.
• 44:14
  It was just like a puppet. Well, we'll make this one purple
• 44:16
  and it's him. It's no, he's, it's got to be
• 44:18
  large, Marvin? It was.
• 44:20
  I mean, we did have the original large Marvin.
• 44:22
  But his, his fleece had faded and kind of So we did have to
• 44:29
  make I mean and his patterns a lot of what happened at Fraggle
• 44:34
  Rock the first time was especially up in Toronto was not
• 44:41
  pattern because it was sort of like well let's make large
• 44:46
  Marvin and Dave would come in and say, I want him to be jolly
• 44:49
  and this that and the other thing and you just do it and you
• 44:52
  wouldn't think about, you know, making a pattern for it.
• 44:56
  So We had his old head and we basically took that old head
• 45:01
  apart re patterned it to make the new one so and interesting.
• 45:07
  Yeah, so I mean, it wasn't the same puppet, but it was really
• 45:12
  close. Yeah, it really is closed.
• 45:15
  I would not have been able to tell the difference.
• 45:18
  The fraggles have split into teams for this game except for
• 45:22
  boober. He is the referee / medic /
• 45:24
  lifeguard and he has to read all 800 rules twice for everybody,
• 45:29
  which was a fun little moment. He has one of those.
• 45:32
  I don't know what they're called that.
• 45:33
  It's like a party blower or a party horn, where you blow into
• 45:36
  it on that Apple's makes a little, Make some noise.
• 45:39
  That's one of those things where at this is the third time I've
• 45:41
  watched this episode and only, because I knew I was going to be
• 45:44
  speaking to you all that, it occurred to me.
• 45:48
  I don't know how they did that. Like that was probably one.
• 45:52
  Yeah, yeah, that's his mouth. It had to blow but he does not
• 45:56
  have lungs. So how did you build that one,
• 46:00
  the whole rig it because that's what we had already been
• 46:03
  supplied a whistle and they said, oh, it's got to have a
• 46:06
  party favor that comes out. So we dismantled an actual party
• 46:11
  favor and installed it into the whistle, and then we used latex
• 46:15
  rubber, tubing attached to It to the actual blower and then paid
• 46:21
  a small slit, and boobers hand-fed, the tube all the way
• 46:25
  up his arm down his body. And then all the Puppeteer had
• 46:30
  to do was, hold the whistle up to his mouth, have the rubber to
• 46:36
  put the whistle up to boobers mouth but the latex tube into
• 46:39
  the puppeteers mouth and blow amazing.
• 46:42
  So simple, that's that was a fun one.
• 46:45
  I have to assume that by the end of a shoot Lot of the puppets
• 46:48
  have little incisions all over their body that you can't see
• 46:52
  because they're hidden by the by the phone by the police.
• 46:54
  I mean absolutely boober boober, pretty much had two slits under
• 47:00
  his armpits in his fur because we were constantly fitting props
• 47:05
  or rods so we just we just stop sewing him up because they were
• 47:08
  under his arm. Sorry Raleigh we interrupt this
• 47:17
  Cast for a special postcard from our uncle traveling, John's
• 47:21
  Heart, A glia and A fraggle fast fact.
• 47:25
  Today's fraggle fast fact is performing sprocket is hard, so
• 47:29
  I got to perform a sprocket, the doggone Fraggle Rock back to the
• 47:32
  Rock and I was assisted by the amazing Karen prell who also
• 47:36
  assisted sprocket on the Original Series.
• 47:38
  So that was really, really cool. And basically the way sprocket
• 47:41
  works is he's a live hand puppet.
• 47:44
  My hand is in his mouth and his head and my life.
• 47:47
  And is performing his left hand and Karen Purcell.
• 47:50
  Performs his right hand and his tail usually behind his nose
• 47:55
  inside. If his nozzle, there is a little
• 47:58
  lever with a finger cap on it, that I can put my pointer finger
• 48:01
  inside of and move it back and forth and that's what raises his
• 48:04
  eyebrows or lowers them. So I'm doing that while I'm
• 48:07
  while I'm, you know, doing the voice and lip syncing and then
• 48:10
  Karen is doing the right hand and usually the tail sometimes,
• 48:13
  the Tails attached to his body. If it's the full body sprocket
• 48:16
  and sometimes it's just kind of a A loose piece, the tails
• 48:18
  loose, and she aligns it up with where his tail would be behind
• 48:23
  sprocket. And the other thing, Karen can
• 48:25
  do is, she has a controller to his ears, his ears on a little
• 48:28
  mechanism. And if she pulls on the
• 48:30
  controller either both of them, both of them at the same time or
• 48:32
  one of the other can make the ears raise and lower.
• 48:35
  So, that's what brings pocket to life, and it takes at minimum
• 48:38
  two people. Sometimes I actually for some of
• 48:40
  the shots we did on the show because they were a little bit
• 48:43
  more complicated, sometimes it would take a third person,
• 48:45
  usually Donna, Kimball, or Jordan, Lockhart or Magically
• 48:48
  would join in and perform. Either, you know, if Karen was
• 48:51
  doing the ears, they do the tail or sometimes if Sprocket was
• 48:54
  doing a really complicated walk, you know that they would help
• 48:58
  out with that. But the really fun thing is when
• 49:00
  we did sprocket full body dancing with Doc, I was actually
• 49:03
  wearing a head to toe blue suit and sprockets feet were attached
• 49:06
  to my feet and I was puppeteering his head from
• 49:09
  behind right behind his head and then in post-production They
• 49:12
  removed me from the picture and that's how sprocket got to
• 49:15
  dance. But doc I think is one of my
• 49:16
  favorite moments in the show. Show anyway, back to the
• 49:19
  podcast. So, all the fraggles are taking
• 49:26
  turns jumping off. This thing, it is Wembley's turn
• 49:29
  and red is just pushing and pushing and pushing him to jump.
