MAY 17TH, 2026
Higher Ground, a short film I co-produced while under the banner of Pagan Circus, earned 2nd Place out of 115 teams and the award for Best Cinematography at the 48 Hour Puppet Film Project, the international puppet-film challenge from Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams (the Henson-founded film series produced by Alex U. Griffin with the LA Guild of Puppetry).
The rules are brutal and wonderful: teams get forty-eight hours to write, build and shoot a complete puppet film around a randomly drawn theme, object and action. We made ours start to finish inside that window. This is the fast, fearless kind of making I like best - there’s no time to get precious, which is usually exactly when the good stuff shows up.
Placing near the top of a field that size, and having our efforts recognized by the Henson puppetry world, meant a lot to me.