Stop Motion City: Visible and Invisible Production in Bristol
Continuing the infant theme, the studio also assisted on Hazel Grian's equally
bizarre Baby-Cue (1997), a fourteen-minute animation of everyday toys
for the Traveling The Edge arts company. The latest in-house film is Booth's
Little Dark Poet, commissioned by Channel 4 and premiered at 1998's
London Film Festival. It follows Aardman's Stage Fright in homaging
early cinema, with live-action silent actors at the mercy of a Humpty-Dumpty
creator. bolexbrothers is preparing a second feature, provisionally called
Clusterworld, written by Paul Davies and Dave Borthwick, who set up
the studio with Richard Hutchison and directed Tom Thumb. According
to bolex's press-release, Clusterworld `will make use of pixilation,
as used in Tom, as well as other techniques we're developing to explore
the possibility of working with human actors without conventional live-action
methods.'
One of the most recently formed production companies is Spike Island, run
by Stephen Williams and featuring animation directors Charles Mills and Terry
Brain (who formerly operated from CMTB). At present, Spike Island is involved
with three new TV pilots: Universally Challenged, a gameshow featuring
stop-frame animal characters, directed by Mills, and The Pudding and
Slimin' Sniffin' Snorks, both by Brain. The company is also working
on a major Coca-Cola campaign, to be shown in 27 countries across Europe.
Another production company becoming increasingly visible is Elm Road Productions,
established by Mike Waudby and Michael Wright. Wright is an ex-Aardman director.
So far Elm Road is best known for slick and funny commercials, such as the
`Giant Smartie' ad -- the one with Puppet Factory's hairy mountaineers, who
we will meet below -- and `Candle Power,' a Madame Tussauds cinema promotion
which has won numerous awards. The studio created the credits on mainstream
TV series Stars in Their Eyes and the laddish Top Gear, as well
as producing the kids' show Spider and Fly for Nickelodeon.
All Those Little Bits...
Companies like Aardman, bolex, Spike Island and Elm Road are surrounded
by an extensive infrastructure of free-lance specialist companies, also based
in Bristol, which support a range of productions. As one free-lancer commented,
"After you've gone a certain way down the line, you tend to specialize...there's
a niche you grow into." Naked Design and Modelmaking is representative:
focusing on background scenery, models and effects, it spends two-thirds of
its time on animation, mainly commercials like the recent Polo campaign. Its
clients include Harum-Scarum in Bath, Puppetoon in London, and a stream of
commissions from Aardman. Many of Naked's projects involve mixing stop-frame
with CGI, interfacing between models and computer.
In similar mode, Jeff Cliff Models provided the sheep-rustling truck for A
Close Shave, complete with rubber tires, suspension and headlights, along
with the Wurtlitzer organ for Stage Fright and sundry props, puppets,
armatures and sets. Jeff Cliff himself acknowledges, though, that advertising
is vital through light patches; his company designs prototype radio/alarm-clocks
and air-freshener tie-ins to Wallace and Gromit. On the documentary side,
Cliff created an `Ice-age city' for a section on the BBC's Wildlife On
One which speculated on climate changes. The company is now working on
Chicken Run.
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