Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

When last we chatted I ended by stating that I had just found out that I hadn’t been fired from the Country Bears Film. I also shared that it was the best Christmas present of the year. (Actually I said “ever,” but ever is a long time.)

Let me continue by saying that as hard as I tried, I couldn’t convince the legal department to jump in the car and rush the contract over to me during the holidays. So I did the next best thing and called DBH at the Jim Henson Company.

Have you ever been in a situation where you have a question, but you’re not so sure you want to know the answer? This was how I felt about the Country Bears. I had been fired and as I dialed the phone and listened to it ring, my heart beat faster and faster as I thought, what if it wasn’t true? I had to admit I didn’t want to go through that hurt again.

DBH picked up the phone and as soon as I identified myself he gushed with apologies. He told me that he was upset that he’d had been given the task of firing me from the production only to reinstate me. He wished it had never happened. We both did.

I hung up the phone and did the happy dance. I sang, I bounced, I cheered and I cried. Just think, I was going to play BOTH Big Al and Trixie. Whoo Hoo!

Shooting wasn’t to start for several months. I finally got to sign my contract and relax. A red letter day as now it was official. I was a Country Bear. No Wait, two Country Bears!

This is also the time when I decided to begin creating my dreadlocks look as I would be confined to the Disney Ranch for several months, the perfect time for my hair to be off kilter.

To begin, all performers were called together to start rehearsal. It takes a good team to make a character come to life and this means a LOT of rehearsal.

For this production, two performers were assigned to each character. So each bear has a suit-performer and a facial puppeteer. The suit performers were Denise for Trixie and John for Big Al. Both characters had their challenges.

The first thing the suit performer does is to become familiar with their costume. They suit up and push the limits by running, or reaching. Basically, they are just working to find out the advantages and limitations of each character costume.

The puppeteer begins by programing the face. That entails creating various facial expressions and attenuating each servo in the head to a button on the joystick and jaw of the Big One System designed by the Jim Henson Company.

All of this takes a couple of weeks or more depending on what hurdles you encounter as you begin your tasks.

Big Al had quite a bit of challenges. First, the skin on his facial skull was vary restrictive and prevented a lot of the servos from moving. This meant a lot of hard work on the mechanic’s part and my own. At times like this it’s sometimes best to compromise. So I huddled with the mechanic and we took a look at the figure to determine just what could be done in the time allotted

I needed to have a responsive face for my character, but we only had limited time to work out a fix. As we tinkered with the figure, John Kriswell, master mechanic, tried again and again to give me some movement in Big Al’s face. At one point big Al’s head caught fire. NOT good.

Finally I suggest that he focus on the brows. If John could give me movement in both the inner and outer brow servos, a touch of mouth expression and open and close plus eye blinks I could fudge the rest. Not the best, but my characters have the least dialogue and John’s team was small and needed to focus on the main four bears.

Luckily, Trixie was a very responsive puppet and only needed her servos assigned to my controls.

Once we completed the technical, we began to work on defining our characters.

We needed to learn the dialogue and become one (body and puppet head). Then word came down from Walt Disney Studios that we would be working to a voice track. This wasn’t too much of a surprise to me as Disney is accustomed to working in drawing animation and this is how they worked.

As many of you know, when doing an animated film, Disney has the voice actors come in and record. Then the animators work with that voice track to create character animation.

However, in films that involve animatronic puppets and puppeteers, you’re shooting yourself in the foot by prerecording the script. This is because the magic is in the improv that can happen when you get a bunch of seasoned crazy puppet performers in one room.

We sent word back to Disney to voice our opinion and the Jim Henson Company backed all of us up.

Disney really hated the idea and finally it was decided that we would film part of the script with and without the prerecorded voice.

The scene that was chosen is the one where Tennessee is playing a marriage counselor and tells the couple how much he misses Trixie. The scene calls for Tennessee to speak a few lines then cry uncontrollably.

The actual scene in the film.
The actual scene in the film.

 

Team Tennessee bear consists of Julianne working the face and Jody in the costume. Two top performers.

First up was performing to a prerecorded track. It looked good, but then it was time for Julianne and Jody to show how it could work if we were allowed to perform a scratch track and have the voices come in and dub after the film is cut together.

And the winner is…..Scratch track! Julianne and Jody were gut splitting funny in the take where she was able to voice Tennessee and cry. None of us could keep a straight face, and we all laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. We knew Disney would agree and they did. That was the crying scene you saw in the film.

