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Vengeance Most Fowl’s Directors on Their 100% Rotten Tomatoes Score After 107 Reviews

Jan 10, 2025

Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub moderates an exclusive Q&A with co-directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham after a special FYC screening of Netflix’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

Vengeance Most Fowl reunites the lovable duo with their foe from the past, Feathers McGraw, in a timely new adventure.

During this conversation, Park and Crossingham discuss the conception of their latest feature, how they utilize CGI, working with the late Peter Sallis and Ben Whitehead, the process of stop-motion animation, and the exciting projects with Aardman Animation coming up, including a Pokémon collaboration and a Pingu revival.

Four-time Academy Award-winning animator and filmmaker Nick Park changed the stop-motion medium forever when he first introduced the dynamic duo Wallace & Gromit in 1989 in his short A Grand Day Out. Since then, Park has continued his collaboration with Aardman Animation as a writer, animator, director and producer on animated classics like Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Over the last handful of years, Park has been busy at work with co-director and animator Merlin Crossingham on the first Wallace & Gromit feature since A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008), and it’s no surprise Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is already in talks for an Oscar nomination.
In Vengeance Most Fowl, to Gromit’s dismay, Wallace is testing out his latest invention — a “smart gnome” named Norbot (Reece Shearsmith) who performs household tasks with high-tech efficiency. Already, Gromit is wary of Wallace’s latest creation, but when a feathery foe from their past, the infamous Feathers McGraw, sets his sights on vengeance, gnome-one is safe.
In honor of this duo’s long-awaited return, Collider was thrilled to co-host a special screening of Vengeance Most Fowl at Netflix HQ, where Park and Crossingham joined our own Steve Weintraub for an exclusive Q&A. Check out the video above or the transcript below for a spoiler-free discussion with the masterminds behind the clay, who share with us the hard work they and their animation team put into each character and every scene. Find out what the real Wallace, Gromit, and Feathers are made of, the filmmakers’ thoughts on the use of AI within the industry, and how long this idea has been in the works. Park and Crossingham also tease the Pokémon and Pingu projects in the works with Aardman, and so much more.
Feathers McGraw Would Give This Classic Villain a “Run for His Money”

The creators reveal a sneaky Die Hard reference in Vengeance Most Fowl.

Image via 20th Century Studios

COLLIDER: I have a million questions for you guys. I like throwing this one at the beginning: besides this movie, if someone has never seen anything you’ve worked on, what is the first thing you’d like them to watch and why?
MERLIN CROSSINGHAM: I’d go for [Wallace & Gromit] The Wrong Trousers myself.
NICK PARK: I was going to say that, as well. Yeah.
CROSSINGHAM: It’s kind of quintessentially Aardman and Wallace & Gromit and an amazing film. I had nothing to do with it, so I feel very happy saying that.
PARK: Just to add to that, and unfortunately, it’s another film I’ve made, but it’s Creature Comforts. There’s something that’s very primal about the use of clay and the great things about clay animation and character and the simplicity of it all.
A lot of people think that Feathers McGraw is one of animation’s best villains. So how would he fare against Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber from Die Hard?
CROSSINGHAM: [Laughs] I think he might give him a run for his money.
PARK: He could, yeah.
CROSSINGHAM: We actually referenced Hans Gruber falling off the building. There’s a shot in this where Gromit falls at the end and we referenced it just because it’s an iconic film of someone falling. It’s not the same, but it was just something we needed to look at so that we didn’t mess it up and copy it. I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard a story that they didn’t tell Alan Rickman they were going to drop him, which is why he has that amazing expression when he falls.
I think I’ve heard that, but I don’t know what’s true at this point.
PARK: We didn’t tell Gromit either.
Will We Ever Get a Wallace & Gromit and ‘Chicken Run’ Crossover?

“We have discussed it.”

Image via DreamWorks Pictures

What will it take to get a Wallace & Gromit-Chicken Run crossover?
CROSSINGHAM: [Laughs] Oh, quite a lot, I think.
PARK: A lot, yeah.
Is it something that you’ve actually ever thought about, or not at all?
PARK: We tend to keep the worlds separate. We have discussed it. While making Chicken Run, we talked about, “Should there be any reference to Wallace and Gromit?” Like them going past in the distance on the bike or something like that. But there is a little Easter egg at the end of Dawn of the Nugget, which we didn’t put in; the crew on Chicken Run put it in — a little Feathers McGraw.
CROSSINGHAM: In the final shot.
PARK: In the very final shot.
CROSSINGHAM: In this film, we’ve got the farmer from Shaun the Sheep, who has a little cameo. That’s slightly different because the Shaun the Sheep world evolved from the world of Wallace & Gromit, although we do keep Shaun from Wallace and Gromit. In Shaun the Sheep, the design is subtly different. We do very purposefully keep them separate.
PARK: So when they do crossover, it’s a joke, really.
Does Wallace & Gromit Use AI?

