The DumbAscii Files Puppets

When I heard about IL Governor Rod Blagojevich being arrested (and after wondering just what took so long anyway!) I knew what I had to do. I MUST MAKE A BLAGO PUPPET! I also had to somehow use the word “gubernatorial” because it’s one of my favorite words to say. Try it… it’s fun!

Ok, technically I didn’t make him. He’s just Manley wearing a wig. In fact I didn’t even make that. I had an artist friend Patty Pulliam of Rustic Studio step outside her usual media to dabble in puppet wig-making. (For the record, I made the part in from that goes across the forehead, and that’s where I got stuck. As you can see from my previous post she did an amazing job on it!

For this video I recorded the audio first at a friend’s studio because I felt it would have been way too difficult to do the voice and puppetry at the same time, and have it consistent enough. Heather and Eric Bouton of Heather’s Drum Studio in Elgin, IL helped me out a lot!


Heather provided the voice and obscenities of Patty Blagojevich. It’s almost a shame to have them bleeped out, but its funnier that way! I could not stop laughing when she was recording her part either!

Eric did all the audio engineering and even chipped in to handle the voice of the cops. Thankfully, he didn’t want to kill me even after the 20th take of some of the parts. (Delicate Genius at work here!) I took the rough mix and did some editing for timing, added a few reverb effects, then mixed in music.

As for the filming, this was the first time I’ve used a green screen. It worked pretty well, even though there are a few little glitches here and there. One problem is that the puppet’s eyes are green, so that was almost impossible to not have it bleed into the background.

This was the first time I tried using an upgrade of my light setup too. The last videos were just done with whatever lights or floor lamps I had in the house. I went to Lowes and picked up some 1000W work lights and some other assorted lights, and had most of them rigged up to mic and drum stands. Guess you have to work with what you’ve got sometimes!

Working with the chroma key effects was interesting and challenging. Next time I’ll need to try a few more lighting combinations to see what worked best. I may also try filming in the basement and backlighting the green screen itself. I’ll have to get my puppets some blue contact lenses as well!

There’s going to be a few more Blago videos too. I can’t let the wig go to waste!

So take a look and help the poor guy out…

Crazy Roddy’s Gubernatorial Emporium