The Center for Puppetry Arts (CPA) took home some loot recently, as the American Tall Tales DVD was recognized with a 26th Annual Telly Award. American Tall Tales was released December 1, 2004, as part of the Center's debut DVD collection, "Puppets At Play."

American heroes spin tales taller than a ten-gallon hat in this historic hoedown. Viewers learn all about the folks behind the lore as Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox invent logging; Native American Hekeke saves her tribe from a people-eating ogre; African-American John Henry becomes a steel-driving man; and western cowboy Pecos Bill tames a tornado. Director Jon Ludwig used hand-and-rod puppets, shadow puppets and twangy tunes to vividly capture the early lives of America's settlers on this land made for you and me.

Creative Digital Group, an Atlanta-based marketing communications company, donated two years of video production services to produce, distribute and archive ten of the Center's productions. Each digitally mastered DVD was shot using a three-camera setup, capturing multiple angles of the live performances. In addition, extensive color and video-level correction was used in order to offset the dramatic changes in lighting used in the theater.

In other CPA news, Jon Ludwig, associate artistic director, was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Children's Series, along with Mitchell Kreigman and Dean Gordon, for Disney Channel's The Book of Pooh. The directors are recognized for the episode "The Great Honey Pot/Paging Piglet," which premiered on April 8, 2004. The National Television Academy announced the nominees for the 32nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards on March 2.

Disney Channel premiered The Book of Pooh in January 2001. Inspired by the literary creations of author A.A. Milne and the creative mind of Emmy winner Mitchell Kriegman, The Book of Pooh is the first television program to combine the 300-year-old art of Japanese Bunraku puppetry with newly developed, computer-generated "virtual sets."