“That human touch is absolutely essential.”

This movie touches on technology and whether or not too much technology is bad. I have been asking this of filmmakers all over the place: what are your thoughts on AI in Hollywood and moviemaking? Does it concern you? Do you think that there’s a way to use it?
CROSSINGHAM: Well, I mean, it is thematically central to our film. When we started working on it, AI was around, but the speed at which technology advances is kind of exponential. So our film coming out and AI being such a massively hot topic in the creative arts and especially in Hollywood kind of is more luck than judgment. But I think for us, the quintessential process of stop-motion is craft-based. It’s about people, and it’s about being hands-on. The actual core method of making the films that we do requires people and artists. You can even see the thumbprints of our animators on the clay faces of the characters, and that human touch is absolutely essential.
We can’t say we haven’t used AI because if you use a smartphone of any kind, you use AI in some form. So you have to be very careful about saying you haven’t used AI, but we haven’t used AI for voice, for image creation, or for any of the core creative methods used in the film, and I think that’s a very important distinction to make. And we wouldn’t. I don’t think you could make the kind of films we make.
PARK: That’s very key to our values.
“We’re Going to Be Fine”: The Clay Shortage Is No More

You’ll never guess who unintentionally started those rumors…

Image via Netflix

What was it like for you guys when the reports came out that you were going to run out of clay, and everyone went crazy? Because it’s the core of your business. Can you address that a little bit or talk about it?
PARK: Yeah, there’s kind of a half-truth to that. I think it was said as a joke by Sam Fell, who directed Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. It’s the sort of thing where Sam comes out with it, but it got taken up in the press and stuff.
I remember reading about it and being like, “What the F? This needs to be rectified.”
CROSSINGHAM: But it was kind of grounded slightly in truth. The company that makes this particular kind of modeling clay that we use was winding up, but there’s been a resurrection and, actually, we’re going to be fine. We were delighted that everybody was so worried for us, but don’t worry, everybody. It’s going to be fine.

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Aardman Animation Only Has Enough Clay For One More Movie

Aardman is the stop-motion studio responsible for ‘Wallace & Gromit’ and ‘Chicken Run.’

If we look at the puppets that you used in the film, it’s not just clay anymore. There’s more to it. Can you tell the audience and everyone watching what the puppets are made of?
PARK: There is essentially an armature inside, a metal skeleton with ball and socket joints, but his torso has always been something solid — in this case, silicone with a solid core. But it’s just with so many animators working on the film, 35 animators, it’s a way of keeping the style consistent and saves a lot of time. The characters have to go into pit stop after every shot, and it just saves a lot of modeling time for the animator. So the sleeves are made of silicone on the outside, and the trousers and the pants are made of silicone, as well. It just saves a lot of time with sculpting every shot.
CROSSINGHAM: But the parts which require the most expressive performance, the hands and the heads of Wallace and Gromit in particular, have always been clay and are always clay because we haven’t figured out a way to do it differently and keep them looking right and performing in the same way.
PARK: And also, silicone doesn’t serve every purpose. So sometimes Wallace’s arms are all clay, sometimes his trousers are clay, and sometimes the whole of Gromit is clay. It just varies. It’s a production issue, really, how to keep the production going at speed.
CROSSINGHAM: But also, these are material technologies that are advancing, and we use it if it works and if it doesn’t work, we go back to the old way. It’s just using the best tool for the job.
PARK: We have to kind of be careful it doesn’t get too sophisticated because there’s a certain naivete, and as I said, that’s the charm that people seem to like is the fact that it is clay. The problem with silicone is you can start animating very smoothly because it’s so controllable, and we don’t want to lose that nature. So, it’s a balance, a bit like technology, really.

