Pelham Puppets and making films win the day.

Suddenly decided to get back to putting films on youtube. Have lots of unedited footage including some to put to my poetry.

But the easiest to start with today are our plays for Pelham Puppets that missed the boat a few years ago.

‘The Cat and the Cauldron’ was an early edit but only went online today. Written in the 50s for children. Does anyone remember performing it?

Editing films is always a challenge but these are really fiddly especially as the films were made with my mother and I operating the puppets and letting the camera run. But ‘Caterpillar Capers’ went up few years ago and is a favourite with Pelham collectors. I still like it myself!

We had to buy some of the puppets on Ebay ourselves to make the films, because when Bob Pelham asked us to write the plays in the early days, we did not actually own any.

Bob had served in the second world war, where he got his nickname Wonky Donkey, from making little push up puppets. My father had served in the second world war too, so maybe that was the basis of their long lasting friendship. My mother was involved in the early newsletters from Pelpop.

David Leech has the official Pelham Puppet site http://www.pelhampuppets.uk.com. He used to work at Bob Pelham’s factory and continues to produce new puppets too. His book published in 1998 has details of all the Pelham Puppets produced.

As far as filming is concerned there is an added complication because to date I can only edit in Adobe 6.1 because it is intuitive. I have mild discalucular that means that anything that requires calculation including plus and minuses is out of the question. I tend to shove a whole film on the timeline and chop it up by eye and instinct.

I have put lots of films on youtube in the last 15 years or so. There are mini documentaries, art, puppets etc. most of them short and sweet, less than five minutes duration

Some I made when I was a member of two different film clubs in London but several have been made since I moved to the outskirts of Brighton.

‘Virginia Woolf’ and ‘Monet’s Garden’ are two of the most popular.

I have recently had to change camera and cope with discs rather than tape, which means a change in editing system. It is all a bit of challenge and I am trying to find the easiest one, But then I still have several films on tape to finish too

The inevitable question is how long have I got and how do I really want to spend my time? I write a lot anyway and have partner, a family, a garden and an allotment! But then still hope to improve my poetry and combine some of them with film.

The link below will take you to all the short films I have already made on all sorts of topics. Most of them are less than 5 minutes long, Some have thousands of hits and others with just a handful. Well you can’t please everyone all the time. 85 films altogether.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Brightonfilms/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=p

Here are a few of the first images to a handful of them.