• 49:33
  And he does not want to. He is so terrified of this, he
• 49:37
  actually freezes and we get a literally Frozen Wembley.
• 49:43
  So, okay. So I have to assume that Wembley
• 49:45
  In. This Moment is, are matured, is
• 49:47
  that accurate? Yeah.
• 49:49
  Yep. And and I mean, do you just have
• 49:53
  like a collection of Fraggle skeletons that you can fit into
• 49:56
  any given fraggle? They're not.
• 49:59
  No, they're not, they're not pre-built.
• 50:01
  It's, it's almost always done just very specifically for that
• 50:06
  scene in that moment because it because it's a lot of separate
• 50:09
  Armature wire that has to be kind of installed one by one.
• 50:14
  So so we don't have, you know, maybe we should, maybe we
• 50:18
  should. Some we gave all their leg
• 50:21
  skeleton, and we label them for each one.
• 50:24
  But no, Scott's right? With the we built that one,
• 50:26
  right then and there. Yeah.
• 50:28
  In in New York they had sent us a nice little kit of Frozen
• 50:32
  bits. And so then they had made a box
• 50:35
  of icicles and, and little patches of it was actually a
• 50:40
  real sign. Net thing, you know, almost like
• 50:42
  a almost, like a wig Lacey. You know that that then they had
• 50:47
  put You know, some kind of snow on and ice crystals and it was,
• 50:52
  it was just a big kit. That was, that was great.
• 50:55
  So wait, that wig wig with frozen feathers and that was
• 51:03
  beautiful. Yeah.
• 51:05
  And then and then he'd gets are matured and then and then
• 51:09
  dressed up in the with that Frozen look and then and then
• 51:13
  once we send that to set and then juergen kind of establishes
• 51:16
  that pose and That's it, that's it.
• 51:21
  Yeah. Well the nice thing about it is
• 51:23
  that once you get it set up you can just leave it there, you
• 51:25
  know. It's not gonna be, we did nobody
• 51:29
  touched right? What do you use to to stick
• 51:35
  icicles on to a puppet like something like that?
• 51:37
  What would you? What's the kind of adhesive that
• 51:39
  isn't going to ruin the fleece? You know what it is?
• 51:42
  It's always different and it depends how long it's going to
• 51:45
  be on there. Some, you know, sometimes if
• 51:47
  it's a real quick gag, it'll be to paycheck.
• 51:52
  But I think in this case, I think we actually sewed, you
• 51:55
  know, because he had so much of it on, you know, it went all the
• 51:58
  way down his arms and bit on his tail and so.
• 52:02
  So a lot of those pieces were actually sewing on all the way
• 52:07
  around the edge. So it was fairly permanent, you
• 52:09
  know? So we, you know, sometimes if
• 52:12
  you kind of and believe me A lot of times you do, just stick
• 52:15
  stuff on and cross your fingers and hope it makes it through a
• 52:17
  shot, right? But in this case because it was
• 52:21
  such a such an important story point that went on for long
• 52:26
  enough that you know, we don't want ice falling off of him
• 52:30
  halfway through and turning into a continuity issue.
• 52:33
  Absolutely. Yeah, that makes sense.
• 52:36
  Read seems to be barely concerned about Wembley's Frozen
• 52:38
  State because all she wants to do is win this game.
• 52:42
  So she is headed to the trash Heap to get some stinkle berries
• 52:46
  which smells so bad, they're bound to help him break out of
• 52:49
  his trance. Um, but first, she has to get
• 52:51
  through the gorgs garden. So we get our first Glimpse in
• 52:54
  this episode of the gorgs. You mentioned Raleigh that the
• 52:57
  ma and PAs gorg are the same builds from the old show, which
• 53:02
  is pretty cool, but we don't very often, see them below the
• 53:06
  waist on this show. They're often kind of in the
• 53:09
  castle behind a wall signature. About the out of a window.
• 53:13
  Is there a design reason for that?
• 53:14
  Or is it just we're trying to keep them away from the action?
• 53:18
  I think I think on this series that they were really trying to
• 53:21
  focus on, you know, Junior, gorgs, you know, he is his
• 53:25
  complete Ark and his story. So I think I think they just
• 53:29
  really quite literally wanted to keep Junior front and center.
• 53:33
  No, that makes sense. Yeah, butbut Mom.
• 53:35
  Paul were. They were complete.
• 53:37
  And again, from the neck down it was pretty much the original
• 53:41
  bill. I mean, we, you know, we made
• 53:43
  new shoes, you know, made new feet for And new hands.
• 53:49
  And then the heads even on Mom. Paula were pretty much entirely
• 53:55
  rebuilt. The under structure, which back
• 53:58
  in the day was done with ratan. Yeah.
• 54:02
  It's a little Rattan cage. That's inside there and that's
• 54:06
  what the actual Motors are tied to to move.
• 54:09
  The mouths that stayed the same. So actually the the servos and
• 54:15
  Motors inside the head were The same and they still work and the
• 54:22
  actual cage underneath. But we did go through and
• 54:26
  replace all the foam and then put new skin.
• 54:28
  And then, you know, and Mom got a new wig and then although the
• 54:32
  hair work on Paw and a new crowd.
• 54:34
  And so so basically what you do see is new on them rather they
• 54:42
  don't. So the same, I mean, that's
• 54:44
  what's important in the end of the actual, the actual framework
• 54:47
  underneath Is exactly. It's true for all of us.
• 54:50
  What's inside is what really cakes?
• 54:53
  But jr. As we've mentioned is a new
• 54:56
  design. So was he completely built from
• 55:00
  scratch? Is there anything left of the
• 55:01
  original Junior in that puppet? Nothing at all.
• 55:05
  It's them again like the the shoes we built new shoes but we
• 55:10
  model those pretty exactly from the original like, we didn't,
• 55:15
  you know, design-wise. We didn't really Ray.
