If you haven’t heard Vinnie Ewart is putting on a show in the New York City area. Here’s information he’s sent out about the event:
Saturday, March 8, 2014. A nite of great Comedy and all to benefit a good cause. Please join me for an event where part of all sales go to benefit The Wounded Warriors Project.
This is very disturbing as far as I am concerned. I purchased a figure for the Ventriloquist Central Collection and the cloths needed to be cleaned as they were very soiled.
I was undressing him and to my amazement he actually was wearing an undershirt and underpants under the clothing. I really should have taken some pictures to share but this really creeped me out and I discarded them while I put the regular clothing in the washing machine.
I guess what made it so creepy was that the figure had been in the basement and so there was some water spots and of course age and so the underwear had these yellow soil stains on them. Only from the water but you get the idea.
There has been much talk over the years about the English mouth and the slot jaw. I have to agree with most that the English style mouth was made popular by Len Insull. Most all the pro vents from England used this type figure. I also believe that the mouth movements with the English figure are just as visible as the slot jaw.
A perfectly working Insull lower lip opens wide enough to show that the mouth is open and in conjunction with the upper lip I feel that the look is about as real as you can get for a dummy showing those great white teeth.
Craig Lovik back in the early 1980’s coined the phrase “Living Mouth” which is the English mouth but he was not the first American builder to do this style. If you go to my dummy collection and look up Pinxy figures there is a wonderful example of an American figure with English style mouth.
There has been a lot of discussion about this subject and I thought I would throw in my opinion on the subject. I myself certainly think that if you can do something easily why complicate it ? It was made clear to me in the study of my guitar playing.
I love playing chord melody on my guitar and one of the masters of this style of guitar was a fellow named Barry Galbraith who was a studio musician back in the 1950’s. He was a most talented player but always said that the simpler you make the playing the more you will get out of it. His interpretations of many Standard tunes shows this off.
I think ventriloquism can follow the same route. You should make it as simple as you possibly can and it will reflect a good job with some practice. If you write your script you should try, if possible, to avoid all the sounds that are so hard to do without moving your lips. If the sound is unavoidable then you have no choice but there is always other words to use.
I am posting this for those of you who do not know, Terry Fator has a new DVD being released very soon,
It will be available in Redbox and in Walmart on Feb. 18, 2014. I do believe you can pre order this DVD. I can’t wait to get mine!!
