‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ Filmmakers In Conversation With Cartoon Brew (Exclusive Video)

Cartoon Brew and Netflix recently hosted a special FYC screening of Aardman Animation’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl in Burbank, California, followed by a conversation with directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham.

The half-hour discussion, hosted by Cartoon Brew editor-in-chief Amid Amidi, offered insight into the film’s genesis and the return of its menacing penguin villain, Feathers McGraw, last seen in Park’s Oscar-winning 1993 short The Wrong Trousers. Also discussed: creating stop-motion animation for non-verbal characters, innovations and animation techniques, and the filmmakers’ thoughts on artificial intelligence as embodied in the film by an army of glassy-eyed robotic garden gnomes.

The Q&A is available below to readers:

Park and Crossingham joined the stage with their special guest stars, carrying stop-motion puppets of Wallace, Gromit, Feathers McGraw, and Norbot the robotic garden gnome, which they placed on a small table to stare back at the audience. During the conversation, Park illustrated Feathers’ size as the smallest of the group by gently picking up the bird, and handled his creation with obvious reverence and affection.

The conversation began with discussion of the film’s long gestation, which initially did not include the penguin. The concept, Park revealed, began during production of Aardman’s 2005 Wallace & Gromit animated feature The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, when the filmmaker struck on the notion of Wallace inventing a diminutive, robotic gardening assistant. The story, at the time, was tentatively titled A Tall Tale, and was conceived, in Park’s description, as “Westworld With gnomes.” The filmmakers hit upon the idea of introducing Feathers McGraw languishing in prison following the events of The Wrong Trousers, which inspired a more emotional story arc, a revenge tale that Park described as “Cape Fear with a Penguin.”

Crossingham confessed, they initially questioned Feathers’ return, not wishing for the new film to be construed as a sequel to Park’s Oscar-winning short. Both Park and Crossingham revealed their trepidation at early marketing for Vengeance Most Fowl, which prominently touted “Feathers is Back!” But reactions to the revelation, and the first teaser trailer glimpses led to an outpouring of love from fans, who 100-percent endorsed the penguin’s return.

Animating the bird, the filmmakers revealed, was a test of their animators’ mettle. From Crossingham’s experience, having worked 30 years with Aardman, Gromit shots always elicit the greatest challenge for animators, requiring exploration of the bipedal’s canine’s pantomime performance that often lead to Gromit’s scenes expanding. Feathers’ non-verbal nature and more-limited expressions led to intense scrutiny, down to the eye-blink counts in scenes. Out of the 35 animators that worked on Vengeance Most Fowl, Crossingham and Park recalled only four gravitated toward animating the bird.

The tiny puppet used “every trick in the book,” Park added, citing a repertoire of performance, blocking, camera motion, music and lighting. This included the introduction of key lights that cinematographer Dave Alex Riddett supplied to create evil glints in Feathers’ glass eye-beads.

Park and Crossingham elaborated on their animation techniques, which include pre-animation acting workshops or ‘laving’ (shorthand for ‘live-action video’). The directors related how, after scripting and storyboarding and initial blocking with the puppets, they then work through each scene with their designated animators, acting out roles, sometimes employing props that, Park recalled, included a nun’s outfit that the studio hired for penguin dress-up sessions. Laving is not copying though — once the curtain closes on the animator and their set, the artist works with an appreciation of the directors’ intent. “Our reshoot rate is one-percent,” Crossingham explained. “Live-action reference mitigates the errors.”

The filmmakers elaborated on developments in stop-motion technology, notably the use of a special formulation of non-shiny silicone for the bodies of many of their puppets, which allows durability and speeds animation. Crossingham noted hero sculptures have varied and evolved from film to film, with Wallace’s grin going “super wide” in A Matter of Loaf And Death (2008). For Vengeance, Wallace’s facial model returned to his Were-Rabbit-era look.

Modeling clay remains Aardman’s favored medium for expressive details, such as heads and hands. Park noted that, occasionally, Gromit was rendered entirely in clay for scenes, for instance, of the dog with his body hyper-extended sailing through the air.

Reflecting on traditions and collaborators, Park recalled his long association with cinematographer Riddett, with whom he has collaborated since Wallace and Gromit’s first adventure on A Grand Day Out (1989). Cinematography remains a passion. “Part of the beauty of working with stop-motion,” Park stated, “is the way you can light in a 3d kind of way, and create all kinds of atmosphere and depth with camera moves and what-have-you.”

For Crossingham, lighting has been one of the series’ greatest innovations, with modern LED technology allowing greater dexterity in illuminating miniature sets and the introduction of tiny-scale light sources that, back in the day, Aardman was forced to improvise using flashlight bulbs. LEDs only recently became useful, Crossingham explained, due to the tendency for the flicker and inconsistent color of early LEDs. Crossingham added the benefits of LEDs include the fact that, “You don’t cook the animators with 10K lights like we had to previously.”

The filmmakers closed with discussion of technology, and its topical relevance, as an ever-present theme in their continuing adventures with their befuddled genius inventor and his faithful dog. For Vengeance, Park recalled, in his first conversations with screenwriter Mark Burton, AI was already on on the radar, and ‘tech’ was a theme based on the idea, “Do we trust the tech that runs our lives?” And, when Feathers entered the picture, “Do we trust those who control the tech that we put our trust in?”

Crossingham noted, “We’re not anti-tech. We love tech as much as the next person, but it’s about that balance. It’s about making sure there is a human touch; there’s the human element, don’t forget. That’s really important.”

Park concurred that Wallace is ‘pro-tech,’ and added another distinguishing factor of the film is that both protagonists have an emotional arc, whereas usually Gromit must adjust his expectations of his human owner. This time, it is Wallace who faces an existential crisis. “[It’s] a rare moment of emotional clarity on Wallace’s part,” said Crossingham. “That’s normally the joke,” added Park, referring to his cheese-loving hero. “He doesn’t learn anything.”