• 55:18
  You know, and his his General costume look is pretty much the
• 55:24
  same and and our methodology behind the body was very, very
• 55:28
  similar to the original, you know, it's a little bit
• 55:33
  different but there's there's a certain way that that kind of a
• 55:36
  hoot suit moves that's that's got so much life that you know
• 55:43
  that we had kind of explored different ways of approaching
• 55:45
  dads and trying to give it a little more.
• 55:48
  Me or you know, a little bit more like Where the Wild Things
• 55:51
  Are sure as we kind of got into that.
• 55:55
  It's it kind of became a parent. Like you don't really want to
• 55:58
  see his weight, you know? And and that's and that's always
• 56:02
  a bit of a trick when we're doing like a Where the Wild
• 56:04
  Things Are is you know you want to sense that they weigh 300
• 56:08
  pounds or this or that. But again there's there's a
• 56:12
  certain lightness to Junior gorg in the way that the hair moves
• 56:17
  in the way the You know, his belly balances up and down and
• 56:21
  and it's so much part of him that we just wanted to keep that
• 56:25
  pretty much absent. Yeah.
• 56:26
  Well special for a character that he really is, I mean he's
• 56:29
  dancing, he's fighting he's chasing like you want to see him
• 56:33
  move and not just you know see a puppeteer kind of struggle until
• 56:37
  you know till like walk down the set that you know he and I like
• 56:41
  any of these characters, they feel so real.
• 56:44
  And honestly I mean it's all due to the design in the
• 56:48
  Performance. So, I mean, that's the half of
• 56:51
  you guys. What you guys are doing, going
• 56:54
  straight into that realism. Read does make it to the trash
• 56:59
  Heap. She avoids Junior and we see
• 57:02
  Marjorie the trash Heap, Philo and gunge you already told us
• 57:05
  the following guns are the original puppets, which is
• 57:07
  pretty cool. But Marjorie does.
• 57:11
  At least to me, she looks different enough that I would
• 57:17
  have assumed that this was a new build.
• 57:19
  Is there anything different on the guts that maybe would have
• 57:23
  would have changed something? Or is it just all in the
• 57:25
  performance? II know that we had to update
• 57:34
  the trash. Oh yeah, a lot.
• 57:38
  I mean which is one of the reasons.
• 57:40
  I mean, she really when we got her out of her box that she'd
• 57:45
  been stored in forever, there really wasn't a whole lot of
• 57:50
  stuff that was like together that you could have even cobbled
• 57:56
  it together. So that it would, you know,
• 57:58
  glass for an entire Isn't or more.
• 58:01
  So, I mean, she really was all new and the patterns were very
• 58:06
  sketchy. I mean, Jane Goethe, Nick worked
• 58:11
  on the original one and know we kept patterns but you know,
• 58:17
  she's pretty free for, didn't know it, she's a trashy, you
• 58:24
  know, and stuff will change. As we went through the season
• 58:27
  two, I mean stuff will be added and taken.
• 58:30
  Away. So, you know, we had the
• 58:33
  original head that there but again a lot of what we were
• 58:39
  doing at this point was remote, all of everybody was working
• 58:44
  remotely. I was building Wembley and
• 58:47
  traveling Matt from home. I'm like my crew in the
• 58:52
  beginning, was at home. So I'm getting messages all day
• 58:58
  long. How do you do this?
• 58:59
  And I Send pictures and it was it was and Marjorie was built
• 59:05
  entirely in any freshers basement.
• 59:09
  Wow. I mean, it was hard in the
• 59:14
  beginning, it was really difficult to get.
• 59:17
  I mean, luckily my crew of people I've worked with a lot so
• 59:22
  they knew the techniques that we were going to use, but I mean it
• 59:26
  was like it's the kind of thing where you want to be Hands-On
• 59:29
  but You can't be so you know it was we didn't see Marjorie
• 59:36
  really until the very end. When when the decorating part
• 59:42
  came in. So I imagine she is different,
• 59:48
  but of all the characters to look any different, it makes the
• 59:51
  most sense for her because she's literally, just made up of a
• 59:53
  pile of trash. So, you know, a banana peel
• 59:56
  might fall off. Their attend can might be put on
• 59:58
  stuck on over there, whatever? Like it's still, her feel like
• 1:00:01
  there's no. Yeah, the character is still
• 1:00:03
  there. Yeah, I would like to point out
• 1:00:07
  that that the set where they built her, she was at because
• 1:00:13
  most of our sets are built about four feet off the ground, at
• 1:00:17
  least so that the Puppeteer can stand on the ground and then
• 1:00:20
  just raise their arm up into the air because the gorg set was a
• 1:00:25
  piece of rolling landscape. By the time we, you get to the
• 1:00:28
  area where the trash Heap is located.
• 1:00:32
  She's actually about 6 7 feet off the ground.
• 1:00:36
  He was oh yeah. Yeah, in fact, they had to put a
• 1:00:40
  giant starter foam block underneath the stage just so the
• 1:00:44
  performers could get up near enough to her.
• 1:00:47
  And it's that where she's installed.
• 1:00:51
  They just took the floor out because she's just as nothing
• 1:00:54
  but giant Hoops. So when we had screwed down the
• 1:00:56
  Hoops, the edge of the stage, but there was leaves the trash
• 1:01:00
  all over the stage area, so you didn't know where to put your
• 1:01:04
  foot because one step and you would literally fall sick.
• 1:01:08
  Seven feet down. So everybody would walk around.
• 1:01:11
  Very slowly you didn't want to fall on top of the puppeteers.
• 1:01:15
  But yeah, she she was raised quite high up off the ground.
• 1:01:19
  Wow. When we did her.