Image via Aardman Animation

I think you said to me when we were backstage that Feathers is a lot of clay, or am I wrong?
CROSSINGHAM: Yeah. So with Feathers, all of the black part of him is modeling clay, and his nose is resin. His eyes are the glass ends of needlework pins, and we buy about 1,000 of them, and we find pairs that match ends so they’re perfectly spherical and the same size. Then, the pairs are partnered for life, and they become Feathers’ eyes. Then his legs are silicone, and the white bit on him is resin because you need something to grab onto. But otherwise, he’s clay.
PARK: And his glove, sometimes.
CROSSINGHAM: I’ve just realized something. We’ve brought a chicken. We should have brought Feathers. Sorry. [Laughs]
‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ Is the Rule of the Roost on Rotten Tomatoes

The animated feature still currently sits at a perfect 100%.

Image via Netflix

One of the things about movies and TV is that, often, people find things to criticize, or not everyone likes something. So what the hell is it like for the two of you that the movie is still at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes after 102 reviews?
CROSSINGHAM: I’ve never known anything different, so for me, it’s great. It’s my first feature. It is quite extraordinary. We’re hearing stories of great films that don’t get this response from reviewers, and so it’s a bit of a pinch-me kind of thing.
PARK: You even start getting a bit nervous to look on the site in case it’s gone down. There’s only one way it can go. [Laughs]
CROSSINGHAM: It can only get worse from here.
It’s very, very, very rare what’s going on in terms of everyone liking it. Congrats. What does it mean to have so many critic organizations and so many people singling out the film as just being one of the best of the year, whether it be the Golden Globes or Critics Choice? I’m sure it’s going to be nominated for an Oscar. What does this all mean to you?
PARK: We don’t want to count chickens, so to speak. One can’t assume that will happen but thank you. It’s nice.
CROSSINGHAM: It is quite an extraordinary feeling just getting the nomination in itself, especially in a really strong year. And I have to say, it’s a mega year for animated features this year. We spent a long time in a dark hole making these films, and so when we come out for daylight and share it with people, and it is warmly received, it’s just wonderful. It’s really, really heartwarming.
PARK: You create a joke four years ago, or a number of jokes, and in the process, you get so close to it all that you kind of start forgetting if it’s funny.
CROSSINGHAM: It’s definitely not funny after four years.
PARK: Yeah, and you start cutting them out or changing them. Then you see it with your first audience, and you certainly think, “Oh my, I forgot that was funny.”
CROSSINGHAM: “It was funny, glad we kept that in.”

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‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ has secured a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and it’s not even out yet.

Nick, when did you realize these characters really meant a lot to a lot of people?
PARK: That’s a good one. Actually, I definitely remember Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation. A lot of people first saw our work over here in that festival.
Wasn’t it Creature Comforts that was in that?
PARK: Yeah. Creature Comforts and then [Wallace & Gromit] A Grand Day Out the same year, and The Wrong Trousers. I remember then that, actually, that was the first-ever autograph I ever signed was at that festival. That really put the films on people’s radar. But I guess it was when we first started getting nominated for things and for awards and getting feedback from TV screenings. I remember, before the internet, getting really moving letters from people. Like Creature Comforts: I remember a lady writing she’d been through a terrible divorce, and she said, “I’d forgotten how to smile and to laugh. Thank you for bringing it back.”
We should tell the younger members of the audience, the kids that are right here, that people sometimes used to write letters with pens.
CROSSINGHAM: Yeah, not just like “A, B, C…” A whole long string of words.
Yeah. It was very popular for a little while — hundreds of years. It’s gone now.
Where’s Fluffles?

Image via BBC

So someone on my staff asked this question: Where’s Fluffles?
PARK: Oh, somebody asked that the other day! Well, that’s a great sequel idea. [Laughs] Thank you.
Was it something you debated?
PARK: We never really got much response about Fluffles, to be honest. So it’s nice that people are plucking Fluffles.
“He Was My First Choice”: Finding the Unforgettable Voice of Wallace

Nick Park shares how he first reached out to Peter Sallis and the gift of finding Ben Whitehead years later.

