 To the editors, November 25th, 1950, enclosed, please find my case study for peer-reviewing publication. Sincerely, Irene Ibis, MD. The New England tapeworm, Tania Nova Britannia, is a sesdoid parasite, presently treated with antihemetics, which have contraindications and limited effectiveness. The patient presented C-figure 1, with complaints of fatigue, weight loss, and diarrhea. A routine examination indicated an infestation of Tania Nova Britannia. In a less enlightened age, this was dire, but modern science brings a brighter prognosis. Foreign objects would be introduced as antigens, stimulating an antibody response, ejecting the parasite. The therapy would be administered over the course of a week, affecting a complete return to health. At night, our eyes turn toward the moon, yearning for the most virtuous rabbit, chosen from those who recently lost us. Welcome to our perfect world, a jewel on the wine-dark sea, now graced by strange-looking guests. Come lately here to study us. Low wind and crack your cheeks. By the pricking of my nose, something foolish this way goes. Good morrow, Fair Herald. What news? Of men, or so they call themselves. Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues, pursuing that that flies and flying what pursues. Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues. We have seen one of their kind before. Gentle scum-crisp, master of song. Oh, it's you. Praise Mother Moon. Dear, my heart. But I fear their kind may not be likewise kind. Kind stumptuous taught me these trills while he sought refuge here from war. A treasure here may prove you wrong, so lend a nose and fathom hence. What testament of good or ill has fortune spilled from careless purse? What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculties, informant moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel. In apprehension how like a god. I am relieved. What wonders await? Mother Moon, preserve us. But preserve us not like that. What monsters among us. Cut down and then cut up. Your smile. Your smile said. Thou unnecessary letters. My lord, you will give me leave. I will tread this unfolded villain into water. Winged ship drops shining gift into our paws. Lord. We have some medical professionals here who could help with the details. On the other screen, how did you do it? You know what I mean. Yeah. Well, it's the magic of cinema. Did you drink of life or what? Well, it was everything with film or digital film in this case. The documentary maker, Don Penny Baker said that film is truth 24 times a second. And that has to do with the frame rate and it isn't film specifically because it's digital but still it's built on the foundation of film. And the frame rate is now 29.9 times a second but the principle holds. And we're counting on the persistence of vision and we can help that along by pushing movements of the creatures in real time and that can be transliterated into the perceived time of all the frames stringing together. These were made with molds of silicone and there was an original model that was made out of a non-reactive clay and then there was a mold that was made from that and then the silicone resin was poured into it but there's a lot more to it than that. Anyway, the idea is to have all the parts of it merged together and create the illusion of life, of reality, of movement, of light and dark and narrative. Can you show some of the moving parts in the eyes and other things that... I don't want to take the eyes out. They're very hard to... Oh, okay, here's a box of eyes. The eyes were done by a technique called replacement which is having them made in a static position and then taking them out and putting them back another piece that's built slightly differently and the difference between those two shows up as the movement that depicts the transition. Some of these have other techniques. There are gears here. This opens and closes the jaw, this worm gear on this and it pulls some fishing cable, some fishing line through this sheath and the mouth moves in response to that and we control that with this worm gear. Talk about how you walk the fur. Oh, right, that's the dangerous part. The fur, after the silicone is made, it's very difficult to glue things to silicone. So I used an electrostatic generator, a Van de Graaff generator which was about 200 kilovolts and there was a kitchen strainer that I poured some lint into and you can get really nicely colored lint. How did you cut it off with fake fur? Well, some of it was. Now, I didn't use fake fur. I did use some, but this was glued down. From a fabric store. There were some metal springs and cable sheaths that I used so that the structure was flexible and stays in place. So that one is the one that you did with the Van de Graaff? A lot of them are. This and this and this used the static generator. Don't ask me to plug this in because I'm a little skeptical that it could survive it. But in this case there was also an electric motor that communicated movement through these three cable sheaths and there was a transmission inside the thorax that would move the ears up and down and we underscored that movement by using a very long exposure so that it would blur the movement of the ears. Slowing down the camera exposure. And the rest of it is the training of these talented actors and vocalists who taught their skills, their musical skills, their singing, their dramatic talents to these small synthetic rubber creatures. Do you want to introduce the people in the audience? Oh, yes, yes. Several of the voices on this was Goldie Vox who was right here with us who just did a wonderful job on this in breathing life into all of them. And the factotum who came to the rescue with innovation and coaxing movements and like out of the creatures was my friend Chris Burke who has been involved in these projects over the years. And after a few years it all came to life. How many ears were you working on it? I don't know, three I think. No, more like seven. I think it was three. Tell us a little bit about the source. Well, Picasso said that good artists borrow and great artists steal. I thought that was after a while. You sure? No. Well, it's more like Picasso to recommend his stealing. But there was a source material for this which was an obscure book written