Puppet News Now!

Co-Creator | Performer

Uth Story Group

2021

Project Synopsis

Puppet News Now! is a fast-paced puppet short film created for a 48-Hour Film Festival, following an overconfident team of news anchor puppets as they deliver absurd, tongue-in-cheek coverage of local news. Blending mock-serious broadcast tropes with scrappy puppet comedy, the short satirizes traditional news formats while embracing the chaotic energy of its rapid production timeline.

Building on the short, we also developed a pitch document for Better LA, a longer-form series concept that expands the same puppet newsroom and characters into recurring segments, world-building, and heightened satire—reimagining local news as a surreal, character-driven comedy series.

The Newsroom

The 48 Hour FIlm Fest Video

This short film was created as part of a 48-Hour Film Festival, requiring the complete development of a concept, script, and finished edit within an intense production window. The project centered on a puppet-run newsroom, a contained setting that helped streamline locations while still demanding fast, creative problem-solving during filming and performance. From rapid scriptwriting to hands-on puppet cinematography and overnight editing, the process was a full sprint—but one driven by collaboration, improvisation, and humor. Despite the time pressure, the project was ultimately a fun and energizing exercise in quick-turn storytelling and practical production.

The better l.a. pitch

From the top to the bottom

Better L.A. is a satirical puppet news series set inside a local Los Angeles newsroom, where a cast of opinionated, underqualified puppet anchors attempt to report on the city’s daily headlines. Framed as a standard news broadcast but constantly derailed by personality clashes, absurd interpretations of events, and low-stakes chaos, the show uses puppetry to heighten the comedy and exaggerate familiar media tropes.

Through recurring segments, character-driven banter, and exaggerated “local news” urgency, Better L.A. reimagines civic reporting as a fast, irreverent comedy series that skewers both modern media and life in Los Angeles.