Image via BBC

I want to bring up Peter Sallis, the original voice of Wallace. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like first discovering Peter and realizing he’s the voice, and then trying to find someone to — I don’t want to say replace — be able to do the voice?
PARK: Well, the way it started, he was my first choice, really. I was a student at the National Film and TV School. We had about £50 to pay an artist, an actor, to be in your film, and I wrote to him. He was very famous in the UK for the series called Last of the Summer Wine, about three old men getting up to all sorts of high jinks in the countryside, and he was a mild-mannered Northern English character. I wrote to him thinking he had a northern accent, which is where I’m from, from the north of England, and he didn’t write back. He sent me an old cassette that he’d recorded in his living room on his little player, and in that, I discovered he had quite a posh kind of London accent. I think I’ve still got the tape somewhere where he goes, “Hello, Nick. Peter here…” He was called Jerry, not Wallace, actually, in that very first script, “I thought this might be what Jerry sounds like.” And he read the whole script for about 20 pages, and I loved it, but I was like, “Oh boy, he doesn’t have a northern accent,” but it worked fine.
So he came to the film school, recorded for a day, and then it took me seven years to make the film because you have to record the voice first. He had this story about how he got a phone call from me, from this little voice on the phone seven years later, saying, “I finished it!” I can’t remember who that is or what he’s talking about, but it was A Grand Day Out. [Laughs]
Talk a little bit about Ben Whitehead, who took over for the role. What was it about, Ben? How challenging was it to find someone to take over?
PARK: Obviously, it was really sad losing Peter, but Ben was just a gift put on our laps, really, wasn’t he? That was already there. Ben had come onto [Wallace & Gromit] The Curse of the Were-Rabbit to do a background voice, and he often stepped in to read in with artists when Peter couldn’t turn up. So he read the script with Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes, and we discovered that he could do a really excellent Wallace voice, and then you carried on working with him.
CROSSINGHAM: Yeah. He essentially became Peter’s understudy, and he would do the jobs that Peter couldn’t or didn’t want to do. So in the early days of console games, we had a PlayStation game, and Peter didn’t fancy doing that, so Ben did those. It was a really great training ground. And they knew each other, and Ben had Peter’s blessing, really. So for us, we’ve worked with Ben for a long time, but to the outside world, he’s kind of the brand-new voice of Wallace.
So, to begin with, not always perfect, but over the years… And it’s worth saying that Ben is Ben and Peter was Peter. While we wanted Wallace’s voice to be as similar as possible, there are times when it’s not Peter; clearly, it is Ben, but for him to be able to perform and to be the actor we needed him to be, we needed him to bring himself to it. But what he found was the heart and soul of the character of Wallace, which Peter had established, and managed to carry that torch forward. We’re really proud of what he’s done in the film, and I hope you all agree that his Wallace is up there with the standard that Peter established.
The Dastardly Feathers Saved ‘Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’

“He was a script solution.”

Image Via Netflix

Absolutely. I’m sure you’ve answered this 1,000 times, and here’s 1,001: why so long since the last movie?
CROSSINGHAM: Yeah, Nick, why?
PARK: [Laughs] Well, to us, it hasn’t seemed so long because we’ve been up to all sorts of things. We also made [Wallace & Gromit] A Matter of Loaf and Death since Were-Rabbit, and we’ve been busy on all kinds of other stuff. Writing a film takes ages.
CROSSINGHAM: There’s a practical element of it, which is that Aardman is a relatively large studio but really quite small in global terms. We can only do one big project at a time, and so when you’ve got other feature films stacked up, you kind of have to wait your turn.
PARK: Chicken Run 2 was held up by COVID quite a lot. It kept getting delayed and delayed, which actually gave us a rare thing in a feature film, which is that we had time to develop the idea and storyboard many more versions of the story.
CROSSINGHAM: We actually knew what Act Three was before we started filming, which has never happened before.
Hence the 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
CROSSINGHAM: [Laughs] Yeah, right! But to go back to your question, I think you, [Nick], were kicking the idea around back on Were-Rabbit.
PARK: Yeah, the idea of Wallace inventing a smart gnome to help Gromit in the garden was an idea I had while making The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I kicked the idea around for quite a few years, on and off, but it was always lacking something. It was a half-hour idea back then, as well. As in all Wallace & Gromit, there needs to be some kind of sinister, motivated villain, and it seems obvious now that Feathers should be there, but it was a very late-breaking idea about five years ago. I just suddenly thought, “Feathers is just perfect for this role.” He was a script solution; it wasn’t an effort to exploit more of Feathers. He was late-breaking into the idea.

