Essay Structure

        Before launching headlong into the essay I thought it would be prudent to write an outline of what each chapter should include, showing how my arguments and thoughts might progress and lead logically on from one another. Having never written an essay with chapters before it seemed sensible to at least have a broad sense of direction, to prevent me getting lost.

Chapter 1: What is a puppet? Explore the definition and purpose of puppetry, and the concept of animism, which is essential to understanding puppetry. How stop motion and cinematic effects may fit within these parameters. This chapter may include a brief overview of puppetry’s origins and presence in history, to help contextualise its purpose. Discuss the ideas and principles behind WHY a puppet may be used (Barry Purves makes some good points on when and why stop motion is appropriate). The Uncanny? 

Chapter 2: The development of cinematic puppetry. The origins of stop motion animation as a special effect, and the development of animatronics and the parallels between the role of the animator and the performer puppeteer. A focus on the importance of performance as much as aesthetics. While performance is equally important for both traditional and contemporary forms of puppetry, the two mediums often have very different stylistic requirements: in the theatre it is possible for the manipulators and mechanism of the puppet to be on show (Brechtian theory) without necessarily shattering the illusion, but this is not possible, or at least not practiced in cinema. Puppetry is poetic and can be abstract, whereas cinema demands a degree of verisimilitude. 

Chapter 3: A case study 

Chapter 4: This chapter should be about the synthesis of my practical artefact, and how the ideas and knowledge explored in my essay have influenced the design and development of my own puppets. Explore why it was appropriate to create my chosen character as a puppet (both theatrical and stop motion). There will no doubt be obstacles in the construction that will have had to be overcome, and lessons that I will have learned. Discuss how the way in which the puppets will be performed has influenced their design, and perhaps how even the construction of one has influenced the other i.e. transferrable attributes from theatre to stop motion.