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Clip description
Exiting the rocket, Rosemary asks the children at home to prepare for story time. Rosemary introduces the Magic Picture Maker, a talking illustration machine, who is feeling sorry for himself because he was not invited to join in the rocket sing-a-long.
Curator’s notes
This clip offers an early example of giving inanimate objects on television both voice and emotion. Here, a rather melancholy machine is disappointed and jealous at not being invited to join in the rocket sing-a-long. Rosemary models how a parent may deal with these emotions in a child, by playing up the machine’s other strengths and encouraging the audience at home to cheer him up with a positive reinforcement of his unique skills.
It’s odd to hear a machine expressing sadness when it has a painted-on smile and immovable expression but Rosemary convincingly interacts with the prop in such a way that children at home would feel it was all right to follow along. Notice that the camera is much closer to the action in this clip, in preparation for the close-ups needed for the imminent story time segment.
