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[Pinky]

And, as much as I hate it to point at someone directly, I had only one person who I almost never understood. I can't say if it's just Pinky's voice, the accent or the low variation in her accentuation but I's very hard to understand what she is saying.

Which of the characters I played was it? When I played Aurelia, I put on a thick accent (for example rolling the "r"s) because she was like a Gypsy from a far away and exotic place. Also, my voice was pretty worn out by the time we performed it, so that probably didn't help either. Mostly though, this below:

I have to say I agree with this: I personally had more trouble understanding native English speakers than Germans most of the time - the Germans usually at least try to take the time to pronounce the English words correctly, while the native English speakers more often rush through it because they're so used to English.

I think that is very true. I probably have to think more about speaking (what is for me unnaturally) slowly and clearly when speaking English. Although, funnily enough, quite a lot of people actually told me the opposite of LeTigre, that I was the one who was easiest to understand. Which again just brings me back to the same point: I suspect there is a linguistical factor at play here. We all have natural languages, that's just how things are at an international convention. Not that we cannot improve, I'll work on speaking more standard English and less British, but we also have to accept the basic foundations for performance.

[Taggy]

The pawpetshow was amazing.  I can only thank all.
The pawpetshow is in my eyes the highlight of the EF. I am sure it is really harder to make a pawpetshow than an theater performance.
THANKS A LOT.

[VulpesRex]

   This is just a short comment to say that I LOVED the Pawpetshow performance of POMPEII.  I've seen enough DOPE performances to say that this was at least as good a production as previous shows, I had NO problems whatsoever understanding the lines as spoken, and if an audience can't get around the fact that occasionally a dulled black figure will be visible around the puppets now and then, well...perhaps puppet shows are not really your cup of tea.  One of the world's best puppet troups is the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre in Los Angeles, CA, USA - and there, the puppeteers are not hidden by any scenery, indeed the audience sits around the periphery of the theater, and the marionettes (with their "Handlers") walk out to the edge of the audience.  No one, from the age of 4 to the age of 80, pays any attention to the puppeteers, and after the first few minutes into a show, they are for all intents and purposes invisible.

   I have other general comments to make about both the convention and the pawpet show, but I shall make them in a general post later this weekend.  For now - good show, to all the pawpet crew!

[Gero]

Sounds like something like they do in the musical version of Lion King, but there them actors has this wonderfull costumes and make ups thats almost worth looking at in theyre own rights.

I didnt bothered with an od head showing thou. I was more concerend with that the video cameras was so high up so the fotage showed the actors heads almost all the time. Still not a biggie but it might help having them cameras a bit lower down next year.

[Zefiro]

Since this comes up regularly, though only from very few people, and we as the ones never seeing it from the audience side obviously have a different point of view, quite literally, honest question:

How much does seing the stuff holding everything together ("the machinerie") distracts you from the story or even spoils the experience for you?

We have lots of things which are required to make everything work, and we try to put everything in black - both, because black can be mentally ignored more easily, doesn't shine and distract by itself, and also as a clear cue to the audience what is intended to be part of the play and what is "the stuff behind the curtain". Those things include the metal hooks for the backdrop paintings, gloves and balaclavas for our puppetteers, lighting fixtures, rods on puppets and props (=all the non-puppet, non-decoration items we handle).

We are also aware of the perspective issue, which became even more important since we don't play anymore directly at the playrail only, but also behind each other - people in the front row have a steeper viewing angle than those in the last rows, whereas the cameras are both further away and placed higher, necessarily to not be obstructed by the audience. Our effective maximum puppet height is literally "one arms length" - thus we can choose between showing as much puppet as possible and a few heads, or no heads but also less of the puppet, too. We did actually discuss this and decided that it's worth asking our audience to ignore the heads as they are ignoring all the other black things already, than to display talking puppet heads only, w/o the body interaction and arm movements. After all, it IS a live puppet play and not an animatronic TV production.

Thus, I'd be interesting to hear whether those heads really bothered you that much, and whether you can explain why it makes such a difference to you?

*purrrrr*

[Suran]

I can ignore seeing half a head poking out somewhere but seeing a full face in a black suit breaks the magic.

[Kamuniak]

This:

• everything is just WAY TOO LOUD — I should have brought earplugs. Characters speaking normally: loud. Background music: loud. Characters screaming (which happens a lot): unbearably loud.

Which is really pity thinking how much time and effort making these shows surely takes, and then thing like this ruins the experience :(

[Jaryic]

This:

• everything is just WAY TOO LOUD — I should have brought earplugs. Characters speaking normally: loud. Background music: loud. Characters screaming (which happens a lot): unbearably loud.

Which is really pity thinking how much time and effort making these shows surely takes, and then thing like this ruins the experience :(

I'm sorry but none told me during the performance.
Unfortunately we don't have a musical theater that has an optimal acoustic design and lot's of small speakers installed to ensure an even level of volume throughout the whole venue. We only have one big stereo speaker system for the whole room. So depending where you sit, it can be more or less loud. In fact we added a new "Nearfield" system this year to the already existing surround and monitor systems as well as doing changes to the adjustments of the main speakers to get a better control over this. But all these changes give us a totally new set of parameters that we still have to learn to ace when doing live audio. None of the tech crew is a pro with that size of a venue and this kinds of events so it may not be THX-HD-DD-12.2-3D-IMAX-48FPS-Quality all the time. We try to, but believe us, even with 14h dress / tech rehearsal it's hard to hit it right on the first shot, that is the show presentation you all see. Bare with us, we're not doing this on purpose. Producing the show takes far too much time to ruin it by ignorance during the premier.
But there is also no invisible barrier between you and us - using a break to come to the tech booth in the back and tell us "it's pretty loud at the front" helps us and we can do something about it.

(And before someone asks, yes, I use an SPL-Meter and yes, at the mix position the audio was at a "cinematic" level - means at a level I'd expect when I go to the cinema or into a musical production)

[Knightmare]

Aurelia just had the kind of voice where i just wanted to run up and hug her, her character just made me melt from cuteness, overall it was a dam awesome show, always wanted to see a pawpet show ever since i first wanted to attend EF, i can now see why others say its like the "highlight of the furry calander" so to speak

[Pinky]

Aurelia just had the kind of voice where i just wanted to run up and hug her, her character just made me melt from cuteness, overall it was a dam awesome show, always wanted to see a pawpet show ever since i first wanted to attend EF, i can now see why others say its like the "highlight of the furry calander" so to speak

*blush* 

[Knightmare]

the voice was just perfect, could hear every word clearly which to me is key when on a microphone whether its for performance or otherwise, wish my microphone skills was as good as yours was and mine should be good considering i do announcing for me local hockey teams