Have you ever noticed that when you are watching some Ventriloquists perform that the characters head jumps up when its mouth opens? This can be very distracting to the audience, since they expect the puppet to be almost human like in its animations.
What causes this problem is merely the incorrect use of the hand by the Ventriloquist. I am going to show you the incorrect way first, then I will explain how to correct this problem.
Incorrect Way
Hold your Puppet Hand up like you would hold it if you had a puppet. The natural position is to let your thumb “pinch” below the other four fingers. Look at yours. When you open and close your hand, observe how your thumb drops down but your four fingers also rise up. This is the way that causes the puppets head to jump all over as though he/she was having some kind of spasms just to talk. WRONG
Correct Way
Now hold your hand out as before. Instead of letting your hand form a mouth as you just did, keep the knuckles of the four fingers locked straight with the top of your hand. Now when you move your thumb, you will notice that the other four fingers stay steady on your hand. All the motion in the mouth now comes from your thumb while the “head” fingers remain motionless. If you prefer, let your thumb curl to the inside of your hand.
This will still give you the same effect, but may cause less hand fatigue for you. Either way is correct. In reality you will probably find that it is hard to keep the top of your hand flat with your four fingers, but if you practice this for a bit using just thumb motion (for the mouth) you will find that when your hand is in the puppets head you will still see a vast improvement in the dancing head syndrome.
As always, practice, practice, practice.
That’s all for now folks.
Steve and JET