Friday Flashback: MUPPET MOVIE Camera Tests

With the Muppets making their return to the big screen this weekend after far too long an absence, we thought it would be fun to go back and look at some of the prep work done for the very first Muppet film, The Muppet Movie, back in 1978. Although Jim Henson was eager to bring his creations to the big screen, since the muppets had never appeared outside of studio sets before, it remained to be seen whether they would look believable in a real world setting. To that end Henson and the film’s director Jim Frawley shoot a series of tests featuring Kermit the Frog, Fozzy Bear, Miss Piggy and Sweetums in the English countryside. They’re not perfect. In the first video below you can catch a glimpse of Fozzy’s performer Frank Oz in the segment they filmed in a car. But beyond the curiosity value, these two videos are also entertaining just on their own for all of the improvised dialogue that Henson and Oz came up with. Fozzy Bear telling jokes to cows is hysterical!