The Powerhouse Museum Ghost

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With my latest puppet video, I wanted to stretch my legs a little bit by telling a story that was fun but related to something that was going on in real life. Because I’m the vice president of the Shepherd Area Historical Society and sort of the designated photographer, I happen to have photos of the exhibits in the first floor of the museum from both before they were moved into an external storage container, and afterwards. I felt like there was a way I could utilize these photos to help tell a story.

Because it’s October and Halloween is less than a week away, I knew that I wanted to tell a story about a ghost that was inhabiting the museum, but now it has to leave because the artifacts are being moved out. I had this idea of the ghost shopping around town for a new place to haunt, but then returning back to the Powerhouse Museum, because that was its one true home.

As I worked through the exchange between “Mr. Ghost,” and the other character in the video, Wyatt, I felt like the dialogue could include actual details from the project to repair the roof on the museum’s annex. As Wyatt is filling the ghost in on the news about the roof repairs, he is also catching the audience up. It also serves as an information piece, which I hope will help to get the word out about our project.

Multiple character conversations are tricky both because I need to record all sides of the dialogue, and because I need to be mindful of the space they occupy as they’re interacting with each other. To do this, I try to adjust the background to help create the sense that the characters are standing in different spots in the room. Because I’m playing both of them, they can’t both be in the same shot at a time, although sometime I hope to try to achieve this with green screen.

The shots in the museum cheat a little bit, because the background is variated ever so slightly. In reality, they would be standing side by side with each other awkwardly and trying to talk to each other. I hope that people who watch the video will not next stand inside the museum, and guess where these characters were supposed to be, because there is no solid answer to that.

I felt like the sequence with the ghost looking at different sites to haunt worked out well, especially with the addition of the music track. I also made sure to include an establishing shot at the beginning, because I feel like my videos in the past have missed them. I decided at the last minute to include a message by a third puppet, to help to fill in the details about the project to repair the roof. I felt like the dialogue didn’t give enough details about the project, and that the best thing was to include text at the end, or to include the epilogue. I chose the puppet that I used because I preferred a more human like character, and he’s kind of fun to watch.

This was the first time that I was able to really set up my equipment in a way which was most conducive. I was able to lift up the box of stuff and later the “haunted object” by stacking a shelf on top of a study desk. It was just high enough to be in view of the camera, which was perfect.

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