Leaning over the decor of a miniature port, animator Ed Jackson delicately lifts the eyelid of a plasticine sheep using a hook: an artisanal cinema technique that the British studio Aardman has successfully perpetuated for half a century.
Famous for its “stop motion” films with “British” humor and retro aesthetics, the studio behind Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run worked for three and a half years on the third part of the adventures of Shaun the Sheep, The Halloween Beast, which is released in theaters on September 18 in the United Kingdom. AFP was able to discover the manufacturing secrets of the film, which recounts the adventures of the mischievous sheep in some 106,688 shots.
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The magic happens in the basement of an industrial building in Bristol, in the southwest of England, where the studio with four Oscars was officially founded in 1976. There, in semi-darkness, we can see a maze of around forty units with blue backgrounds separated by partitions. Each one hides, behind a curtain, one of the film's puppet-sized settings: Shaun's farm in autumn colors, a science lab or an imposing red and black trawler. “Nowadays, there aren't many places in the world that do stop motion on this scale,” says Claire Rolls, director of animation.
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Living puppets
In the middle of the brick docks lit by spotlights, Claire Rolls and Ed Jackson, a member of her team, prepare the scene that the latter is about to shoot: the sheep, dressed in yellow oilskins, are trying to attract the attention of a crew of sailors, she says, showing the black and white storyboard. The technique of “stop motion”, as old as cinema, must “give the impression that the puppets are alive”, explains the one who joined Aardman in 1998, at the time of films on film and hand-painted backgrounds.
Ed Jackson gets to work, his eyes glued to a screen which alternates between the shot he is preparing and the previous shot. He tilts one sheep's head or lowers another's hat before taking a photo, minute changes that will give the illusion of movement on screen.
It will take the animator approximately two days of this infinitely patient work to capture 48 images, or two seconds of film. The concentration that reigns on the set contrasts with the gags and numerous sound effects that abound in the studio's productions, recorded later. “The animators are, in a way, our actors: they deliver a live performance and do everything to get the first take right,” explains Steve Cox, co-director of the film, because “stop motion” makes it difficult to go back.
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Film guaranteed without AI
The creatures that populate the studio's productions are designed upstairs, in the puppet department. Shaun, born in 1995, is one of its icons, hero of an animated series and two films. In a jumble of drawings and materials, Kate Anderson, the head of the department, opens a box filled with interchangeable mouths - closed, jaw dropping or in an "o" of surprise - which "allow you to articulate the different sounds or expressions" of the Bitzer dog.
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“We remain faithful to modeling clay for expressive areas like the face,” even if the rest of the puppets are sometimes made of silicone, which is more resistant, on a mobile metal skeleton, she explains.
The Aardman brand, playful and zany, is recognizable in every detail, from the pumpkins to Shaun's mad scientist glasses. Digital effects, whose progress has taken a leap since the 2000s, only serve to “embellish artisanal work”, the “handmade”, underlines Richard Beek, producer of the film.
The studio also assures that it did not use any artificial intelligence in the production of the film. When Toy Story, the first CG feature film, was released in 1995, many worried, as with AI today, that there would be "no more room for 'stop motion,'" recalls Richard Beek. “But we continued to make films. The world is changing around us, but many things remain the same at Aardman. And it’s probably that familiarity that people like,” he adds.
