Blocking is the planned movement and positioning of puppets and performers through a scene — where everyone stands, when they move, and where they end up.
Why it matters more in puppetry than in acting
A human actor can adjust in the moment. A puppeteer is holding a character overhead, watching a monitorThe monitor is the screen a puppeteer watches while performi..., working within a frame lineThe frame line is the bottom edge of what the camera sees, a..., and often cannot see their colleagues at all. Nothing can be improvised safely, so everything has to be decided in advance.
What gets blocked
The puppet’s path, obviously. But also the performer’s path underneath it, which is a separate problem — two puppeteers whose characters need to be close together may need to be shoulder to shoulder in a space that does not fit them.
Sightlines and the frame
Every position is checked against what the audience or the camera can see. A move that puts a performer’s arm in shot, or opens a gap in the masking, gets reblocked no matter how good it looks.
Entrances and exits
take disproportionate planning, because a puppet appearing from the wrong place or at the wrong height reads as a mistake instantly.
In the dark
Black light and booth work is often performed in near-total darkness where blocking has to be memorised completely, since you cannot see your colleagues or your own marks.
Write it down
Professional productions keep a blocking script. For a solo builder shooting at home, a simple sketch of positions per shot will save you a rebuilt scene.
The hack: block the performers before you block the puppets. The characters can go anywhere; the people holding them cannot, and that constraint is the real one.