6:34

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When you guys were working on the story, getting this thing off the ground, what were some of the big changes that happened that ended up not in the finished film? Was there any big thing where you were like, “This is just not working. We’re gonna have to cut this out?”
CROSSINGHAM: There’s always lots of those kinds of things.
PARK: Remember the bangers and mash?
CROSSINGHAM: Yeah, we had a Bangers and Mash-o-Matic.
PARK: Bangers and mash is like sausage and mashed potatoes, a traditional British food. Anyway, in the breakfast scene, there was going to be this Gatling gun, like an old-fashioned machine gun, but it was going to fire…
CROSSINGHAM: Strings of sausages going in.
PARK: …and fire dollops of mash.
CROSSINGHAM: It was going to assault the postman.
PARK: That’s right. The mash would spin ‘round, and the sausages went into it. That was good fun.
CROSSINGHAM: It was really funny, but it just didn’t fit in the sequence. We had a whole thing with Gromit becoming a sleuth, going to the library, looking through microfiche film, and it was a great sequence, but it just didn’t didn’t work.
Were there any sequences that you came up with that the animation team was like, “This is going to be impossible, so this can’t be in the movie?”
PARK: Well, they don’t have any say. [Laughs]
CROSSINGHAM: No. So I was an animator on Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I was the lead animator of Wallace & Gromit, and I did quite a lot of animation of the actual Were-Rabbit, and when Nick and Steve Box, who directed that, were in development and said, “We want the Were-Rabbit to have actual fur,” we literally laughed in their faces and said, “That’s impossible.” They went, “La la la, not listening,” and we made it happen. So having those challenges really is a wonderful thing, and our team did the same thing on this when we said at the end, “We want Act Three to be on barges on the water and end on a big set piece on an aqueduct,” they were kind of like, “No.” Then we kind of just encouraged them, and they stepped up to the mark and made it better than we expected.
Feathers McGraw Is No Friend of the Animators

The devious mastermind strikes again!

Image via Netflix

What do you think was the toughest shot in this film? Was there one that no animator wanted to take on?
PARK: Well, there’s big stuff, but one of the hardest things in the whole movie was one of the smallest things, and that was animating Feathers McGraw. Because, like he was animated in The Wrong Trousers, we had to stay on an incredibly steady course, and only about four or five animators actually would volunteer to animate Feathers because he’s done with such precision. That is the scale we’re working with, so even close-ups of his face are done on that scale.
CROSSINGHAM: I’d say the hardest shot of the film is probably Feathers shaving. That’s literally the hardest shot in the film.
PARK: He was tricky, that one.
CROSSINGHAM: I think that was Ian Whitlock, superstar animator, and it’s, what, six seconds long? Seven seconds of animation? And it’s weeks of work. Animation is slow anyway, but it was so painstaking for him because he’s animating the character in the foreground and a real reflection, so it has to work. You can normally cheat stuff — there’s nowhere to hide in that shot.
PARK: Yeah, we had to do a bit of digital work just to kind of mend the foam on his face afterward.
Blending Stop-Motion With Digital Techniques to Fit the “Wallace & Gromit World”

“We have been pushing those kinds of boundaries.”

Image via Netflix

How much does CGI help make a movie like this now, and how much are you like, “We don’t want to use CGI at all, but in this shot, we kind of have to?”
PARK: There’s a difference between actual CGI, actual animation, that’s generated on the computer.
CROSSINGHAM: For characters.
PARK: But no characters. All the characters are stop-motion like these. But I mean, we’re open to using digital effects just like any movie does — fog, fire, things we can’t do with clay, basically, and explosions. That kind of thing. And a lot of fixing afterward if a shot goes wrong or there’s a bit of a fingerprint. We love the fingerprints. We actually asked the digital guys not to take the fingerprints off because they can so easily do that.
CROSSINGHAM: We had a very clear starting point, which was if we can do it in camera, then we will, and if we couldn’t… We’re very lucky we’ve got all of the latest digital production and post-production technology at our fingertips at the studio, and as filmmakers, I think we’d be foolish not to use every toy in the box to make the story we want up on the screen, as long as it fits the world, which Nick established, the Wallace & Gromit world.
PARK: With the stop-motion feel.
CROSSINGHAM: Exactly. So the water is a really good example. CG water has been around for quite a while, but it was always based on live-action, real water, and it’s only been in the last couple of years that the simulation engines that make the water have been malleable enough and clever enough to stylize it in a way that we can place it in a film like this and it feels appropriate. Because even though the water feels right in this film, if you put this water in a live-action film, people would go, “Whoever did that, you messed up,” because it’s very, very stylized. Those kinds of subtleties are not necessarily appreciated. Everyone thinks, “Oh, digital, you can do everything.” It’s not always the case. We have been pushing those kinds of boundaries, as well.
Obviously a shot with the shaving takes more time to do, so how does it work out in terms of budgeting, like where and when you’re going to deploy those added resources to make certain shots shine?
PARK: Sometimes, it’s an economic thing to speed up the stop-motion. Like for example, if a character is leaping through the air or even just running, it’s faster for the animator, rather than spending time hiding wires and fishing lines or whatever, just to animate the figure on a rig and then paint the rig out later. So there’s often digital cleanup and fixing stuff on almost every shot.
CROSSINGHAM: But the production department, that’s their whole reason for being, is figuring that stuff out. One of the big questions from our producer was when we were locking down our story rail. “Act Three is massive. Are you sure you want to put all of that effort and energy that’s going to be required into that sequence? Because we are going to have to make some sort of efficiencies elsewhere in the film.” And we said, “Yes, we do.” So we did have to cut a cloth accordingly. The thing we most chopped off was time, really. That’s what gets you in the end, so it’s always a discussion.
As directors, we’ll always push for more and more and more. That’s kind of our jobs. On the whole, everyone at the studio gets behind making it happen, and we’ll find a way. Actually, sometimes having limitations makes what you’re setting out to do better because it makes you really question, “Is this really important? Do we really need this in the film? And if we don’t, then why are we doing it?” If it’s just there for being fancy for fancy’s sake, then let’s just make the simple version, and the simple version’s often either funnier or the more direct way is often better.