• 1:01:20
  I mean she was maybe three feet above the ground because
• 1:01:24
  everybody was seated doing her there where they weren't
• 1:01:28
  standing now. There's there was a bit of a
• 1:01:31
  wow, they were sitting but they were sitting on a giant star
• 1:01:35
  foam block and and again for You know, for you know, this, this
• 1:01:41
  one, the, you know, they built the entire Gordon castle and it
• 1:01:46
  was, it was enormous. And so, the trash Heap is very
• 1:01:50
  much, you know, if you walk around a giant castle, it's over
• 1:01:55
  on the side of the castle. And so again, it is at kind of
• 1:02:01
  the top of a hill, because the whole gourd Castle is built on a
• 1:02:06
  on an incline, right? They used to set her up
• 1:02:09
  specifically because we had a little tiny studio.
• 1:02:14
  So that, you know, we do the caves one day and then they'd
• 1:02:18
  have to switch to the, to the castle.
• 1:02:22
  You know, then they have to switch to Doc's, you know,
• 1:02:26
  studio and it was Tiny. You guys, I mean, we have the
• 1:02:32
  advantage of having we were filming on 33, full sound stages
• 1:02:37
  and It was, it was impressive. I mean those, you know, the you
• 1:02:43
  know, the fraggle hall or the great hall and then all the cave
• 1:02:46
  systems and again they were usually two stages just filled
• 1:02:50
  with cave systems, where, you know, depending on different
• 1:02:54
  things. And then there were floating
• 1:02:56
  sets, that would kind of come and go once we've come backs
• 1:02:59
  Workshop, you know, that that space became, you know, a place
• 1:03:03
  where they wouldn't install the specialty caves and stuff.
• 1:03:05
  But, but the gorgs castle and You would be amazed really.
• 1:03:13
  You did all that in here. No one.
• 1:03:16
  We saw that. When we saw your stages, oh my
• 1:03:20
  gosh, they were outrageous. Yeah, it was always a pleasure
• 1:03:25
  to be to go to the stage where the gore Castle was too because
• 1:03:30
  I mean they can you can see in the show's I mean it's not just
• 1:03:33
  a castle with her chipmunk, massive trees and there's a
• 1:03:36
  whole garden and everything's grass.
• 1:03:38
  And literally, you know, between takes the Rhineland crew just
• 1:03:42
  literally, sit on the side of a hill with trees, and there was
• 1:03:45
  leaves and it felt like, if you are outside because outside its,
• 1:03:49
  you know, 13 below zero. So it was a pleasure to be on
• 1:03:54
  the gorg set because they really did a beautiful job.
• 1:03:57
  But and that's on that said, Marjorie stayed there
• 1:04:00
  permanently because she had her own cook of the castle.
• 1:04:05
  That's really cool. It's also interesting.
• 1:04:08
  Eating just because I don't think we ever made.
• 1:04:10
  Correct me if I'm wrong. I only ever see the transition
• 1:04:13
  from the gorg's garden into marjorie's cook.
• 1:04:19
  You know like you easily could have done those on two separate
• 1:04:21
  places and just insinuated that they're next to each other.
• 1:04:25
  Yeah well and and in fact kind of the space between what what
• 1:04:29
  we see in the show and where Marjorie is, I'm not sure, they
• 1:04:33
  even ever got a camera over to the the full right other.
• 1:04:38
  There's There's a side of that castle that I'm not sure, they
• 1:04:41
  even never put the camera and so when you get out, yeah, there's
• 1:04:47
  there's still things to explore over there.
• 1:04:49
  Alright. Season 2, we get to see the side
• 1:04:51
  of the castle. So, Marjorie asks read, if
• 1:04:59
  Wembley wanted to jumper Fred, just wanted him to jump.
• 1:05:01
  And, you know, she teaches her a lesson about.
• 1:05:04
  Yes means, yes, no means no. It's not a big, yes.
• 1:05:07
  Then it's a no. Go go and oh my gosh we are
• 1:05:10
  teaching consent on Fraggle Rock which is a huge topic for a kids
• 1:05:16
  show and I love it. What a great thing as red is
• 1:05:19
  heading back to Fraggle Rock Junior catches her and it looks
• 1:05:23
  like Juniors holding red here and we've seen in the previous
• 1:05:29
  episode you know, a matted you know puppet version of Mochi on
• 1:05:34
  to the real Junior gorg Saint to get the Comparison there.
• 1:05:39
  But here, I'm not 100% sure if that is a small red puppet.
• 1:05:43
  Like you guys used to use the old show, where you have the
• 1:05:46
  smaller versions of the fraggles that could run through the
• 1:05:49
  garden. Do you recall what that process
• 1:05:52
  was for for having these two characters, interact it?
• 1:05:55
  Again, I think I think in this scene, they used every every
• 1:05:59
  trick in the book, I think we did because we did have the
• 1:06:04
  small versions of the fraggles. It, did you make those Rowley?
• 1:06:09
  Yep. I think those were the original
• 1:06:12
  ones where they just, you know, Spruce them up at a new hair,
• 1:06:19
  but those were the original ones.
• 1:06:22
  They're amazing because they're fully functional little puppets
• 1:06:26
  and and they're just the cutest thing ever.
• 1:06:31
  But but we had, we had gotten those.
• 1:06:34
  And and so I think there is a shot of I think one of the But
• 1:06:38
  you see there is one of those small versions as as Juniors,
• 1:06:43
  carrying or, and then and then sometimes again like when you
• 1:06:47
  see the above the ground shots and she's kind of bouncing
• 1:06:50
  around his feet. Those that, you know, that
• 1:06:52
  becomes the digital read and then and then there's certainly
• 1:06:56
  blue screen shots where she's been matted into his hand.
• 1:07:01
  Wow, it's seamless. Yeah, it really is the
• 1:07:06
  transitions between each of those is seamless and the fact
• 1:07:09
  that again like this is my third time watching this episode and
• 1:07:13
  it's only now that I'm starting to go okay.
• 1:07:14
  Which one where do they change? Like how do they do this?
