Dick Short started appearing at the internal ensemble dinners of Lundaspexarna. The spex production Bismarck 2005 included a rewritten version of Jim Henson's classic Manah Manah. As I'd just started up my new hobby of building puppets, I couldn't resist the temptation of doing the number with puppets and the original text. I made two identical sock-puppets (the "pateepitipis") and engaged two identical twins (funnily enough!) from the ensemble to perform them. "The Real Manah Manah" was a fact, as well as an instant hit! Entertaining the spex ensemble with little bonus puppet numbers every now and then became something of a habit of mine. During Karneveljen 2006, the big startup show and party for all the students engaged in Lundakarnevalen, Dick would become the star he was always destined to be. Erik Silén, head of Carnival Entertainments suggested we'd have Dick Short (it was Erik who came up with the name) appear as an exchange student journalist reporting "live" from downtown Lund at even intervals during the show. Thus, one cold day in Mars we went around in Lund with a camera and shot Dick in different "journalistic" situations. These clips, edited by Erik, were later shown at two big screens in front of three thousand people. We got laughs. It was cool. I only managed to retrieve three out of the five clips shown at Karneveljen. They're all in Swedish.
Kul Med Jul is a music video featuring young Swedish pop-star Frans, who got his breakthrough with the hit single Who's Da Man in 2006. I was contacted by Johan Rünow, the director of Sigillet, the feature film of Lundakarnevalen 2006. He wanted to make a puppet music video for Frans's new Christmas song Kul Med Jul, scheduled to be released later that year. I simply couldn't say no and thus spent two and a half weeks working my butt off for free, acquiring an ulcer in the process. With some distance to it, however, I think my first professional puppet video was worth the pain. The project would never have been completed (at least not with that next to nothing budget), were it not for the creative force and enthusiasm of Lund's student society in general and Lundaspexarna in particular. Basic idea, plot and character line-up for the video all came from Johan. The puppets were designed and built by me, with the aid of the set designers. I was also the main puppeteer during shooting, as well as instructor for the other puppeteers. The song is in Swedish.
Rogge & Roland were designed and built for the cabaret of Lundakarnevalen 2006, Det Fockade Kölsvinet. They appeared with even intervals on a small screen heckling the previous number in a Statler-and-Waldorf-esque manner. The green and blue Siamese twins were meant to reflect the theme of the Carnival, "Dual" (the Carnival posters had two sides, one green and one blue). As always, it was a minor miracle that I was able to accomplish the task of building them, since I was totally stressed out from previous carnival-related work and sick all through the production of the cabaret. Once they were finished it was next to impossible to find time and people to film it all. Finally, one day prior to our first public performance we managed to gather everyone needed for three sweaty hours in a small room with deficient equipment at our disposal. We couldn't store more than 60 seconds of material, so we had to carefully time everything. With regards to these circumstances I'm quite amazed by the result. The skits were written together with the script group, and the twins were performed by me and the director of the cabaret, José-Gabriel Sato Folatre. The clips are in Swedish.