Image via Netflix

I love Wallace’s inventions, but what is it like animating Wallace’s inventions and figuring out, “What can we actually do? Is this an impossible shot?”
CROSSINGHAM: Well, I guess they’re all impossible in some way, but because they’re all bespoke, we can kind of make them do whatever we need anyway.
PARK: Yeah, make them believable. Because they don’t really work.
You’re ruining it for me.
CROSSINGHAM: [Laughs] So, often there’s not just the one thing; there might be several different models to make it look like it’s one coherent event, but it’s some tricks cutting around.
PARK: I think the “reboot-o-matic,” as it was known, on the barge chase at the end took a bit of working out, didn’t it?
CROSSINGHAM: Yeah. Don’t analyze that from an engineering point of view.
PARK: It falls apart.
So how does it work in terms of test screenings or friends and family screenings when you’re making one of these? At what point are you actually screening for people, and what feedback did you get after screening it that impacted the finished film?
PARK: This one was the first feature film I’ve worked on where we didn’t really have audience test screenings — I guess because Netflix is basically a streamer. We did tests for ourselves, didn’t we? We got friends and family and people who were not familiar, like crew family, who were not familiar with the film. We gave them a questionnaire, and they filled in when did it get boring, or when was it not funny? When was it funny? Sometimes we want to know when it is funny, as well so you don’t chop it out. But it was off our own bat, really, wasn’t it?
CROSSINGHAM: Yeah.

Image via Netflix

What condition of the film are you showing? Are you showing storyboards? Are you showing rough animatics? Where are you feeling comfortable that the the people you’re showing it to are going to understand enough of what you’re doing that they can give you realistic feedback?
CROSSINGHAM: We had about, probably, 10 minutes of Act One so they could get an idea of where we were going with production quality. Then the rest was fairly slick animatic story reel, all the way through the whole film.
PARK: You have to make sure the animatic looks good, and in color. Otherwise, no matter how much you explain that it’s not going to be like this, you can tell it’s like a lull in the audience when the animatic comes on.
CROSSINGHAM: For some people they just can’t watch an animatic and engage with it. For some people, it just doesn’t work, executives included. But you have to go through that. I mean, for us, it’s just such a natural way of progressing your idea. For us, it’s a normal way of making film. But for other people, it’s a very esoteric experience because they’re used to seeing finished films, not, “I promise it’s going to be good,” and we kind of try and explain what we’re doing in a very rudimentary form.
What was the last sequence or scene that you ended up cutting out before getting to animation? I’m assuming nothing was animated and then deleted?
PARK: Actually, there was. The scene that was mostly subject to those changes was the bit in the middle where all the inventions are taken by the police and Gromit’s on his own in the basement. We lost about five or six shots out of that, I think.
CROSSINGHAM: That were animated already.
PARK: That’s partly because the pacing in the middle was a bit too complex for it or something. I can’t quite remember quite why it happened now, but yeah, we had to cut some shots that we’d already done.
CROSSINGHAM: But otherwise, the most that ends up on the cutting room floor is the top and tail of the shot. So, our animators will overshoot by eight or 10 frames on the beginning and in the end. It doesn’t sound like much, but that’s nearly the best part of a second, and that’s a day’s work. We have to have that to allow the edit to have a least a little bit of chance of getting a good cut in the edit and refining the show. So, that’s unavoidable. But as Nick says, we lost about five shots, but we really try to avoid that.