• 1:07:18
  I think most people are watching it and thinking, well, that's
• 1:07:20
  cool, they look real. And you know, the idea is that
• 1:07:23
  we don't want people to think more about it beyond that they
• 1:07:26
  did, they did such a great job and JJ directing.
• 1:07:29
  And then Johnny And you know, they really thought all that
• 1:07:34
  stuff through and really, really did.
• 1:07:37
  For the most part have a really solid plan about how they were
• 1:07:40
  going to kind of achieve some of that magic.
• 1:07:42
  I'd also like to think that up to the post post editing group
• 1:07:46
  because they took all that raw footage of blue screen and
• 1:07:50
  Miniatures and they blend it all together.
• 1:07:53
  So they helped. Because it's yeah.
• 1:07:57
  Looking like you said looking back.
• 1:07:58
  I'm like, okay was this seat? I can't.
• 1:08:01
  I can't remember now. And it's so close together.
• 1:08:05
  I don't know anymore. It's fraggle.
• 1:08:08
  Magic is what it is. So Pas gorg is telling Junior
• 1:08:14
  demanding that Junior drop read down the well.
• 1:08:17
  And this well does go directly down into the fraggle pool.
• 1:08:22
  In the Great Hall, red says, to Junior that she does not want
• 1:08:26
  this junior sis deposit. He does not want this.
• 1:08:29
  There's a lot of different types of consent going on here or non
• 1:08:34
  consent for that matter. And also like, really getting a
• 1:08:37
  look at this cycle of abuse, That hog org is setting across
• 1:08:42
  here. That's going directly from him
• 1:08:44
  to Junior to read to Wembley that, you know, like no one
• 1:08:48
  could have ever predicted again big topics or a good show.
• 1:08:52
  Yeah. It's deep.
• 1:08:55
  It really is Junior drops her into the pond and she admits
• 1:09:02
  that this was not awesome. It was awful and she is hurt.
• 1:09:07
  Like, I mean emotionally she looks really hurt.
• 1:09:11
  She says that she's jump from this height many times before.
• 1:09:13
  But this was different because she didn't have a choice.
• 1:09:17
  So that kind of gives her the moment of realization that she's
• 1:09:20
  able to go to Wembley and apologize for what she's done to
• 1:09:23
  him. And she sings our third song of
• 1:09:26
  the episode which is every voice and Wembley falls out.
• 1:09:31
  Thank goodness. You got that Armature skeleton
• 1:09:33
  out of him. Yep.
• 1:09:35
  Exactly. Wembley tells read that he
• 1:09:39
  didn't want to jump. And she accepts him for what he
• 1:09:42
  what he is saying and how he's opening up to her, but he is
• 1:09:46
  willing to jump from the lowest platform on the desert, our, and
• 1:09:51
  our episode ends as they realize that they don't have any rules
• 1:09:55
  for how to declare a winner for this game.
• 1:09:59
  That red is invented and they just decide when we is going to
• 1:10:03
  be the winner, and I like the moment where they give him Uncle
• 1:10:06
  traveling Matt's bubble, wrap to wear like a cloak and everyone,
• 1:10:09
  huh? Exam.
• 1:10:10
  And you hear the bubble wrap pop.
• 1:10:13
  You're very cute. So now that we've reached the
• 1:10:17
  end of this episode curious, if you three of you have any other
• 1:10:21
  interesting stories to tell any other observations in, even
• 1:10:24
  something that's maybe not about this episode.
• 1:10:27
  Maybe there's some interesting character builds that you want
• 1:10:29
  to call out from other episodes. Oh, I gotta say flutterflies
• 1:10:36
  that show off. I think it's like episode 6 or 7
• 1:10:39
  that, wasn't that great bill that Scott had to manage but
• 1:10:43
  those things, those are quite the little there we can.
• 1:10:49
  We could go on for hours and hours about all the all the
• 1:10:51
  different funds time to go. Sure.
• 1:10:54
  I know it's a shame that we're only talking about this one
• 1:10:56
  episode that, but yeah, there is no.
• 1:10:58
  Hey, I want to talk about the flutterflies one.
• 1:11:01
  Talk about any of these things. As if it was something that felt
• 1:11:03
  important to you, or felt like you're genuinely proud of what
• 1:11:07
  you created. I want to talk about it.
• 1:11:09
  They were all, you know, you know, it was interesting and
• 1:11:12
  very challenging as it is, you know, we we did, but it's
• 1:11:17
  somewhat popular now day and days.
• 1:11:19
  And lots of shooting is they do they block shoot, they block
• 1:11:24
  shoot series which means that they'll shoot, you know, three
• 1:11:27
  episodes at a time. You know and so when we're in
• 1:11:31
  the Great Hall, they'll shoot all the Great Hall scenes from
• 1:11:35
  three episodes. So over the course of, you know,
• 1:11:39
  two or three weeks. We'll be shooting three episodes
• 1:11:43
  at a time, which again, makes it all even more challenging when,
• 1:11:48
  you know, like an episode. Like this one, which was so
• 1:11:50
  water, heavy and just tracking the continuity on and I was
• 1:11:54
  impressed on this episode just in general with just like watch
• 1:11:59
  their wet. Hair?
• 1:12:00
  Because of course, when they're in the water, it's wet, but then
• 1:12:03
  they're out of the water and then that hair is slowly drying
• 1:12:06
  over time and the continuity is pretty spot-on.
• 1:12:10
  Like, you know, like Reds hair and this and that.
• 1:12:14
  But anyway, you know, the point being that when you're shooting
• 1:12:17
  those three episodes, there's so many new things to do for each
• 1:12:23
  episode that it is, it is just constant.
• 1:12:27
  So, you know, I think while we were filming this episode I was
• 1:12:30
  off again, trying to prep those flutterflies for for the next
• 1:12:35
  block, right? But yeah, it's a lot of fun.
