David Starbuckle — Running With Scissors (2025)

Summer of 2024, I was graced with the opportunity to embrace my inner child (as director of the ‘𝙍𝙪𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙒𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙎𝙘𝙞𝙨𝙨𝙤𝙧𝙨’ narrative music video) alongside Austin, Texas, music legend David Starbuckle, the SMOPPET puppets, and our team ~!

This project premiered on the silver screens of Austin Film Society cinemas, as an anthology piece within the awesome "BANG! It's David Starbuckle: The Movie" (a variety-visual album and feature film), alongside a bunch of other great music video projects and narrative pieces.

You can support this project by watching this music video on Amazon Prime Video, as part of the "BANG! It's David Starbuckle: The Movie"~!

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DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT:

This project found its premise at our first production meeting, with David Starbuckle and his assistant Emily Loe— While discussing inspirations for the album, potential video concepts, and David's early inspirations as an artist, out came: "I fucking love the muppets, man."

David's earliest musical inspiration came from Kermit the Frog, in the film "The Muppets Go Hollywood". Where Kermit's earliest desire was to simply make people happy with his music, so was David's. I wanted to expand upon this pinnacle of David's career, and the truth of a hero being non-human (actually, the cartoonish personifications of epitomized humanly aspirations).

This project found its story by my exploration of the fine line between indulging in one's inner child and the dangers of unchecked "fun and exploration"... Running With Scissors. Then, during a secondary discussion about never-ending adult chores and piles of dirty laundry and smelly socks, something was born… The SMOPPET (Sock Monster Puppet).

"And I must not sleep, I must warn the others."

While seemingly innocuous, our SMOPPET characters have a way of getting themselves in (and out) of trouble... Watch and find out just what I mean!

I'm so grateful for our talented team for trusting me to guide them through an unconventional puppet-heavy production process, and to David and the Same Sky Studios team for trusting us with this piece.

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MORE BEHIND THE SCENES — HOW WE BROUGHT THE SMOPPETS TO LIFE:

Our casting process was a series of virtual sock-hand puppet play, where we asked our potential cast to perform some hands-on child's play exercises alongside me and my co-producer Stella Yrigoyen. While we met so many talented and animated folks, so ready to embrace child-like fun, we ultimately landed with Jack Monzingo and Javier Elizondo who, with such incredible enthusiasm, brought our puppets to life (alongside our leading man Merril Wesley Wilgrubs).

Our puppet character designs are but a generic Amazon ventriloquy-marionette style puppet, sold for ~$50 each... For sake of our low budget, we minimized the customization we decided to give to our characters… But the personality and soul of our SMOPPETS came from the collective inner-child play of our wonderful cast and pupeteers who brought these little creatures to life. Orange Juice (OJ), Kiwi, and Grapes— Our "Sock Monster Puppets" that come to our lead in a moment of weakness, lending him disillusioned childhood faith/strength.

Our ventriloquy rigs were homemade with some fishing line, wooden dowels, and ingenuity. We workshopped these during our pre-production process to ensure we'd be able to give our Smoppets maximum movement and personality on-set.

Our editing process required quite a bit of pre-production special effects scheming— With our DIY made ventriloquy rigs to control the puppet arms, legs, and special movements, we had two puppet operators per Smoppet. Our main puppet operator worked with the mouth and facial movements, and then a second operator pulling the ventriloquy strings to control the arm and leg mechanisms, all together bringing our Smoppets to life!
Our main operator also wore a green or blue special effects sleeve on their arm, depending on the environment (a tube sock, cut at the end, from Amazon). Our most puppet-heavy scene required six people to operate two moving puppets at once!

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CAST & CREW:

COMPANY: @aureum.studios & @sameskyprod

PRODUCERS: @catxrae @stellayri @michelle_janett @egeemusic @davidstarbuckle

𝙲𝙰𝚂𝚃

MUNDANE MAN: @woolgroobs

ORANGE JUICE: @hey_guys_its_jack

KIWI: @javitherealist

GRAPES: @smokeeeric

PSYCH: @davidstarbuckle

SUPPORT: @koharajr @laraynee

𝙲𝚁𝙴𝚆