Behind the Scenes: “Space Miners”

Last week I released my latest puppet video called “Space Miners.” The video was always going to be birthday-inspired and a follow up to a similar video that I published last year in which one of my characters is interrupted by a news report while he is singing “Happy Birthday” to the target of the video message, a friend of mine named Sarah.

In that previous video, the news cast that interrupts the singing announced that the government had ended birthdays for everybody, which was meant to be a jab at the person who was being recognized for having a birthday that day.

This year’s follow up was a bit more elaborate. The video starts out as a live-streamed web show called “Space Miners.” The three characters who appear on the video are on a mission to mine an asteroid in deep space. When the video opens, they have already laded on the asteroid, and mining operations have begun with one of the crew mates, Gary, already making his way towards the designated dig site. Captain Wyatt is filming the introduction from the bridge and greets the audience. After talking to Gary, we see Gary move off camera as the video is interrupted by a news report stating that the government has reversed the previous order, and that birthdays will now be recognized.

When we return to the ship, we discover that Gary is dead. The attending doctor catches the viewer up to speed, but as he is wrapping up the video is interrupted again with a news report.The video culminates with the entire crew dead or missing, and the last shot is of an alien which as presumably caused all of the trouble.

Planning

I knew that I wanted to repeat the pattern of the previous birthday video, but I wanted to add a new layer so I always aimed for a live streamed show of some kind. Originally, I thought it would be funny if the video suggested that the characters had been shrunken to microscopic size, and were actually inside the person celebrating their birthday and conducting a colonoscopy in some new kind of way. It would have been a send up of “Fantastic Voyage.” But, then, I didn’t know how appropriate all of this would be, so I shifted to the idea of mining an asteroid which had been named in their honor. Originally, the dialogue was going to even state that the money made from the minerals mined on the asteroid would go to the person celebrating their birthday, but I missed this part of the lines in the take that I used for the video, so this whole concept was lost.

Production

My favorite part of the video is the scene with Gary on the surface of the asteroid. It was tricky, but I think that I got him to bounce just in the right way to stay with the idea that he was in an environment with low gravity. The helmet really sells the scene, although later I realized that it didn’t make very much sense for him to not be wearing gloves. Oh well. In the exchange between Gary and Wyatt, I like how Gary emotes the realization that he needed to go back to the ship to get the moon rover and digging gear without really having to say any words.

When I first envisioned the skit, I thought that there would need to be a lot of exterior shots of the ship showing it landing or maybe on the surface of the asteroid. But, those were going to be tricky and time consuming, and it was a lot easier just showing the view of the asteroid from the bridge, and then Gary’s moon walking scene.

In many ways the video is a send up of “Alien,” and I think it helps that the story beats it does show really fit into that movie, and help the audience fill in the missing pieces that are covered up by the news breaks.

My one regret is that I stayed too close to the events of the movie and stated that Gary had had an egg implanted into him. I realized afterwards that I should have instead have taken inspiration from “Jurassic Park II,” and maybe had Gary find the egg and attempt to carry it back to the ship, setting up the alien monster as perhaps an angry mother trying to get the egg back. Had I portrayed the scenes, I probably would have gone this route.

If I were to revise this video, I think I would invest more resources into the beginning of the video, perhaps by adding a theme song and title card for “Space Miners,” really helping to establish it as a live streaming web show.

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