• 1:12:42
  Speaking of those wigs that battle comes down to Raleigh and
• 1:12:45
  her crew because she created all these different levels of wet
• 1:12:50
  hair. So it was all about, you know,
• 1:12:53
  so we had all these versions of to use it was just snowing.
• 1:12:56
  Now, we doing seen 14 or seen 18 and then we have to go to the
• 1:13:00
  director of the ad. Okay.
• 1:13:02
  How dry do you want them to be at this point?
• 1:13:05
  How much time has passed? So luckily we had all those Wigs
• 1:13:09
  for everybody and Kent when you get, I mean the continuity was
• 1:13:13
  really good. Is you've probably watched all
• 1:13:17
  the shows do you have you noticed any continuity errors
• 1:13:21
  that pop into your heads? Oh, there's that there's, yeah,
• 1:13:27
  there's, there's plenty of stuff cuz I'm sure but I like these,
• 1:13:31
  they're so close to it. You see the seems like the
• 1:13:34
  something I would never have noticed.
• 1:13:36
  Yeah. He's very your head on your
• 1:13:38
  pillow and scream when we were doing some of the traveling
• 1:13:44
  Matt's. We were out in California and we
• 1:13:47
  were, he was skateboarding. And I had to Armature traveling
• 1:13:53
  that on a skateboard and, you know, send him off across the
• 1:13:56
  scene and I forgot to put his tail on him to get the scene
• 1:14:05
  before it. It begins dark and it was like,
• 1:14:09
  and I didn't realize it until it was shot was like oh they're
• 1:14:13
  gonna kill me. I'm never going to let me do
• 1:14:16
  this ever again so that you just see the top of him and you see
• 1:14:23
  him for a split second but I know he didn't have a tail.
• 1:14:27
  Oh, we're going to keep an eye out for that one.
• 1:14:30
  There's now we know there's so many details on all of these
• 1:14:33
  puppets and and there are In this episode either, there is a
• 1:14:39
  big continuity error and I've not even going to point it out.
• 1:14:42
  I'll let you try to find let us know.
• 1:14:57
  I do know that at one point. I just remember this one gobos
• 1:15:03
  best because he takes it off while swimming.
• 1:15:07
  Our while diving. So for the majority of the
• 1:15:10
  episode, he does not have his best because it's got all these
• 1:15:12
  little gadgets and it's postcards.
• 1:15:14
  And so the logic was, of course, he take it off.
• 1:15:17
  He doesn't want to get postcards quit, but I read the first time
• 1:15:21
  I watched it, it was at the very end in Wembley.
• 1:15:24
  You're the hero, you win the prize and I was just horrified,
• 1:15:28
  what does it have its best? And it's finally I went because
• 1:15:33
  he's been swimming, but just brief moment.
• 1:15:35
  There was that. Total feeling of Terror that I
• 1:15:39
  blanked out but he was just getting a little warm you know
• 1:15:44
  he wanted to cool off off screen.
• 1:15:47
  It's a deleted scene the peonies that alone.
• 1:15:52
  All the peoples only at the Met. Yeah there's a team red and team
• 1:16:01
  they they wanted them all in little team.
• 1:16:06
  Pennies which is which again, it wasn't aware that.
• 1:16:09
  I was terribly familiar with but well, little best that, that
• 1:16:12
  have their little team logos on them.
• 1:16:16
  And so are our costume Department up there.
• 1:16:20
  Kim Kim basically put together like, you know, and again very,
• 1:16:24
  very quickly. It was like we need a little
• 1:16:26
  vest for every fraggle and they were, they were really cute.
• 1:16:31
  They've got the, they've got little silhouettes of red or
• 1:16:34
  Gobo on them. And then in their team colors
• 1:16:37
  and then those are all hand stitched around the edges.
• 1:16:39
  And you know, there is a there's there's a look to some of the
• 1:16:42
  Frankel costumes in that they don't have, you know, the
• 1:16:46
  fraggles don't have sewing machines and you know, they
• 1:16:50
  their technology is fairly primitive down there in the
• 1:16:54
  caves and so that's kind of the fun of it as trying to figure
• 1:16:57
  out like how would a fraggle you know like like which fraggle was
• 1:17:02
  in charge of putting team uniforms together?
• 1:17:05
  And and how are they actually sewing it together?
• 1:17:08
  So you get to kind of invent your own little stories, says
• 1:17:10
  to, you know, like who's which fraggle is factually in charge
• 1:17:14
  of that and sewing those together and then figuring out
• 1:17:17
  to what level they're able to put together.
• 1:17:20
  A little felt vest. I love that because you're I
• 1:17:24
  mean even though it's probably never going to be seen on
• 1:17:26
  screen, you're creating fraggle Cannon, you're creating lore
• 1:17:30
  before the fraggle world and and again like so much of that.
• 1:17:35
  Just lives on because when we finish it goes into a box.
• 1:17:40
  So when you see like boober in this episode and he's got the
• 1:17:43
  when he's the referee and he's got the, you know, he's got his
• 1:17:47
  whistle and then he's also got a, you know, like a little, he's
• 1:17:52
  got like the medical thing, because he's also the medic.
• 1:17:55
  Yeah, he's the medic and the referee, and all of that stuff
• 1:17:59
  existed. So, you know, his referee shirt
• 1:18:04
  I think it's his referee shirt that he would have worn at some
• 1:18:07
  point in the original show and and then the same with that,
• 1:18:10
  that accessory. You know, there's a box of
• 1:18:13
  original accessories and throughout the whole series, we
• 1:18:16
  went to that all the time, you know, where it's just like we
• 1:18:20
  need, you know, we need silly hats and there's a there's a
• 1:18:24
  box, you know, there's an embarrassing, large box of silly
• 1:18:29
  hats and and some of them are even sillier than the next.
