Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the special effects studio behind The Muppets, Babe, and the live-action puppet versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, has been working in the movies since the early ’80s. Thanks to the new series of Muppet movies, the studio has been getting a lot of high-profile work recently, and an emissary from Tested.com—the online home of Mythbusters’ Adam Savage and Jaime Hyneman—stopped by for an interview with creative supervisor Peter Brooke.
The resulting video traces the history of onscreen puppet entertainment from its humble felt beginnings to today, when puppeteers use analog rigs to operate entirely digital creations. Brooke also outlines what he sees as the place for live-action puppets in a film industry capable of producing photorealistic creatures with computer graphics. It’s a fun, informative watch for anyone who ever shoved their hand up a sock and pretended it could talk, which we’re pretty sure has included most people at some point in their lives.
