Jim Henson Spent a Week Under a Log

The Muppet Show had already been on the air for two season and was in the middle of filming their third when Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and the rest of the show’s crew took a break to film The Muppet Movie, released in theaters in the summer of 1979.

The Muppet Movie tells the backstory of how the Muppets met and eventually ended up in Hollywood. An establishing story like that needs a memorable establishing shot, and Henson, along with script writers Jerry Juhl and Jack Burns, came up with an unforgettable opening shot that was as breathtakingly beautiful as it was difficult to film.

Shortly after the Muppets settle into their theater chairs, the film begins with aerial footage of Kermit’s swamp that quickly transitions to a crane shot. The crane lowers and the camera pushes forward until Kermit finally appears in frame. Deep in a swamp, sitting atop a log, we discover Kermit playing the banjo and singing the film’s opening number, “The Rainbow Connection.” As the camera continues to roll we see what appears to be a fully animated Kermit the Frog strumming the banjo with one hand as his other moves up and down the banjo’s neck. Kermit’s body sways to the music as he happily sings his song.

From a logical point of view, the shot seems difficult (if not impossible) to perform. There’s not enough room inside the log Kermit’s sitting on to hide a performer, and the log itself is floating in water. Kermit’s surroundings don’t show any telltale signs of being filmed against a bluescreen, and Kermit’s performance is too fluid to have been performed from above like a marionette. The only way it seems the shot could have been done would be to stick a performer underwater, but surely they didn’t do that… right?

According to the above diagram (posted on Twitter by Muppet History) that’s exactly what they did. Jim Henson himself climbed into a modified diving bell that was located directly underneath the log. The small metal container was equipped with an air hose to provide oxygen, and had a rubber sleeve at the top that allowed Henson to reach up through the metal container, through the log, and perform Kermit. The diving bell was also equipped with a small black and white monitor that provided Henson the ability to view his performance. The scene, according to Wikipedia, took five days to shoot ,with Henson often being submerged underwater for hours at a time.

Other camera tricks and special effects were used throughout the film to create the illusion that Muppets could walk, ride bicycles, and even drive a car, but the opening shot of the film required close up footage of Kermit and needed to sell the idea to moviegoers that Muppets were fully interacting with the real world. Jim Henson, part performer and part magician, often thought outside the box to come up with innovate techniques… even if that meant spending hours underwater in a metal sphere in order to get the perfect shot.