• 1:18:33
  East and so stoic. So it is wise all, yeah, I mean,
• 1:18:44
  she was a stickler as as far as her outfits because she wanted
• 1:18:50
  her original outfits and most of what he asked for we did have
• 1:18:56
  there were only one or two that were kind of dicey that we
• 1:18:59
  couldn't find well. And, and that went all the way
• 1:19:02
  to the, you know, every prop And when they were decorating, we
• 1:19:05
  Reds room again, like Terran is a, you know, an encyclopedia of
• 1:19:10
  knowledge and and we would, we would use her all the time and
• 1:19:14
  when we'd have a question about something when we have to, you
• 1:19:18
  know, there's a I forget which episode it's in, but Junior,
• 1:19:20
  Gordon needed to be wearing a suit of armor that was meant to
• 1:19:23
  be pause. And so of course we go and say,
• 1:19:27
  oh, you know, what would you know if we give him a shield?
• 1:19:30
  What would what would Pau? Gorgs armor shield look?
• 1:19:33
  Like the Juniors going to have in this and you know without
• 1:19:37
  pause she would say oh that's episode for season 3 and she
• 1:19:44
  pulled out her phone and pull it up.
• 1:19:46
  And sure enough, we'd have a picture like within seconds.
• 1:19:50
  I don't know there's what his shield looks like and so that
• 1:19:55
  but it was the same in her bedroom where she'd be like you
• 1:19:58
  know and you know and episode 14 red won this Trophy and we
• 1:20:03
  really need that Trophy up in the nook.
• 1:20:06
  And, and then the calls would happen like that people trying
• 1:20:09
  to find this trophy, does it still exist?
• 1:20:11
  And, and in a lot of cases, things existed.
• 1:20:14
  And, and in a lot of cases, we'd be making new things or or
• 1:20:18
  again, just going back and trying to, you know, again, in a
• 1:20:22
  later episode usually just see detective.
• 1:20:24
  Red shows up that and she of course, was featured in The
• 1:20:28
  Original Series. So it was like, we need to
• 1:20:30
  really try to duplicate that coat advance.
• 1:20:34
  Get that. Get that look just right and Oh
• 1:20:37
  yeah, that's it. And that becomes a lot of the
• 1:20:40
  fun as well as is really trying to trying to do it as Faithfully
• 1:20:44
  as you can. Is it is the challenge that's
• 1:20:48
  just as rewarding as inventing new things.
• 1:20:52
  So is there something in that prop box that you're like I just
• 1:20:56
  can't wait till we have an opportunity to throw this thing
• 1:20:59
  on. There was a lot when you're
• 1:21:13
  filming things and a lot of times a puppeteer might just
• 1:21:16
  have some crazy idea of, you know, can I have this?
• 1:21:20
  You know, can I have a thing that looks like this and you'll
• 1:21:24
  just grab whatever objects happen to be around or
• 1:21:27
  whatever's, you know, or whatever those Builders have in
• 1:21:31
  the shop. And again, you know, you know,
• 1:21:33
  and we found that out up until It's like we don't have an
• 1:21:37
  endless supply chain of things, so it does turn into like, okay,
• 1:21:42
  we need to make this but we need to make it about, you know, from
• 1:21:46
  whatever we have around. So, you know, there there's the
• 1:21:50
  original show a whole series of tribal, you know.
• 1:21:54
  And again, I don't even know an episode it was from, but
• 1:21:57
  apparently everyone. Everyone needed these kind of
• 1:22:00
  tribal outfits and they're all made out of, you know, straws
• 1:22:05
  and why. And quarks and again, hey I just
• 1:22:10
  said they're imagining like like who was all sitting around?
• 1:22:14
  Like, you know, probably talking another bottle of wind
• 1:22:36
  Oh yeah. So delightful up in Toronto
• 1:22:39
  called Lovecraft. Aft.
• 1:22:41
  So if you can imagine what kind of a shop that might be some
• 1:22:47
  things came from Lovecraft. Ha ha ha.
• 1:22:52
  Sure. There are some there are some
• 1:22:54
  tears are somewhere. You look at that would go is
• 1:22:56
  that the most talked about it. Somebody's missing this from
• 1:23:02
  their desk or I think there's a lot of connections between
• 1:23:06
  Fraggle Rock and HP Lovecraft already for adding in the
• 1:23:11
  Whatever they sold at the love craft store.
• 1:23:14
  Well, I could talk to the three of you for another hour or two
• 1:23:17
  about all this stuff, but unfortunately we have hit our
• 1:23:19
  limit with the heart. I'm on this podcast.
• 1:23:23
  So Scott Johnson you're going for a Goodson Raleigh.
• 1:23:26
  Crewson it. It's been an absolute treat
• 1:23:28
  having you here. Thank you for all the amazing
• 1:23:31
  work that you did on this series and especially Raleigh it's
• 1:23:35
  again so fantastic to have you back on Fraggle Rock.
• 1:23:39
  I hope that we get to Do more of this for season two so fingers
• 1:23:43
  crossed. Yep.
• 1:23:45
  Fingers crossed. I hope so, and call, anytime
• 1:23:49
  it's fun. Fun to talk.
• 1:23:51
  Thank you. It's been a blast talking to you
• 1:23:53
  as well. And for everyone listening, that
• 1:23:55
  brings us to the end of another fraggle Talk podcast, but stay
• 1:23:58
  tuned as tough pigs own. Beth cook talks more about the
• 1:24:01
  themes of this episode in our dive deeper segment coming up
• 1:24:05
  next. Hi.
• 1:24:17
  This is Beth cook and I'm joined by executive producer and
• 1:24:20
  president television at the Jim Henson company Holly Stanford.
• 1:24:24
  Holly thank you so much for joining me for this.
• 1:24:26
  This is the Dig Deeper segment. Yay, thanks for having me.