Image via Netflix

Besides those five shots, what was the last thing that you cut out, if you can remember, before getting to animation? Did you have a sequence or scene that came really close to being in the movie?
PARK: There probably were. It’s pretty hard to remember. You go through so many different cuts.
CROSSINGHAM: It was a long time ago. We had a little bit of an action sequence with some rowing boats on the canals. That was in until before we started sort of reining in Act Three. Because there were lots of sight gags there, and what was important with Act Three was that Feathers was in control. Then Gromit appeared to be in control, and then Feathers got control back, and it’s a back and forth between them. We found if we put extra jokes in there, it sort of was a bit of a sidetrack and it stopped it being about a tussle between the two of them. So we sort of focused the idea.
PARK: We always start by piling every idea in, every joke. I remember on the British canals, you have these locked gates. We never actually boarded, though, actually, did we? It was just an idea that was in there. There was going to be a bit in the middle of the chase where they reach these locked gates and have to get out while it’s winding and the water levels go up.
CROSSINGHAM: It’s a very slow and tedious process.
PARK: It’s going to be one of those jokes like the fast and slow barge joke.
CROSSINGHAM: I think that was the thing. It was too similar to that, wasn’t it?
PARK: It was, really. It was in danger of repetition.
Did You Spot These Wallace & Gromit Easter Eggs?

“It might not seem like it, but we do police the puns.”

Image via Netflix

I know there are a lot of Easter eggs in this movie, so let’s talk about some of them. What do you want to tell the audience that just saw the movie, and what do you want to tell the audience that’s watching the video online?
CROSSINGHAM: Well, there is a lot. We do take every opportunity to put extra things in, even on the day. If someone comes up with something, and we’ve got time to make a prop or something, we will have that made. I have a particular favorite, which is right at the end of the film when Feathers McGraw is on the train going away, and it says, “There’s the Yorkshire/Lancashire border,” and on the sign, it says, “Yorkshire Border. You Keep Out.” And on the other side, it’s the Lancashire border and says, “No, You Keep Out!” on the other side. So, I like that.
There are other things. I’m from the south of England, and there are some very particular northern references, which Nick had to educate me on. One is that there’s this kind of cake called parkin cake, and it’s so randomly regional and colloquial that on the bridge when Mukherjee comes in, there’s a big sign that says “No Parkin,” and that’s on the border, as well. So it’s essentially saying there’s no cake allowed to cross the border. [Laughs]
PARK: It’s a very local joke.
CROSSINGHAM: A very, very local joke, but I love that it’s such a specific joke.
That joke is for five people, and five people are going to lose their minds.
PARK: Yeah. The whole of Yorkshire fell apart laughing seeing that on Christmas Day.
What about on the submarine?
CROSSINGHAM: Well, we didn’t actually ever put a nameplate on it, but we called it the “Naughty Lass” as a reference to the Nautilus. But it’s all those kinds of things. We have a lot of in-jokes even within the production.
PARK: A lot of references. A lot of film references, as well, like Captain Nemo and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I don’t know if anyone got that there’s a town in the north of England called Accrington, and the barge was called the Accrington Queen. I spent my childhood with my dad watching films like The African Queen, so that’s kind of a Lancashire version of that.
Are you at any point going to do a list of all the various Easter eggs or is it really up to the audience to find them all?
CROSSINGHAM: We should. There are a couple we made just because of the way the focus or the depth of field went like when Wallace is at his piano in a melancholy way — it’s a bit meta — playing his own theme tune. The music that’s on there isn’t the Four Seasons… There’s the Four Cheese suite of music. So things like that, which I find funny. It might not seem like it, but we do police the puns.
I don’t think you do.
CROSSINGHAM: [Laughs] No, no! We really do. There are some really bad ones.
PARK: One thing that no one will ever spot because they won’t know is when Feathers is hacking Wallace’s computer, and the keys on the computer were self-pressing like in Ghost — maybe that was a reference to Ghost. The animator, Raul [G. Eguia] spelled out his son’s name on those keys.
CROSSINGHAM: Just for fun. Just because he could.

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Here’s Everything We Learned From the Set of ‘Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’

Collider’s “Grand Day Out.”