Next time I’d like to share about my time at the Disney Ranch and singing training.

FEEDBACK

Many thanks to all of you who continue to comment as I just love that.

To Ken Goldenberg , I think Into the Woods tries very hard not to frighten kids. I believe it’s geared toward kids. If she has seen Guardians, she’ll be just fine.

And thanks to all of you who said that you’re becoming fans of my stories. This is the best Christmas present I can ask for. Thank you for making my wish come true.

Happy Holidays, see you in two weeks.

UPDATE

Wow! Can you believe that Christmas is next week? Ttime sure does fly.

Are you all set and ready? I’m so impressed with you if you are. I’m not much of a decorator. I know this comes as a surprise to some of you. However, I create all year and I really enjoy seeing how others create at this time of year.

I have one of those coil-type trees and I love it because it’s modern, easy and fun to decorate. My favorite part is that it’s FAST to set up. I can set it up and back to work I go. Ahh, the joy of loving the work you do. This weekend is set aside to bake my designer cookies as I’ll bake the cookies I’ve designed especially for my family and friends for the holidays. (Perhaps I’ll write a cookbook for you in 2015).

I did something a little different this year. I wanted to have a quick run to prepare for January’s Dopey Challenge at Walt Disney World Florida. I thought, it’s Christmas and I know I can find a great race and give back at the same time. I found the Santa to the Sea race in Oxnard.

Have you ever had a day where everything after you get up just goes wrong? The kind of day where you really begin to entertain the idea that you should’ve stayed in bed?

That was how I would describe my race day.

Imagine a brisk beautiful morning, Sunday, just a couple of days after the rains. It smells awesome. So far so good. The Santa to the Sea is a race that takes place in Oxnard at the giant Santa Statue you can see from the Ventura Fwy. in southern California.

SANTA as seen from the Northbound Ventura Fwy.
SANTA as seen from the Northbound Ventura Fwy.

I pull out my cell phone to take a picture, and my arm gets bumped and it flies from my hand as if in slow motion and crashes to the ground only to be kicked by another runner right down into the sewer.

MY PHONE IS IN THE STORM DRAIN, NO!!!!!!!!

A few runners that see it react. OOOOOOOH!

As I stand dumbfounded, the announcer for the race comes over and we got all the way down onto the road to look into the storm drain to see if we could find it. Laying on a filthy road, really?!

I see it! And the good news is that it’s dry down there, and it’s a bright green phone so it’s easy to see.

The bad news is that the man hole covers are locked and you have to call Ventura Sanitation to get access.

I ran my race. I tried not to think of my phone. But the stress did get to me a bit.

After the race I went to grab the shuttle, the same one I had taken to get to the race. I was thinking I would soon be able to shower and eat and find out about getting my phone.

Unfortunately, the race folks had arranged for shuttles to take us to the start line, but had forgotten to get shuttles to take us back to our hotel. Hundreds of runners were stranded. Two hours later and a few more miles under my belt I made it back to the hotel. Needless to say, I’m not going to do this race again.

Back at the hotel, I discovered that no one was available to help me with my phone until Monday morning. Oh dear, the forecast for Monday, RAIN. Wow!

So, with no food and no shower, I became a tiger determined to get my phone.

Thanks to the Marriott Residence Inn Oxnard for their assistance as they gave me one of those Seen on TV grabber things. I then called David McGrath of McGrath’s Pumpkin Patch where I teach classes in October. His patch is nearby and I hoped he would help me. Alone, I realized I would be in the road with no protection. He came down and as I kept watch he lay flat in the street and retrieved my phone from the jaws of the storm drain. My phone was a touch scuffed but good to go.

David and Terri pose holding the prize of the day. Her phone.
David and Terri pose holding the prize of the day. Her phone.

Thank you to David and Diana for swooping in like superheroes and rescuing my phone. And thanks to all of you who have my number for not calling as my phone sat on the precipice in the drain. If anyone had called, it could have vibrated its little self right into the ocean. Whew!

As a final point I have to point out that stress can knock the stuffing out of you. It’s a killer. So try not to freak out too much.

Happy Holidays everyone. See you after Christmas!

 

Terri Hardin Jackson
Terri Hardin has designed attractions as a Disney Imagineer from 1987-1997. She's also a Jim Henson Puppeteer and has worked on over 42 film and TV projects including Ghostbusters & Captain EO. She currently creates Disney collectables and plays a Foster Farms Chicken.