• 1:24:30
  I'm so happy to dig deep into Fraggle Rock With You,
• 1:24:33
  wonderful. So episode 102 Red and the big
• 1:24:37
  jump, I guess. I shouldn't have been surprised
• 1:24:40
  that consent and boundaries were a perfect fit for the world of
• 1:24:45
  Fraggle Rock. How did this become a topic that
• 1:24:50
  came into the show? Well, you know, it, we have a
• 1:24:55
  gaggle where we talked about a lot and you'll hear me say that
• 1:24:57
  a lot about the Gaggle, we talked about a lot of issues
• 1:24:59
  that really were important to parents and kids and teachers
• 1:25:04
  and one of the big issues on a Personal level for children was
• 1:25:09
  boundaries and consent, and we talked a lot about bullying and
• 1:25:14
  we talked a lot about, you know, do we want to do that kind of
• 1:25:17
  story? And then we were like, you know
• 1:25:18
  what, we don't, you know, we don't want to create a Boolean,
• 1:25:21
  Fraggle Rock. But we do want to talk about,
• 1:25:23
  you know, children of setting personal boundaries and physical
• 1:25:26
  boundaries, emotional boundaries.
• 1:25:29
  And what does that look like? And so as we started to play
• 1:25:32
  around with it Red Sea, Seemed like the perfect character who
• 1:25:38
  actually she's so in her own skin.
• 1:25:40
  She's so extroverted. She is so positive and physical,
• 1:25:45
  she may not be aware that other people have different
• 1:25:48
  limitations than she does about things that she loves.
• 1:25:51
  So we thought, okay, what if she pushes one of the characters in
• 1:25:54
  a way that they don't feel comfortable with?
• 1:25:56
  And so, that's how we came about with the, you know, sort of
• 1:25:59
  identifying red as the one who might push a character beyond
• 1:26:03
  what they feel comfortable with and then have her learn the
• 1:26:06
  Seeing herself. So you'll see in the episode
• 1:26:09
  that, you know, she pushes boob excusing up, boober Wembley to
• 1:26:14
  jump and in the game and he's not ready and he freezes and
• 1:26:19
  fear. And I have to tell you, I've
• 1:26:21
  actually watched that episode with kids and particularly boys
• 1:26:27
  and their riveted at that moment.
• 1:26:29
  Like, oh my gosh, he is Frozen with fear and it there riveted.
• 1:26:33
  They're not worried but they want to know what's Going to
• 1:26:36
  happen. And a lot of it has to know what
• 1:26:39
  ultimately helps Wembley. Is that red has compassion and
• 1:26:44
  empathy and understanding because she herself is thrown
• 1:26:48
  down the well my junior gorg and she did not give him her
• 1:26:52
  consent. So these messages at this early
• 1:26:55
  age for children are so important to be taught as they
• 1:26:59
  grow up, not just from a physical safety place, but also
• 1:27:03
  an emotional place or in the workplace or in the I don't feel
• 1:27:07
  comfortable talking about that right now.
• 1:27:08
  I need to talk about that later so I think we all as parents and
• 1:27:13
  kids can get a lot out of this episode about what it means to
• 1:27:17
  be in that dance with our relationships about when people
• 1:27:22
  are ready to do things that you want to do and participate in
• 1:27:26
  the way you want to do it. And my favorite moment in that
• 1:27:30
  episode is when when because I'm going to do it but I'm going to
• 1:27:34
  do it a little bit. Shallower still dumb said, he
• 1:27:39
  still does it and they cheer and they're proud of him.
• 1:27:43
  So he pushed himself a little bit too but not without that,
• 1:27:47
  the apology and understanding of of red, there was a great tie-in
• 1:27:52
  with the doc and sprocket segments being on a similar
• 1:27:58
  lesson of, they find a crab at the beach and sprocket learns.
• 1:28:02
  Oh, you need to give this guy a space.
• 1:28:04
  You have a Miss space and, you know, we did, Try to carry the
• 1:28:07
  theme. Not every time we do it but
• 1:28:09
  almost every time we're able to carry the theme from the
• 1:28:12
  fraggles to the Doozers to Doc and sprocket to to the gorgs.
• 1:28:18
  But yeah I love that moment with the crab and sprocket because
• 1:28:22
  you know it has to learn. I think it I think we've all
• 1:28:25
  seen our dogs do that as well or cats but they are animals.
• 1:28:29
  But he does have to learn to respect the boundaries of Nature
• 1:28:33
  and to allow space. But then in By the end, their
• 1:28:37
  friends. So I'm not sure that would
• 1:28:38
  really happen, but it on Fraggle, Rock that happens.
• 1:28:41
  It's rock and in the crop can be friends.
• 1:28:43
  It worked perfectly. Yeah, so, what kind of research
• 1:28:47
  went into, crafting? This message for such a young
• 1:28:50
  audience. We talked to teachers and two
• 1:28:53
  parents and two Specialists of this age group on, what are the
• 1:28:59
  actual lessons that have to be taught at this age with
• 1:29:03
  boundaries, and a lot of it does have to do with em.
• 1:29:06
  The perception and having kids, sort of walking, you know, the
• 1:29:11
  shoes of the other. So of course, I'm Fraggle Rock.
• 1:29:14
  We can literally make that happen, right?
• 1:29:16
  Whereas in real life, you know, we're not going to throw a kid
• 1:29:18
  down the well or throw a kid off of, you know, into a pool.
• 1:29:22
  But we can at least, you know, demonstrate that this particular
• 1:29:28
  moment for kids can be debilitating.
• 1:29:32
  And I think that for the child watching at home, they'll be
• 1:29:36
  great. Apathy so it just we talk to
• 1:29:38
  people that actually work with kids at this age and get the get
• 1:29:42
  the get the points down that we need to deliver and give it a
• 1:29:46
  fraggle spin. Always give it a fraggle spin.
• 1:29:55
  Fraggle, talk The Unofficial Fraggle Rock podcast is brought
• 1:29:58
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• 1:30:01
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• 1:30:04
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• 1:30:06
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• 1:30:08
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