Puppet Quint Takes Viral Sea Shanty Trend To Next Level

After one man’s Sea Shanty videos on TikTok went viral and landed him a record deal, our good friends over at Pop-Up Puppet Cinema recreated some sea shanties of their and managed to persuade Puppet Quint to deliver the bomb of all performances

What was the inspiration behind the 'Maneater' shanty?

You couldn't miss the Wellerman going viral, that original video is wonderful. Then you watch the version with the lyrics about a fight
between men and the sea.... well we thought we have to be able to turn that into a Quint shanty.....

How long did it take to come up with the lyrics?

Not long at all, it's such a lovely fit with what's there. Also Jaws is a tale of tales already, and there's so many lines
to pick from which lend themselves to the song. Also having the song retell quints journey gave it a direction.

How did you record the song?

Well as we're all in lockdown it's thanks to the wonders of the internet and our fellow puppeteer and resident musician Andy. We recorded Quint's vocals and harmonies in Preston and Andy then mixed and worked his magic and played all the instruments in Manchester.

How about the video, was that aboard the Orca?

Hah, we filmed that in Preston, getting a camera steady and then puppeteering on your own is awkaward, but Quint was very patient! The background is an old sea-chest we have upended with a special tin-of-beans ship light and the wonderful lighting provided by table lamps and bike lights. We wanted to mimic the original video for fun so we created our FishHook logo as well as Jaws themed icons, there's some easter eggs in the numbers for the jaws fans. That was then all edited together by Andy.

That lyric font seems familiar?

Ha, yes. We wanted it to be Jaws themed and went looking for the right font... unfortunately the font we wanted, one that looked like the Close the Beaches sign, didn't exist. So we took the original sign from the film and used it to create extra letters and a font. It's not fully complete (we didn't need any numbers) but it's got the full alphabet and common punctuation, and we have sent you a copy for any Jaws fans to have, it's called Let_Polly_Do_The_Printing.

What have the Puppet Cinema got planned for 2021?

Hopefully some more videos, but really we're just hoping that we can finally get back to performing live. We've been working on some new shows based on other beloved films and it would be lovely to get them out into a live environment at some point!

How can Quint sing a song about the time he was eaten by a shark?

*At this point the line went dead.

Thankyou to Pop-Up Puppet Cinema and you can find them on facebook at

https://www.facebook.com/PopUpPuppetCinema and Twitter @Puppet_Cinema