Lisa Henson, the oldest daughter of the late Jim Henson, is carrying on her father’s legacy of children’s entertainment with “Unstable Fables”. The series, which takes classic children’s stories and reinvents them, features colorful CGI worlds inhabited by characters voiced by some of today’s biggest actors.
While Henson spends much of her time managing the legacy of the Henson family with her brothers and sisters, she also takes a very hands-on creative approach with every project the company endorses.
The Jim Henson Company has remained an established leader in family entertainment for over 50 years and is recognized worldwide as an innovator in puppetry, animatronics and computer graphics.
Best known as creators of the world famous Muppets (the rights to which are now owned by The Walt Disney Company), Henson is the recipient of over 50 Emmy Awards and nine Grammy Awards.
Credits include the Saturn Award-winning “Farscape” and the features “MirrorMask,” “Five Children and It” and “Good Boy!”. With additional locations in New York and London, The Jim Henson Company is headquartered in Los Angeles on the historic Charlie Chaplin lot complete with soundstage and post-production facilities.
Independently owned and operated by the five adult children of founder Jim Henson, the Company is also home to Jim Henson’s Creature Shop™, a pre-eminent character-building and visual effects group with international film, television and advertising clients, as well as Henson Recording Studios, one of the music industry’s top recording facilities known for its world-class blend of state of the art and vintage equipment.
The Company is currently in production on “Sid the Science Kid,” a new science readiness animated series for preschoolers scheduled to debut on PBS in September 2008, and recently launched “Puppet Up! - Uncensored,” a live puppet improvisational show that has played to sold out crowds around the world and premiered as a special on TBS.
The Company has also announced the creation of Jim Henson Designs, a merchandise collection inspired by Jim Henson’s earliest sketches.
The company’s latest DVD release, “Tortoise VS Hare,” takes the form of a mock documentary focusing on Aesop’s tale about an overzealous hare who underestimates the power of persistence in the form of his rival Tortoise.
“Tortoise VS Hare” is available in stores nationwide right now. The Jim Henson Company will be releasing the next movie in the series, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears Show”, later this year. For more info about the “Unstable Fables” series, check out www.geniusproducts.com/unstablefables .
Henson took a few minutes to talk to us about her role as CEO in the company, the origins of “Unstable Fables” and the future of The Jim Henson Company.
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LH:
As well as the fact that we both produce, and in Bryan’s case, he directs. So, you know, we jointly run it, but we have a lot good people in senior positions underneath us that have also ------ full responsibility. So it’s not like we do everything ourselves, personally, but we are in charge of it.
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And then more recently, we have been very interested internally as a company in sort of hybrid technologies of combining puppetry and animation. But then we’re also interested just in producing good-quality animation.
So, as it happens, “Unstable Fables” doesn’t use our puppeteer animation system. It’s just a good property that we did the creative direction of it, and it is animated conventionally, not with our puppeteered animation. I guess as a company, (something about rambling) we want to do entertaining projects and good entertainment for the family. We’re not really limited and never really been completely limited to the familiar hand puppetry medium.
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We have a spectrum where some of our projects are more puppetry and other projects are more just done the normal way.
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And probably no show has ever been as original as “Sesame Street” at education. But, you know, over time I think kid’s programming has kind of become a little too split. You know, there are shows that are very educational and there are shows that are almost completely entertainment, and usually don’t cross-over that much. And we, as a company, still like to try to see a little more of both in all of our programs.
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Ok, so we actually have a live show going up through Christmas season. Which is a live version of “Emmet Otter” with puppets and costumes; it is going to be amazing. And then we have locally here in L.A. a hilarious puppetry improv show which is for adults only, and that - we do that like once a month and it’s really a theater experience.
So we do theater, we do TV, we do home videos, and we have been working on the production on many features, but we have some big ones in development.
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And I will say, it always felt like once I came to the company that my work has become much more rewarding and focused, because, you know, when you’re at a studio you’re just like desperately looking for the new, hot project, script, movie whatever. And it’s very scattered, like my head was in like a million places all the time, not very focused. And, you know, working here we’re very, very focused on our projects.
We have a clear company mission, and we only do a couple of genres and you know we know what we’re doing. It’s been very rewarding to be so, not only close to the family legacy and heritage, but also really just working on very specific type of thing- you what you’re doing.
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So two of our tenants were Flame Productions [Flame Ventures], which is Tony Krantsz’s company and we had the US office of Indian Animation company called Prana also were our tenants. So, you know, it just happens that this is probably like the one project we’ve produced that emerged from simply the synergy of having a kind of campus-like atmosphere where people just bump into each other and start talking about corroborating.
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And we would put it up at different junctures in the production process. Like we first we showed children just the storyboard stung together with the soundtrack and that’s the animatic. So they look at that. We actually are able to judge a little bit from, you know, if they absolutely don’t get a joke or if they all just want to get up and leave at some point- maybe that might mean that’s a boring section.
We do do - we actually show things to kids at different stages, particularly the “Unstable Fables,” we used that technique quite a bit. And my kids always do enjoy joining those groups or they like to- if it’s something we are shooting live, they really have a lot of fun visiting the set.
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LH:
So you know if we had ten totally different movies that are kind of related to each other, because they take place- they take place basically in the same world. It’s like a fairy-tale, animal-populated version of our own world. So, it’s got modern technology the kids - they drive cars, they go to school and it should be recognizable to most families, you know, the world that it takes place in.
And so if we do ten movies set in that arena it would be really fun, but mainly you have to keep them fresh, and each of them is quire different from the other. Did you watch “Tortoise vs. Hare”?
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So when we make something and we put the Jim Henson name on it, we really want to feel that we are genuinely recommending that show or that product to families and for parents to show their kids. We are not necessarily interested in rehashing the past, you know. There are certain things that are legacy-rated projects, like the “Fraggle Rock” feature film but we are extremely interested in the ‘new.’
We have a restlessness that is inherent in the genetics of the company where always want to be doing something new, something new, something new. So we will always be doing something new and perhaps faster than the public expects. At the same time, you know, we know people are- feel very fond towards the past so we need to make sure that that translates into a quality level.
Unstable Fables: Tortoise vs. Hare is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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