Puppet show for the 21st century
The Jim Henson Company is revisiting ’80s classic The Dark Crystal for Netflix. Benji Wilson
discovers how puppetry was married with special effects to bring the world bang up to date
A
T LANGLEY STUDIOS, half
an hour west of London,
they’re trying to make a puppet
swim. It’s for a scene in The Dark
Crystal: Age Of Resistance, Netflix’s
10-hour return to the fantasy world of
Jim Henson’s 1982 cult movie.
Rian, one of the Gelfling tribe – the
put-upon heroes in the benighted land
of Thra – has jumped off a tower and is
about to land in a moat. Or so we’re
told. What’s in front of us is a green
screen and two puppeteers dressed
head to toe in green, manipulating the
Rian marionette.
Two further puppeteers surround
him, turning and twisting rods to try to
make him swim. Breaststroke is jerky
and looks unrealistic, so they switch to
doggy paddle. Another puppeteer
comes to control the kicking legs. It
looks a little like an operating theatre for
major surgery in a large green hospital.
Then suddenly, the conversation
ceases, the shadow unit director calls
action and it all makes sense. A wind
cannon is fired vertically to suggest the
puppet is falling, the puppeteers do their
subtle dance and as if by magic, Rian isalive, falling, hitting the water, swim-
ming to the surface. By the time it makes
it into episode one of The Dark Crystal,
Rian will look like a real creature, with
a face and a character all his own.
The effort involved in realising a
two-line stage direction gives you
some idea of how much time, exper-
tise and money has gone into Netflix’s
resurrection of one of the 1980s’ most
beloved movies.
“This is historic,” says Brian Froud.
He should know – he was the concep-
tual designer and costume designer
for the original film (as well as for that
other 1980s Henson classic, Labyrinth).
“Since The Dark Crystal film, nobody
has made puppets like this,” says
Froud. “We had to rediscover how toTHE DARK CRYSTAL:
AGE OF RESISTANCE
Production company
The Jim Henson Company
Length 10 x 60 minutes
TX 30 August, Netflix
(global)
Executive producers
Lisa Henson; Louis
Leterrier; Halle Stanford
Producer
Ritamarie Peruggi
Director Louis Leterrier
Writers Javier Grillo-
Marxauch; Jeffrey Addiss;
Will Matthewscreate the illusion. I kept telling the
production team: ‘Puppets don’t do
anything; they’re not like actors in
costume.’ Even when you want a
puppet to pick up something and
drink, it’s a special effect. You have to
find ways around all this stuff.”
The new series is set many years
before the events of the movie and has
been realised using classic puppetry
married with cutting-edge visual
effects. The story begins as the world
of Thra, which holds the Crystal of
Truth at its heart, is dying, corrupted
by the evil Skeksis as sickness spreads
across the land. The adventure
unfolds as fires of rebellion are lit and
an epic battle for the planet begins.
Serving that sprawling story required
the creation of not just an astonishingly
detailed set of puppets, but a world for
them to inhabit. Langley Studios has
40,000 sq ft of workshop space, which
has been divided into 3D printing
booths, craft shops and costume
rooms, full of life-size puppets of the
postulant Skeksis and cute Gelflings.broadcastnow.co.uk 23 August 2019 | Broadcast | 43People have realised
something has been
missing from
animation and computer
graphics, and that is
character and charm
BRIAN FROUD
CHARACTER AND COSTUME DESGINERBEHIND THE SCENES
THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE NETFLIX
Puppet masters: traditional and
modern techniques were used to
create the 10-hour animation seriesContinued on page 45 ➤