This blog is probably a bit late, due the the fire surround blog but I’ll do it anyway.

This is the second year that Mo and I have put on a Christmas show for the local community. Last year we did “What Christmas Carol?” which was very well received. This year we did a totally different type of show.

“The Fourth Wise Man” is a story about exactly that – a fourth wise man who keeps missing the moment and never makes it to the Nativity.

As it was a slightly serious story (unlike Scrooge) I decided to fill it with multimedia to break the scenes up. We wrote a lot of humour in also, with one character that is funny throughout.

We decided to have three sets of ‘Wise’ men – Adults, children and puppets! Firstly so that it would appeal to an all age audience and secondly, as we had a mugging in the story, we decided that using the puppets for this would be better than having violence on stage. It actually added humour to the violence so it worked.

I was faced with a huge amount of videos to make so got started on that immediately. Filming puppets is not an easy thing, in fact it’s harder than anything I have ever filmed. The first attempt was a bit of a failure and it mostly had to be scrapped. Eventually Sindie and Livvie came round and we set the stage up in our lounge! Without proper lighting and equipment it was not as good as I would have liked but I was able to get enough video to add to the little bit I was able to save of Emily’s puppetry to complete the two songs the puppets sing. Before too long I managed to get all the puppetry stuff filmed.

When we were talking to the TV people about the show we had written for TV, we were told that filming puppets was a specialised field and would need a special team of camera men. I now see what they meant.

The show introduction.

The song “Wise Man”

The Song “Manger Zone”

The mugging

While all this was going on we were meeting up with the team regularly for rehearsals.

I also needed to get video of five letters being written. For this Gary came to the rescue. While I got the surface to rest on ready Sindie set to roasting some paper in the oven. Everything had to look like it was feasibly written 2000 years ago. Sindie had picked up a twig on her way round and I broke a biro and inserted the inner tube into the centre of the twig for a writing implement. Gary wrote out about four letters (in full) as I filmed constantly from several different angles. It worked great! The only thing that didn’t look reasonably authentic was his rings – he couldn’t get them off.

I had a few other videos to create, making twelve in all but they all went without too many hitches. The main problems I had was sourcing various music clips and video clips that needed to be inserted in my videos. That took me forever!

We also had two original songs in the show. One that I wrote the lyrics for which needed the music arranged and to be recorded, and one that was written especially for the ending. This was the important part of the whole show so it needed to be written carefully. I left that totally to our music man. I had enough to do :O)

I then moved on to some props – scrolls and maps, the gems and head bands for the wise men. At the very last minute I was faced with having to make the costume for Jesus! Someone had let us down. Sandie came to the rescue there and gave us a lovely Victorian sheet. It came out nice I thought ;O)

What would we do without family?

The next part will follow soon

Stumble it!