by a German anatomy professor. And it didn't get a lot of notice. It was a parody on scientific treatises. And it was a review of the American edition, the first English translation in Scientific American when I was in, I think, eighth grade. And it just caught my notice and stuck with it. And I made everything here based on the descriptions in the book. And I kind of hope that the current copyright holder doesn't see a quick way to suing me for infringement. But fortunately, there's fair use right, I think, I hope. No, they're going to go running. They're going to go sending off letters to Elsevier's agent in his country and they'll probably get a healthy bounty on my head when it comes to it. Thanks. It's E-L-S. I'm curious about the one that had all the arms and it played with the music. Yeah, well, that's this. Yeah, this was supposed to be a pipe organ. Yeah, I know. And keeping the puppets with a good balance between their flexibility and their stiffness to hold the poses, wiggle their tails and their noses. And there is a lot of fishing running through these cable guides. All you have to do is take 7,000 really good pictures in a row and you've got it. Oh, and having a good dialogue writer helped. Where do you go now? We don't have Radio Shack anymore. Where do you go? Yeah, well, there is no more Radio Shack. You do it electronically. Oh, OK. Well, there are places that sell silicone. There are places that sell the metal that's used in the skeletons. There's metal sheathing that isn't a spring but it maintains its shape, it's stiff. And then you can run the cables through it and you can use this to hold their limbs. Oh, yeah, it's a place in Connecticut that makes this. And you can push the fishing line through it and then use that to make them move. You make the move easy for you? Well, let me see. No, I don't know that I feel like plugging this in because it might pull the puppet apart. Yeah, but this, you wouldn't know it, but Jill was able to get into this costume. I was substantially smaller if you didn't know that. And the terrific job she did. I don't know if anyone asked this already. How do you make the puppets? Did someone ask that yet? Well, it's a pretty standard casting method. Make an original, do sketches, of course, and use cheap clay to do it at first to see how the things look in three dimensions. You have to use a clay that doesn't have any tin in it or sulfur because clay has a lot of those elements because what that will do is it will inhibit the cure in the silicone. And I use a material called hydrocal, which is a very tough plaster to make the receiving mold. And then I put the halves or as many parts as I make together and pour in the mold material, which is a platinum-based silicone. And somewhere I should have it. A lot of the color is dried pigments because there's a really good range for it. And use a silicone adhesive to glue some of the fur on. This is one way of doing it. You can see here I marked the direction of the grain in this and held down the material with silicone glue and had to pin everything in shape so that there wouldn't be any lumps. Do you have a vision of what you want these animals to look like and then go looking for the stuff that'll make it work? Or do you collect stuff as you go and does that suggest things? Well, both, really. For example, this creature's ears were modeled after my dog's ears, who unfortunately is no longer with us. He should be here. How long does it usually take to make one of your creations? Well, they have all different levels of complexity. And it's a long process. And I usually do things by stages rather than doing one puppet and letting it go. So as long as it takes to sketch out the idea, that's the first thing. Before you do anything, you should do sketches from different angles. You can use inexpensive clay just to see how it looks in three dimensions. And the skeleton in it is, like I said, brass tubing, which is cut and soldered and it's pinched into hinges. But the metal work isn't really that complex. In fact, I think it's sometimes a little bit sloppy. Blobs of solder and the like. So for this one to work, we had this which connects to these cables and cable guides, which go into the transmission in here. This is the eccentric to have the motion reciprocating. But there was a small transformer in three volts. And when I was doing the shooting, I'd be looking through the camera and watching the movement and then pushing this button and it would move the cables. And an interesting thing is a lot of the tempo in doing the animation, which as I said showed up at 29 frames per second, translated from actual regular middle of everything movement, seemed to fit perfectly with the tempo of some of the late symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich. So I would be doing the animation in time to some of the symphonies and it made it a lot easier because it's about rhythm. It's about the visual rhythm that we're creating when the creatures are waving their arms around or leaping about or talking to one another or gesticulating. It seems to translate. I really appreciated that you called us to invite us and I'm so happy to see the final result. I've seen a little bits and bobs here and there and it's just really cool that the magic come together. I'm so glad you came. Thank you for inviting me. Excellent source for materials to make all these... It's kind of an advertisement. No. It's the version that it takes a village, really. Yeah. So all right, well, that's great because Reynolds has been with me for the whole process and I appreciate it. So that's another important thing is to get somebody who knows the materials and the processes and is willing to help you along. Very, very impressive creatures that you've created. And to think about all the pieces that have to come together. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, another thing you can do if you're just trying to put something together in a few steps is in Genesis. There's some instructions. Modesty aside. Do you want to say anything about the photography itself? The photography? Oh, it's blurry. It's scratchy. The lights are falling. The gels are coming off. The photography is terrible. You've seen better images through the bottom of a soda pop bottle.