Xia Hou is Turning Ears to Future Puppet News

Future Puppet News is many things. It’s funny, educational, mesmerizing, and somewhat irreverent. Standing above all of these traits is creativity. When writer/director Jacob Menache contacted Xiao Hou to be the sound designer for this production, he knew two things; it was going to be a lot of work and a lot of fun. While much of Hou’s resume is populated with films, documentaries, and the like, Future Puppet News would truly be world building for Xiao as he would need to supply every sound aspect that wasn’t dialogue for the show. One of the most visible characteristics of an artist is that they do not base their decisions on money or visibility but rather on the creative opportunity with which they are presented. This formula has led to some of the most unexpected and beloved offerings, among which Future Puppet News can now be included. For a sound designer, this presented the chance to bring a wide open palette to the show and create a signature style that would bring layers of depth to a fantastic world.

The program is a SoulPancake production. Founded by Rainn Wilson (Triple Prime Time Emmy nominee known for his work in The Office, Juno, Super, etc.), the company is known for taking on highly creative and unique projects. Presented on SoulPancake’s YouTube channel, Future Puppet News [FPN] is an educational show for kids which follows a television reporting team (of puppets) in the year 3000 as they investigate historical moments with relevance to our own current day. The puppetry, the humor, and the sounds create the perfect complement to the more serious historically significant occurrences depicted in the show. Storylines are epic and would not achieve nearly the impact that they do without the immense contributions of the show’s talented sound designer. Jacob Manache professes, “Xiao’s creative input was superb and of huge benefit to SoulPancake.” With under a year of visibility online, FPN is nearing half a million in viewership. Comparing this to the early days of educational puppet show on the PBS format, Future Puppet News is already a resounding success.

While Hou was given a great deal of creative license in manifesting the sonic universe of the show, Manache stipulated that he wanted the sounds to correlate with the era to which the team had time traveled. Dust storms and rocket launches have a certain timeless quality but the recreation of 1960’s Moscow was much more demanding. Xiao describes, “It was a lot of fun creating the aural experience of being in Moscow during this era. I used a sound library of people speaking Russian at a distance for a base. I layered faint traffic noise of cars from that actual decade to get the proper motor sounds. Saint Basil’s Cathedral is clearly visible in the background so I added some church bells. Even the sirens that were heard in 1963 are different than they are now at the Kremlin; I made sure that they were authentic to that time. Even though the show has a lot of humor, it’s educational. I appreciated that Jacob wanted me to be true to the time period of each episode. It was like painting with sound and matching the style of that period in time…quite fun!”

A centerpiece of each episode of Future Puppet News is the time travel machine used by the news team, dubbed the Chronodoppler. This is an essential part of the program as it supplies the means by which the reporters can give a first-hand view of the important moments in history. Hou used a Theremin to complement the synthesizer produced “blips”, “bloops”, and drones in the Chronodoppler’s personality. This musical instrument uses antennas that sense the movement of the player’s hands via oscillators and amplifies them to a speaker output rather than any physical contact. The sound designer concedes that the Chronodoppler and many of the sound effects he created for the show were based on description or static images rather than a beginning or finished product. The final results are even more impressive when viewed with this knowledge. It’s all in the pursuit of knowledge with humor. Those with an ear for detail will spot “Easter Eggs” in the show, such as when during the Operation Paperclip discussion the classic PC warning tone accompanies “Clippy” the paperclip who interrupts the newscaster. It’s these small details that keep Xiao Hou smiling and keeps the audience engaged.