Baa-hind the scenes of Shaun the Sheep: The Movie.
Is Aardman
Animations about to have its biggest hit at the box office? The
Bristol-based company behind Wallace and Gromit is quietly hopeful that after
several successful but not quite blockbuster-level movies, including Flushed
Away and Arthur Christmas, they might have a global franchise on their hands:
all thanks to an unassuming sheep called Shaun.
First glimpsed in a small role rescuing Gromit from jail
in 1995 short film A Close Shave, the sparky Shaun has since surpassed odd
couple Wallace and Gromit to become Aardman’s most commercially successful
creation.
“Wallace and Gromit have been loved for so
long but in terms of sheer international exposure Shaun The Sheep is the most
successful,” says Peter Lord
who co-founded Aardman Animations with David Sproxton in 1976.
Quite so. The TV series chronicling his misadventures,
launched in 2007, is a smash in 170 countries.
Now he has his own film, Shaun The Sheep Movie, a
baa-rnstorming romp (stop-motion animated in the Aardman tradition)
brimming with visual invention, brilliantly crafted set-pieces.
Co-writer and co-director Mark Burton describes it as “a slapstick comedy without words” and the
silent storytelling aspect is certainly one reason the series travels so well,
a la Mr Bean.
“The shows are so
rich visually,” says Lord. “I’m not going to say anything negative
about the competition but very often when you look at other kids’ series which
are dialogue or narration based they’re sweet and the stories are well told but
they’re not funny. Shaun is funny the whole time because it’s so visual.”
Nevertheless, the decision to make Shaun dialogue free
was initially a practical one says Richard Starzak, the Aardman animator who
devised the series and co-wrote and co-directed the movie with Burton, whose
credits including Aardman’s Chicken Run and Dreamworks’ Madagascar.
“The original
idea of having no dialogue was actually to make the animation easier because
animating dialogue is quite lengthy and expensive,” Starzak said.
Although the character was conceived by Wallace and
Gromit creator Nick Park it was Starzak, an Aardman employee on and off since
1985, who is credited with steering Shaun to international pastures.
Says Lord: “In terms of making Shaun who he is today, I think that’s Richard’s great achievement.”
Says Lord: “In terms of making Shaun who he is today, I think that’s Richard’s great achievement.”
Of Polish origin and known as “Golly”, the softly spoken
Starzak nursed the idea of a feature film from the first series. “It felt like it had a lot of potential to
tell longer form stories because it had an emotional heart. Even as a TV series
it punched above its weight.”
Having originally devised the series as a kind of
workplace comedy in which the flock were pitted against their masters, Starzak
created more of a family dynamic between the characters with Shaun as the
naughty little brother, Bitzer the big bro trying to keep order and the farmer
the hapless parent.
The question was how to advance from seven-minute
episodes to an 80-minute feature film.
“It’s very hard to tell a story visually over 90 minutes” says Burton whose
background includes writing for TV comedies like Have I Got News For You and
Room 101.
“You need an idea
that is simple enough to be comprehensible but not so simple that the story
drags.”
The idea they hit on combined simplicity, scale and
plenty of potential for sheep-out of-water comedy: remove Shaun and pals from
the “comfort zone” of the farm and plonk them in a city (called Big City in the
film but loosely modelled on Bristol).
An unlikely inspiration was 1985 teen classic Ferris
Bueller’s Day Off: Shaun plots to take a day off from the farm’s mind-numbing
routine but things go awry when the slumbering Farmer freewheels into the city
in his caravan.
“Ferris Bueller was a big influence because we loved the
idea of a character who was ebullient and street smart and changes the world
around him,” explains Burton.
There’s also an undercurrent of melancholy to the story
reminiscent of the Pixar movies as Shaun’s attempt to jazz up his life
disguises a sadness at his stale relationship with Farmer.
“You need the emotion to make the comedy
funny,” says Burton.
As an Aardman outsider who works both for the company -
he co-scripted the Oscar-winning Wallace And Gromit: Curse Of The Were Rabbit -
and Hollywood studios Burton is well placed to comment on the secret behind
Aardman’s success.
“We discuss this
quite a lot. What is the Aardman thing? I think it’s something to do with
taking epic ideas, like prison escape in Chicken Run, and doing a very Aardman,
quirky British version of it,” he says. “And we all come
from a similar background watching British sitcoms and Morecambe and Wise and
there’s a bit of that DNA there too.”
Shaun The Sheep Movie marks Aardman’s break with
Hollywood: its previous four movies were made in conjunction with studios
Dreamworks and Sony. Shaun is a collaboration with French production and
distribution company StudioCanal and Peter Lord says it feels more of a natural
fit for the company.
“When you make a
Hollywood movie there’s always an awareness of the American market rumbling
away. That background pressure is just deep in the movie culture. With
StudioCanal we’ve enjoyed more freedom. It’s been great,” says Lord.
Shaun The Sheep Movie is in cinemas on April 29.
Nationwide !
Released and distributed by CAPTIVE CINEMA.
Clever bits, sight gags and situational slapstick will appeal to both kids and adults, especially the flock's problems carrying out smart sheep Shaun's elaborate schemes.
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