The cheese-loving Wallace (Peter Sallis) and his ever faithful dog Gromit—the much-loved duo from Aardman’s Oscar®-winning clay-animated shorts—star in “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” an all new comedy adventure, which marks their first full-length feature film.
Nick Park (“Chicken Run”), the original creator of Wallace & Gromit, and Steve Box are directing “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” from a screenplay by Bob Baker, Mark Burton, Steve Box and Nick Park. The film is produced by Peter Lord, David Sproxton, Nick Park, Claire Jennings and Carla Shelley, with Michael Rose and Cecil Kramer serving as executive producers.
Peter Sallis, who has voiced the role of Wallace in all of the shorts, reprises his role in the feature film. Academy Award® nominee Helena Bonham Carter (“The Wings of the Dove”) and two-time Academy Award ® nominee Ralph Fiennes (“The English Patient,” “Schindler’s List”) are the voices of Lady Tottington and Victor, respectively.
An Aardman production, “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” is presented by DreamWorks Animation SKG and Aardman Features. The film will be distributed by DreamWorks Distribution L.L.C. in the U.S. and will be distributed internationally through United International Pictures.
GENERAL PRODUCTION FACTS:
§ The entire feature production crew consisted of 250 people.
§ From development to finish, the film took five years to make. Principal photography took about 18 months.
§ The studio held 30 filming units and two test areas, which were all filming at any given time.
§ At the height of production, 100 seconds of footage was shot and approved each week across all sets. (Film runs at 24 frames per sec with 16 frames per foot of 35mm film. 1.5 ft per second equates to a final film running length of 7,200 feet for an 80-minute film, which then equates to 115,200 frames of finished footage).
§ On average, a single animator usually completes about 5 seconds of film per week.
§ The largest unit was measured at 75’ x 40’, the smallest unit at 10’ x 8‘.
§ 150 walkie-talkies were used on set. Up to 10,000 calls were made on walkie-talkie handsets to
coordinate filming in the studio.
GENERAL PRODUCTION FACTS (continued):
§ The crew used 44 pounds of glue every month to assist in sticking down the sets.
§ The directors’ daily walk around the studio would cover about 5 miles.
§ The production crew consumed at least 500 liters of water every week.
CREATING THE STORY AND CHARACTERS:
§ Nick Park and Steve Box began development work on the feature in 2000.
§ The Victor Quartermaine character was once known as Tristrum, and was originally written into the script as Lady Tottington’s son.
§ During the character design phase, the look of Lady Tottington changed as many as 40 times.
§ Lady Campanula Tottington is named after Nick Park’s favorite flowers, campanulas.
§ Victor’s dog, Philip, was originally a Pointer but now belongs to the Bulldog family, a breed traditionally associated with England.
§ Police Constable Mackintosh (PC Mac, as he is referred to in the film) is named after the personal computers.
§ Most of the character’s names are garden related, for example, Mr. and Mrs. Mulch, Mr. Grow-bag and Reverend Clement Hedges.
§ Posters fixed to walls around town advertise movie masterpieces such as “Carrot on a Hot Tin Roof” (a reference to the 1958 movie version of the Tennessee Williams play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”).
§ The hairdressers’ shop in the town is called Close Shave, in honor of the Oscar®-winning Nick Park short which marked Wallace & Gromit’s third adventure.
§ The voice of Hutch is provided by Peter Sallis – suitably speeded up.
§ When the Were-Rabbit stalks the Vicar in the church, the scene is deliberately reminiscent of a similar one set on the London Underground in John Landis’ 1981 movie “An American Werewolf in London.”
§ Posters attached to walls around town advertise such cinematic gems as “Spartichoke” (a reference to Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 classic “Spartacus”).
§ The Latin motto of the Tottington family inscribed on the manor house translates roughly as ‘Manure Liberates Us All’ (it was originally meant to be ‘Free Manure for Everyone’).
§ At the fairground, there’s a little notice in front of the Hot Dog stand that says ‘Hot Dogs, and Cats and Burgers’. It’s an affectionate nod towards DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.
