Atlanta's Raymond Carr discusses being puppet captain for Netflix miniseries 'Eric'
Puppetry helps bring one of this year’s stranger stories to life in a new psycho-drama thriller miniseries on Netflix.
“Eric” stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a puppeteer joined on a quest by a 7-foot puppet to find his missing son. To help create the performance of the titular puppet “Eric,” the production team brought on Atlanta-based puppet guru Raymond Carr, founder of Ninja Puppet Productions.
Carr worked closely with the production team to bring the puppetry to life, training and practicing with them on a tight schedule that tied together the series into a memorable and dramatic production.
The puppeteer sat down with “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via the online platform Riverside to share a behind-the-scenes look into his work as puppet captain on the new series.
Cumberbatch and most of the actors in the show entered into production with little knowledge of how to operate inside the world of puppetry, a place that requires several interconnected skills that had to be learned by the cast on the fly.
Beyond teaching the ins and outs of the puppetry world, Carr also had to maintain constant communication with the camera department, art department and wardrobe department because the show took place in 1985.
They wanted the sets to look and feel accurate to the time period, including “the cameras that we use, the monitors that we use, the microphones that we used,” and the puppetry technology, according to Carr. “There was a deep dive into not only puppetry, but also puppetry of the time,” he said.
You can hear more about Raymond Carr’s experience and expertise by tuning into “City Lights” or by watching the show on Netflix.
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