NICE BOY OF THE WEEK: BRIAN HENSON

The super talented Brian Henson has a new show, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge, on Syfy and I love it! I had the opportunity to speak with Brian last week on a press call and knew he was the perfect choice for Nice Boy of the Week. Please see the interview below and tune in to Syfy on Tuesday nights at 10pm EST to see what creatures are being made on Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge.

Moderator:             Can you talk about how you got started doing this series and why you decided to do it?

Brian Henson:         Well it’s something we’ve been considering for quite a long time. Normally speaking the Jim Henson Company – everything that we produce has an element of fantasy in it and often fantasy characters in it. And so it’s not easy for us to imagine what we would do in the reality realm of television but the creature designers – specifically creatures versus puppets. We’re very famous for building puppets and when we build a puppet it’s a very different thing.

A puppet is clearly made of ping pong balls and felt and fur fabric and foam rubber and it’s not trying to look alive. It comes to life through the puppetry and through the puppeteers but when we do creatures which started back on Dark Crystal and then continued with Labyrinth and Storyteller and Dinosaurs and FarScape. When we do creatures it’s a different sort of thing that we’re looking for.

We’re trying to create a creature that looks and appears to be a living creature and it has a lot more movement, a lot more detail. They’re more expressive and the specific artists that do this well tend to have started at a very young age. They’re very rare talent and they’re hard to find but what they do is in my mind almost the closest to magic that you will find in the artistic field and nobody knows about these creature builders.

So really these are artists that people don’t know what they do. They haven’t seen it. It’s kind of a secret area – dark secret area that we love exposing and showing what they do. So we have thought for years that doing some sort of reality series around those artists would be the most exciting and interesting to the general public and it was when I met (Joe Freid) who’s an executive producing partner on the show.

(Joe) comes from a reality background and when he came in and we started talking, he shared exactly the same enthusiasm and of course he had the right experience base to really put that into a television show.

Moderator:             Do you think that this show and focusing on the artistry of the animatronics will create a resurgence in that art form over CGI? Or do you think the economics will keep the studios sticking with the CGI?

Brian Henson:         Well it’s interesting. The economics of CGI are not as good as the economics of animatronics – particularly what we can do now versus what we were doing 20 years ago with the green puppeteer removal, rod removal, and string removals. All these techniques are easier than ever. The big difference between animatronics and CGI in terms of movie production is that with animatronics you have to start a year ahead of shooting and to me this has always been really a studio dynamic that it’s very hard for a studio to know what movie they’ve got until they can see the director’s cut.

And so they’re a little bit in the dark and it’s uncomfortable for studios that are financing a movie when it’s a substantial animatronic build because it’s very hard for them to get a sense of what they’ve got and all they are aware of is how much money they’re spending every week whereas with CGI the bulk of the work actually comes in after the studio’s seen the director’s cut. So it becomes just easier for them I believe to spend the money with CGI.

What I think we’ll see going forward is a little bit more of that because there are accuracies that you can accomplish with CGI that you really cannot accomplish with a creature or animatronic creature in terms of the very specific accuracy of lip-sync of eye lines.

So I don’t know that we will see a return to all animatronic creatures becoming a major resurgence. What I do think we’ll see is more of this sort of hybrid approach where we’re using animatronic creatures and often in wider shots and in the distance they may be fully animatronic but when they come up close we’ll be utilizing CGI enhancement to make more accurate the expression and performance of the creature. I suspect that’s where we’re going.

Moderator:             Beyond the sense of commitment to this art or obligation to his professional legacy, what does it feel like to have a father who’s so cherished and beloved the world over?

Brian Henson:         It’s very, very comfortable actually for me. It’s kind of lovely. I think that I’m kind of blessed by a situation where everybody knows how much – how wonderful my dad was and how special he must have been to me and I think most people probably feel that way about their fathers and don’t benefit from an entire world whenever you meet anybody knowing exactly how that must feel.

So it’s a very nice feeling. People really loved my dad and they can anticipate what he was like as a father and you can tell from his work and he really was a wonderful father and I loved growing up with him as my dad, and I loved working with him as an adult.