This film is available on Netflix, which is really cool because it means everyone around the world can watch. Is it sort of nice not to have to worry about the opening weekend box office and the fact that your movie is available everywhere?
PARK: I have to pinch myself because I first made A Grand Day Out as a student, and Aardman helped me finish it, and now here it is being shown on Netflix and the Golden Globes last night. It’s amazing.
CROSSINGHAM: I mean, it does take the pressure off because an opening weekend can be kind of made or broken by the weather. Sometimes, if it’s a wet weekend, you’ll get a bigger box office. So, those kinds of random events. It does take a layer of stress off not having to have an opening weekend. But, yeah, it’s like 170-something countries around the world. That’s amazing.
I think everyone in this room is a fan of stop-motion movies. What do you think would surprise everyone to learn about making a stop-motion film?
CROSSINGHAM: It’s not requiring patience — a lot of people say you must have a lot of patience, and actually, I think you only need patience when your mind is idle. There’s so much to do, whether you’re an animator or a set dresser or the director. There’s so much in your head that there’s actually not enough time in the day to do what’s in your head. You need other things, like you need to stay motivated, and maybe you need to be stubborn more than you need patience. But I think that’s the biggest thing people say, “You must be really patient to be an animator of any kind.”
PARK: It’s our friends and families that need the patience, really.
CROSSINGHAM: [Laughs] Yeah. Just in general.
PARK: It’s so demanding, the whole thing.
3D printing has really helped animated films. Can you talk about what 3D printing has done for you guys?
CROSSINGHAM: We have a 3D printing lab, so we will use 3D printing for repetition of props. We’ll hand-make the first prop, 3D scan it, and then replicate it if we need to. But actually that doesn’t get used as much as the internal workings of the puppets. A lot of the frameworks, and actually the molds for casting, are now 3D printed. So rather than making 3D components, we’ll use 3D printing to be the master for the components. So, for us, that’s been the biggest thing is external pieces. Norbot’s head is 3D printed. But I think that’s the only component on the puppets externally that is.
How many 3D printers do you have at the office?
CROSSINGHAM: Thirty or so.
PARK: They used it quite a bit on Pirates! [Band of Misfits], didn’t they?
CROSSINGHAM: That was when the technology was in its infancy, and they were like car-sized things. Now, they’re whatever size you need them to be.
What’s Next for the Wallace & Gromit Creators?

Aardman has quite a few exciting projects in the works.

Image via Aardman

What else are you guys working on at the office?
PARK: We’re always developing something back at the studio.
CROSSINGHAM: So there are things we can talk about and things we can’t talk about. The things we can talk about is there’s a new Shaun the Sheep television series in production.
PARK: Just finished.
CROSSINGHAM: Just finished. It just wrapped.
PARK: Just finished shooting.
Is this Netflix?
CROSSINGHAM: We don’t know. I don’t think it is.
PARK: We haven’t been involved in that.
CROSSINGHAM: No, I don’t know who.
Is it coming out this year?
CROSSINGHAM: Yes. It will be coming out this year. There’s an Aardman-Pokémon collaboration in the pipeline — can’t say much more about that, but that has been announced.
Wait, we need to pause right there. What? I’ve heard this Pokémon is kind of popular. Did you go to them? Did they come to you?
PARK: Pass.
CROSSINGHAM: I don’t know the answer to that, but there is something that we are making with Pokémon.
PARK: We haven’t even seen any of it yet.
CROSSINGHAM: No, we’ve not seen any of it.
This sounds very cool.

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The 25 Best Pokémon Movies, Ranked According to IMDb

Gotta catch these films!

CROSSINGHAM: If you are aware of a character called Pingu that was around for many years, the rights holders of that intellectual property — I don’t like calling it an intellectual property; it’s an ugly thing — the owners of Pingu came to Aardman and said, “Would you resurrect Pingu for us?” So we’ll be going to production on, as well, through Aardman.
Is that a short?
CROSSINGHAM: It’s a preschool television series.
Are people currently animating a feature that has been unannounced?
CROSSINGHAM: Not at this time.
So this year it’s gearing up.
CROSSINGHAM: Yeah. So, we just finished in the studio. The Shaun the Sheep series went in, and I think they’re literally striking that as we speak and preparing for whatever’s coming up.
PARK: In fact, we’re just waiting for the green light on the next thing.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is available to stream on Netflix. Don’t miss out on Collider’s next screening events — there’s a lot more to come in 2025!

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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Director

Nick Park

Cast

Reece Shearsmith
, Ben Whitehead
, Peter Kay
, Diane Morgan
, Adjoa Andoh
, Lenny Henry
, Muzz Khan

Runtime

79 minutes

Writers

Mark Burton

Watch on Netflix

Disclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by filmibee.
Publisher: Source link

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