Shadow puppets
I’m getting ready to do a show for the Melbourne Comedy Festival next year; a puppetry show!
Part of the script calls for some projection of images, and rather than use a data projector, I thought why not use shadow puppetry. However, the play is a one-woman show, and I needed to make the shadow puppetry simple to operate.
I don’t quite know how I came across the idea - I guess I thought I was trying to avoid using a overhead projector as well - and thought, ‘Why not make my own shadow projection?’
Having thought of this idea, I began designing a box, in which you could slot individual ’slides’ (material with silhouette images on it), but that didn’t seem very elegant to me. The script calls for a number of tableau images to be shown. I tried to think of a way to make the slides pass through, and I got stuck…
Then, the thought of The Lion King (the musical) came to me - in particular, the scene with the rotating buffalo stampede. And it hit me! Why can’t I rotate the images somehow?
Combining this idea with the box, I decided the best way to make a simple shadow puppetry box operated by one person, would be to make a long piece of screen - to which the silhouettes would be attached - each end attached to a rod inside the box. Handles on the tops of the rods would allow the screen to be rotated.
It’s kind of hard to describe, but if you can imagine the inside of a camera - how one end of film rolls on to the mechanism, and rolls off the film case.
Here you can see my prototype - I bought two boxes, one in case I couldn’t find anything that was suitable (the one used as the prototype), and the other later, having come across a size I was happy with.
Really, when I set out making it, I had a basic design in mind. However, putting into reality was a little more difficult, since I went about it a bit backwards.
First of all, I cut my rods - some dowel - to the correct height. It’s actually a bit shorter than the height of the box, since the handles attach to the top of the rods. More about that later.
Once I cut the rods, I then made holes in the box. You can’t tell in this view, but the box is actually for presents - so the lid removes. This meant that I had to make eight holes; four each side of the box, four each side of the lid, and they all line up to slot the rods through.
Once I did this, I cut some wire - clothes hangers - to the correct height that I wanted, and then bent them into a sort of zigzag shape. I wanted the handles to be like cranks, to make the turning a little easier. Then I threaded a couple of very large wooden beads onto the top of the rod, and gaffa-ed the bead on - since it’s only a prototype, I didn’t worry about making it look good.
Once the rods were gaffa-ed to the handles, I tried threading them through the holes in the box - it worked, but barely! I had to make the holes bigger at the top, because the gaffa-ed ends wouldn’t go through. Finally the rods were inserted.
Next, I had to cut the hole for the screen to be seen through. I had to make the hole a bit higher than the height of the light inside. The light - a small fluoro tube, bought at Bunnings, which has a lead attached and a button on the top to turn it on and off.
I measured the light inside the box (the height), and cut a hole at the back of the box to thread the lead through. I later gaffa taped the hole up, since the plug is bigger than the lead and left a huge hole visible. Plus, I gaffa-ed the light into the box so that it wouldn’t move about in the box.
Then I cut out a ‘TV’ shaped hole in the front of the box - 3cm away from the outer edges of the box. This is when I realised that I should have cut the hole first, and then tried to fit the rods in; with the hole, I could reach into the box and fiddle with the rods without taking them apart or out of the box at all.
It was also absolutely wonderfully flukey that I used a box with a lid. Because of this, I can open and close the box, having greater acccess to the insides - making repairs and other adjustments easier.
Anyway, once this was done, I had the box, the light inside, the hole, now I had to attach the material that would make up the projection screen. I wasn’t quite sure what material to use, so I just went to Spotlight and bought some scraps. As it turned out, what I bought was perfect. A white, sort of calico material (it wasn’t calico, but had similar thickness and toughness), and some black see-through material.
Then I got some sheets of black origami paper and cut out two images - one a bird, the other a cat - in silhouette. I stuck blue-tacked the bird onto one end of the material, and the cat on the other end.
I then gaffa-ed each edge of the material to a rod inside the box.
The cat can’t be seen here because it is on the material that is rolled onto the right-hand rod. Believe it or not, but the black material hanging over the box is supposed to be there. In the final product, the black material will actually properly cover the box (the cardboard box in the background in fact), giving it a bit more mystery and atmosphere. As you can tell in this picture, the light works really well (at 60 watts I was worried it wouldn’t be bright enough, but nighttime tests suggest it will work in a small blacked-out theatre), passing through the white material and the black material.
So, by turning the handles to the right, the material winds across the ’screen’, allowing each silhouette image/tableau to be shown in order. Turn it the other way, and the silhouettes go backwards. Simply, easy - it took me less than an afternoon to make up - and best of all, it works!
What was a simple idea in my head turned out so well in the prototype, I’m really looking forward to making and using the final product!
With all the lights off in my house, even at 8.30 am, this projection box looks great. … I think so anyway 
Want more? Help build a puppet!
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