And in terms of continuing his legacy, it’s never been really a burden. His legacy mostly is do bold things and don’t be scared of failure and if you fail but you’ve been doing something bold and innovative that nobody’s seen and it failed – that’s a triumph. And, you know, don’t copy yourself. Don’t copy other people. Do things that are fun and be irreverent and question the status quo and be a little subversive when it feels like the right thing to do.

So that legacy is kind of a wonderful and liberating – it’s a liberating legacy to continue. 

Nice Girl Lisa:      Hi Brian. I saw the first episode of Creature Shop Challenge and I loved it. I can’t wait to see the rest of the season.

Brian Henson:         Oh great. They get better and better and more and more ambitious.

Nice Girl Lisa:      I can’t wait! So, I know that contestants on the show learned a lot from you, but was there anything that you learned from them?

Brian Henson:         Well I think that we always learn from talented artists all the time. In the show we also have three creature shop masters that are working with the teams as well and I think what we all saw is something that we don’t often do. We don’t often decide that we’re going to make a creature in three days. It’s just too fast.

So I think we all learned watching talented people trying to come up with a strategy and a workflow that would result in a creature in three days’ time. And I do think that coming off of it we did think wow, okay it’s kind of nice. We’re all learning this faster route which is kind of cool.

They’ve just been watching these designers do creatures in two to four days and watching them say we can do that and we can make them great. They really did an extraordinary job in a super short amount of time. And I’d say we learned a lot about how to prioritize the most important things creatively in a creature and how to create a very fast workflow.

Nice Girl Lisa:     That’s awesome. Are there going to be any guest stars or guest judges that make an appearance on Creature Shop Challenge?

Brian Henson:         Yes, there will be. I don’t know that I can tell you more than that other than there will be. I think the whole idea is we won’t tell you what’s coming up exactly but yes, there will be.

Nice Girl Lisa:     What advice would you give someone who wants to become a creature designer?

Brian Henson:         Well that’s a hard one. it’s interesting because the question that I get the most from people in the public is how do I become a puppeteer and I’m going to just for a moment answer that one because in the past it’s been very hard to become a Henson style puppeteer because it requires a camera. It requires monitors. There’s a lot involved in the technique where before there were camcorders and video recorders it was almost impossible really to become a Henson style puppeteer.

Nowadays if you want to work on your puppetry I say to people well just get out your little webcam, put it up at a standing height and make videos and post them on YouTube, just go for it because you can actually just do it and you can find, build your own puppet or if you can’t build your own puppet, go to FAO Schwartz and get a build your own Muppet because they’re great and just get going.

Becoming a creature designer – boy is it hard. The kind of artists that we’re looking for in this series is what we call the all-around creature artist. And they have to be able to design and sculpt and build and mechanize their creatures. Those – that is usually not a late in life decision. That is usually something they’ve been doing since they were 8, 9, 10 years old and really they’re already somewhat accomplished in this area and then they’re just looking for the opportunity to do it in a more professional arena with more materials and more higher expertise that they can put together around them in a team.

And those people – and they’re very rare – they really just have to put together their portfolio and come talk to the few places like the creature shop and just interview. And of course the creature shop like all of the other big shops and physical affect shops are interviewing people all the time if they have an impressive portfolio.

Nice Girl Lisa:        Okay, great. My last question I have to ask because I’m such a huge fan. Is there going to be a Fraggle Rock movie?

Brian Henson:         Oh I can’t – you know what? I can’t really be specific on anything but we are developing a Fraggle Rock movie and we are enthusiastic about it but it’s not so far along that it’s got a production schedule or anything like that. It’s like we’re working. We’re always developing. We’re always refining our movie projects and they don’t have a schedule until they have a schedule and when they have a schedule you’re going to be shooting in 15 weeks. It sort of – it comes together very quickly after many years of hard work developing.

Nice Girl Lisa:        Well I hope so. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Thanks again for talking with me today and I can’t wait to see the rest of the season.

Brian Henson:         Oh it gets better and better. Stay tuned. Thanks Lisa.

Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge airs Tuesday nights at 10pm EST on SyFy.