MAKING THE MODELS:
§ The modelmaking department consisted of 40 skilled individuals.
§ The models are made from a special blend of plasticine (or modeling clay) called ‘Aard Mix’.
§ 2.8 tons of plasticine were used in the making of this film!
§ There are a total of 42 colors of plasticine (or modeling clay) represented in the film.
§ 15 pairs of new plasticine hands were made every week for Wallace.
§ There were over 500 rabbits made for the film.
§ On average, each character gets a new pair of eyes approximately every 2 months.
§ During production, there were more than one Gromit physically in existence; in fact there have been as many as 43 differently posed versions.
§ There were 35 versions of Wallaces in various costumes.
§ There were 15 versions of Lady Tottingtons in four different costumes.
§ There were 16 versions of Victors in various costumes.
§ There were also many different removable mouth shapes for each main character, such as:
o 12 different mouth shapes for Wallace.
o 14 different mouth shapes for Lady Tottington.
o 20 different mouth shapes for Victor Quartermaine.
SET DESIGNS & PROPS:
§ All the wallpaper created for the sets are entirely hand-painted.
§ All tools used to create props are proper tools made in miniature.
§ Tottington Hall took many months to develop and eight weeks to build. Inspiration for the design was drawn from many stately homes and the final design was closest to the National Trust’s Montacute House in Somerset. It is made from a wooden base and the stone effect is created in a resin called Jesmonite.
§ 100 varieties of foliage were researched and recreated for an authentic look to the countryside, gardens and the Tottington Hall landscapes.
§ Lady Tottington’s rooftop conservatory features produce not normally grown in England, such as: melons, figs, grapes, vines, peppers and lemons.
§ Over 700 molds were made to create the vegetables.
§ Over 880 pounds of plaster were used to fill the molds.
§ Various scale models of the Anti-Pesto van were made for the film, each for more than the price of an original Austin A35.
§ The Anti-pesto Van has a working suspension with functioning lights, doors and hood.
SET DESIGNS & PROPS (continued):
§ For all the ground they seem to cover in the film, the Anti-Pesto van has only ever driven half a mile on screen.
§ An actual A35 Austin Van, the model used for the Anti-pesto Van, has been recorded for noises for use in Foley stage. It has been driven, doors closed, wipers etc.
§ In honor of the film, the Austin fan club in the U.K. renovated an Austin A35 and made it into an exact replica of the one in the film, complete with logos and dents. This is currently touring the U.K. It even has the number plate HOP 2 IT!
§ Incidentally, Nick Park actually owns his own Austin A35 van.
§ Grass is made from “fun” fur brought in from the US.
§ Gromit’s greenhouse set features real glass panes.
§ The portraits on the dining room wall are moved along the room to make it appear longer.
§ 50 portraits appear on the client wall, which makes 100 flashing eyes for all the clients.
§ ? mile of miniature fencing was created for the various sets.
THE ANIMATION TEAM:
§ A total of 30 animators worked to create the various characters’ performances --19 key animators, mentoring 11 assistant animators. Talented individuals from all over England as well as from all over the world, made up the animation team on the film. Such countries as Finland, France, Scotland, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Australia and Denmark are represented.
§ A reference model of each character was made from hard resin and is called a “fast-cast.”
§ Each week the entire crew of animators would consume as many as 1,000 baby wipes to clean both the clay models and their hands.
§ Animators used a variety of tools to model the characters, some more unusual than others, such as: cocktail sticks, water, eye tools, wire scoop tools, clay shapers, and also some personal handmade tools. However, the ultimate tools are the hands themselves.
§ The longest time spent preparing a model for a shot was a whole day. This particular shot featured Victor getting dragged underground by the Gromit and the Anti-pesto Van.
§ The hardest parts to animate on a model are the teeth, hands, eyelids and mouths.
§ Each key animator has their own dust-buster to keep their sets clean for animating.
