By: Cara Latham
HIGHTSTOWN As other cars were passing by young Gregory Ciano and his mother while she was driving along the highway one day, she kept noticing that people were laughing and pointing at her car.
Curious about their laughter, she looked in the rearview mirror and kept catching a glimpse of a puppet dancing, singing and waving to the passersby.
"Oh, it’s you!" she said to her son, who was handling the puppets. "I was getting paranoid!"
Mr. Ciano, now 37, still plays with puppets. In fact, he is trying to make a lucrative living doing it, which could happen if network representatives like what they see at the New York Television Festival. A pilot of the Hightstown resident’s series, "Dave and Augie’s Home Movies: The American Adventures" will be among the 21 submissions shown.
The event for independent television producers sponsored by MSN between Sept. 12 and Sept. 17 in New York City is what Mr. Ciano hopes will give him the chance to make a dream job out of his childhood love.
Since he was a young boy, his favorite shows included "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show." In every picture from his childhood, he can be seen with a puppet on hand, he said. He even put on productions for his mother while she was doing the dishes.
But the idea of being a puppeteer stuck with him as he grew older. First pursuing an acting career, Mr. Ciano moved from his former residence in Old Bridge to Los Angeles, but grew tired after two years of going on auditions and wanting to do more work behind the camera. So, he moved back to New Jersey and came up with an idea for a puppet show.
"The Rex Dino Show" began in 1997 as an educational and entertainment puppet show starring puppet Rex Dino, which aired on a Jackson cable-access station.
The experience led Mr. Ciano to realize that he wanted to create shows outside of the studio, he said.
So, he came up with the idea for "Dave’s Home Movies," where he would take his puppet, Dave, to different places , such as the Statue of Liberty and New Brunswick, and the puppet would give background on those places.
Mr. Ciano got the idea for "The Dave and Augie Show" from this project.
In 2000, he and his crew began shooting the series and added Rex Dino’s buddy, Augie manned by Mr. Ciano’s friend, Mike Ricci from the first show, thus giving the show its name.
"Augie is the silly, quieter version of Dave, and Dave is the wilder crazier version of Augie," Mr. Ciano said. "They’re kind of like yin and yang."
Each episode begins with the puppets in the van on the way to the site the crew will visit during the episode. En route, the characters, including on-screen actress Hillary Scott, who is driving, discuss the background information on the site and explore other tidbits once there. For example, in the third episode, the puppets talk about Theodore Roosevelt’s role as a president and what he was like as a father, said Mr. Ciano.
Throughout the 30-minute episodes geared toward children ages 5 to 9, the puppets play a game called Who Wants to Win $1.20?, similar to "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?" The game re-examines what the children have learned during the puppets’ trip. Each episode ends with a music video, in which puppets play instruments and sing about what they learned.
Mr. Ciano said he wanted to make the series entertaining for both children and adults, and so far, he said it is being well received by both.
"I really feel I’ve been successful on that because I get everybody from 0 to 90 watching it and laughing and having a good time and actually saying they learned something from it," he said. "And it’s a good feeling to know that we actually set out to do something and we succeeded in it."
Dawn Frascaria, Mr. Ciano’s sister, has a master’s degree in history and does the research for the program, he said. Mr. Ciano adds Web-based production design and edits his own work. He also founded his own company, Freggie Entertainment in 1999, which distributes the videos, and he does freelance video editing.
The first episode of the series was a re-shoot of the Statue of Liberty. The second video called, "Ben Franklin’s Philadelphia," along with the third episode, "Theodore Roosevelt" about the 26th president and his home in Sagamore Hill, followed. Both received excellent reviews at the KIDS FIRST! Festivals, based in New Mexico, Mr. Ciano said. The Library Video Company picked up the series for distribution on its Web site and also distributes it through a paper catalogue.
Mr. Ciano said sales have been going well, but he decided to submit the third video to the New York Television Festival after a friend told him that he heard of other independent producers receiving deals as a result of the festival.
He thought to himself that "it sounds like something that I might get into, but there’s probably going to be so many people submitting to this. My odds are really thin."
But when he got a phone call telling him his video was selected, among 175 submissions, to appear at the festival, Mr. Ciano said he was floored.
"I was really not expecting to get in," he said. "Just to have him look at it would have been great."
Now Mr. Ciano is optimistic about the chances of winning $2,000 from the newly added education category, where three other producers have submitted their video. If he wins overall at the festival, he would receive $10,000. However, it is the chance to hopefully get picked up by a network or sign with an agent that Mr. Ciano said he wants most.
"If I can actually get myself an agent out of this, that would be great because then I’d have someone who might get me into those meetings (with networks) if I don’t get a production deal out of the festival," he said.
