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A brief bit on CHICKEN RUN!
Our dear Mr Backes of Stay Tooned dropped me a line to let me know that AARDMAN had screened 15 minutes of footage from their first feature film (from the folks that brought us WALLACE & GROMIT and CREATURE COMFORTS!!!). Man.... to be a fly on that wall...eh? Ya know... one of the great thing about us geeks is we know that the sun will come out someday... and it will be glorius. CHICKEN RUN is a sunrise I await with great anticipation. Nick does not only fantastic work... but he has the snazziest taste in clothing I have ever seen (with the possible exception of John Lassiter!) If you happen to hear anything more on this project... Drop me the slightest bits of knowledge you hear... Ok? Thanks. Here we go...
I've found out that Aardman Animations recently
had an internal screening of "Chicken Run" work
in progress. So far, the stop-motion/clayanimation
studio has finished 15 minutes of the film in a
rough cut; the sound has obvioulsy not been added
yet. The entire Aardman crew attended the
screening and "a great sense of achievement
was shared." Aardman workers immediately went back
to production since the projected release date
is sometime during the Summer of 2000.
"Chicken Run" is a comedy escape drama with a
touch of passion set on a sinister Yorkshire
chicken farm in 1950's England. The film follows
the turbulent romance between two farmyard
chickens, Rocky and Ginger, who yearn for freedom
and plan a daring 'prisoner of war' style escape.
"Chicken Run" is being produced by Dreamworks and
is being distributed in the UK by Pathe.
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+ Expand All
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But does this sound
like "Animal Farm" to
anybody else? Oh
well, a feature stop
motion film will rock
anyways! -
Man, Wallace and Gromit and Creature Comforts are just terrific. I heard Mel Gibson was producing Chicken Run (he's a huge W&G fan) but I might be wrong about that. Nick, save us from the art of the stick figure and a few computer bits...(no, I'm not hacking on CGI or traditional animation - this is a praise thing, so just go with me here...)
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Has anyone been over to Corona's Coming Attractions and read the idea for the film Food. If I remember right Jan De Bont is going to produce it, and no he will not direct the picture. Anyway, it is about the food being prepared for a holiday feast, and one of the main characters is a piece of wedding cake that has been in the freezer since the couple's wedding in the 70's (so the cake would be voiced by Barry White or someone who can nail John Travolta's coolness from Saturday Night Fever). This sounds like an original project, and sounds like a lot of fun. Unfortunately,"Original" is a dirty word in Hollywood.
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I heard about that, and I remember thinking that this was a concept that I really could enjoy seeing in a theater. But I haven't heard anything new about it. The fact that Jan DeBont is doing it makes me nervous, though. But if The Haunting of Hill House turns out as good as I think it might be (although a lot of people hated the trailer I thought it was a terrific minimalist approach and intrigued me enough to see it) I could be wrong on my take of the man.
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Mel Gibson isn't just producing this movie...he's also voicing the main character. ******* This sounds like a great project. It's not that much like "Animal Farm" (unless the idea of talking animals on a farm is all it takes to invite that comparison), but it does sound a lot like "Zoo", a concept that was floating around WB for a while...the idea of doing a prison movie with the animals in the zoo playing all the archetypal characters. ******* BTW, another stop-motion film coming soon--maybe even this year--is Monkey Bone, by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach).
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Can't help but notice not too many posting here. My thoughts on why: Americans (in general) don't understand W&G. Sure there are exceptions (5 of you have posted) but I think too many sitcomms have finally cleared your minds on conciese(sp) thought. W&G - great stuff. Genuinely funny and fantastic animation (how they did the soapy water look with sm clay is way beyond me.) This could be well worth looking out for.
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Can't help but notice not too many posting here. My thoughts on why: Americans (in general) don't understand W&G. Sure there are exceptions (5 of you have posted) but I think too many sitcomms have finally cleared your minds on conciese(sp) thought. W&G - great stuff. Genuinely funny and fantastic animation (how they did the soapy water look with sm clay is way beyond me.) This could be well worth looking out for.
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A couple of posters have compared this project to other movies. Nick Park has his own comparison, which I seem to remember seeing in a TV inverview quite a while back - he said (and I'm paraphrasing here) in true 'Player' style - "Imagine the Great Escape....but with Chickens!". I'm sure everyone agrees that this is a film that was just crying out to be made....
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Since I'm jumping into this thread several days late, I'm probably just talking into a void here, but I'd like to respond to a remark in the original article: "...the sound has obvioulsy not been added yet." As an animator who has worked on a lot of clay/puppet projects (as well as other techniques), I can tell you that for virtually all professional animated production, the recording and editing of the soundtrack is the FIRST thing you do. This soundtrack is then painstakingly broken down into individual frame units by some poor schmuck (such as me, when I was first starting out) so that there is a record of what exact syllable or sound the actor uttered for each frame. The results are compiled into what is variously known as a "breakdown sheet," a "track analysis," or a "dope sheet." The animators then use this as a guide when animating the movements of the characters' lips and jaws. If you tried to do it the other way around, it would be almost impossible to get that tight lip synchronization that audiences have come to expect. I have never worked for Aardman, but I would be amazed if this is not how things are done for their projects, including the "Chicken Run" feature under discussion. By the way, Harbinger: even though I am an American, I am an immense fan of Wallace and Gromit. In fact, ever since "Creature Comforts," the works of Nick Park have been the "Gold Standard" to which my coleagues and I aspire.
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