CAMERA & LIGHTING:
§ The camera department holds 33 cameras for which there are 96 camera lenses varying in range from the widest at 7.2mm and longest at 30mm. The cameras have been modified specifically for Aardman. In addition, the cameras have a unique mechanism that ensures that every new frame of film is in exactly the same place as the last frame. Due to the nature of the filmmaking process, film can be kept in a camera for up to a month. The motors that drive the cameras are called ‘Animotors’, these are unique to Aardman and were designed in-house.
§ The camera department consists of 19 people.
§ The ‘canning up’ process, whereby film is removed in a dark environment, involves unloading a magazine using a tent that is fondly referred to as nun’s knickers.
§ To assist any troubleshooting later on the film cans are religiously marked with vital information about the camera, lens, magazine, etc.
§ When film is first loaded into a camera a ‘scratch test’ is conducted to ensure there is no grit, pressure marks or scratches.
§ As with Aardman’s first feature “Chicken Run,” the new feature will also be digitized. This new and evolving process allows a perfect composite to be created during the editing process.
§ PVR (Perception Video Recorder) Towers have been created to assist animators during the filming process. These PVR’s are essentially computers that record a video image one frame at a time using a software programme. A frame of video is always taken before it is committed to film.
§ 15,000 practical lamps were used for the feature to decorate the fairground scenes, festoons for Tottington Hall and the client wall.
§ 400 practical lamps were used on each carousel.
§ 250 rolls of gel of over 50 different colors were used in filming.
§ 950 studio lamps have been used, each lasting over 900 hours, which is three times the manufacturer’s predicted lifetime.
§ Countless drawings were done to plot out the lighting for each set, the simplest requiring 1 lamp and the most complex requiring over 2,000.
CG EFFECTS:
§ A team of 20 computer animators at a London effects house called Motion Picture Company worked on the project for over a year.
§ There were 772 shots in the movie that had some type of digital effect applied to it. This amounts to approximately 2% of the overall film.
CG EFFECTS (continued):
§ CG elements include not only the floating bunny rabbits, but also, growing fur, mind waves, smoke trails, fireworks, a water splash, smashed glass, flying mud, assorted flying debris and a were-rabbit shaped hole punched through dense fog.
§ For the "mind waves" that come out of Wallace's head and fill the Mind-o-Matic and the BunVac, the digital animators used reference material that included the rings of light that surround the lady robot in Fritz Lang's Metopolis, electrical effects from early Frankenstein films and photographs and video of smoke rings.
§ All the Were-Rabbit fur in any of the transformation shots is completely computer-generated.
§ Special software had to be created in order to photo-realistically recreate the texture of genuine Aardman plasticine in the computer. This software had to create the possibility for slight imperfections, e.g., fingerprints to appear on the fake plasticine bunnies and ripple effects of the characters moving their plasticine arms and legs.
§ Aardman provided the digital animators with physical clay bunnies to copy. In some scenes, both "real" and digital ones are used - try to spot which are which!
§ Digital bunnies were mainly used for the shots where the bunnies need to be floating around in the air - something that would have been very hard, if not impossible, for the "traditional" animators to achieve.
§ One animator, by the name of Jason Wen, was responsible for all the digital bunny shots.
§ Any of the shots with rabbits floating in the BunVac are computer generated.
§ Many shots in the film include mist and fog. The mist had to be shot as a live-action plate separately from the stop-motion animation (some fog was even generated digitally). The animation and the fogged-up scenery were then combined together digitally by MPC.
§ Just like in a live-action movie, blue-screens and green-screens were sometimes used to allow characters to be shot separately from their backgrounds. This was used in various scenes – e.g. for the van driving down the street with the model Lady Were-Rabbit on the roof, and for the Were-Rabbit in the forest, and for the "dog fight" near the end.
§ The flying mud thrown out by the digging Were-Rabbit is animated digitally in 2D, using software called "Shake."
§ The image resolution (or definition) used for the digitization of the film was 2048 x 1556, which is the current standard for most film visual effects.