If Nick Park seems slightly dazed, its understandable almost three weeks of non-stop promotion has taken him to Australia, Toronto and recently New York City on behalf of his new movie, WALLACE AND GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT, which opens in the U.S. Oct. 7, 2005.
Ensconced in a corner DreamWorks office high above Madison Avenue, Park sits down for interview after interview, accompanied only by clay models of his two stars. Like many TV stars before them, the dim but eager inventor and his long-suffering canine companion are moving from the small screen to feature films. This is the same scale we did the shorts in, he says, referring to their roughly foot-tall height. I was very keen to keep the quality of the shorts. Even in clay it could go slicker, more smooth, but I didnt want that.
Park and co-director Steve Box supervised 30 separate crews working on different scenes at the same time, each crew averaging about three seconds of footage a day. We have to get across whats in my head, or Steves head, Park explained. We talk a lot together and then try to communicate everything to the animators. Everythings got precision we know exactly what we want, every angle, every beat of the action.
On-set playback of in-progress shots helped the animators catch and repair most errors before they moved too many frames ahead. Sometimes you can do a fix using digital technology as well, Park confided. You can cut frames out in the middle if you dont like a certain movement. Its not always possible, it depends on what else is moving at the same time you dont want to lose those frames as well. On rare occasions, however, completed footage would have to be discarded and refilmed. We couldnt afford to do that more than a couple of times. Sometimes its a bit hit and miss, but if the shot was within what we were going for, no would know we didnt want it to look exactly like that.
Purists might be surprised, if not shocked to discover that not all of the bunnies in Curse of the Were-Rabbit are made of plasticine. Weve come to rely on digital technology a bit as well, doing things that are impossible to do otherwise. Theres one scene where Wallace sucks up all these bunnies into a glass case where they float about. We created them in CGI because the animator couldnt get at them inside the glass to paint out all the supports. When asked if he felt like he had gone over to the dark side, Park responded with a Frankenstein-ish computer, friennnd No, it is a friend, you know.
I would always say if we can do it, do it the traditional way, but the Bun-Vac shot seemed like such an impractical thing really I wasnt sure whether it could look good with the clay. I was suspicious for a long time, but we gave a clay bunny to the CGI guys. They scanned it in, fingerprints and all, and they cloned this one bunny and made many more, and got them all floating. They moved the bunnies a bit like clay, you had a kind of double-frame animation, not that silky smooth CGI look.
Park sidestepped the philosophical implications of CGI animation that can close to perfectly mimic his hands-on look, fingerprints and all. In this instance we wanted a floaty look and that would be very hard to achieve in clay. I dont want a floaty look for the rest of the animation. It would all be too smooth, it would sort of bland things out. Unless theres a real animation artist in control it can get a bit like that.
A malfunction in one of Wallaces hi-tech inventions, and not the rabbit bite one might expect in a horror spoof creates the were-rabbit. It was a kind of tricky thing really, whether it would work, said Park. It didnt seem right for Wallace and Gromit to get into kind of a bite and flesh thing. In a way there was a danger of going too sinister because its to do with the mind and if its the mind, how can it be physical? Its a fine balance really, we played with it for a long time. We had many different versions of that scene, different drawings of different inventions. At one point the reason we had was the batteries were in the wrong way around.
The were-rabbits metamorphosis is depicted in quick-cut close ups that are at once both dramatic and slapsticky, culminating in an unexpected sight gag. On the other hand, his return to human form is a deliberate throwback to the old days of mismatched lap dissolves, a decision Park credits to co-director Box. I think it was a good idea. We could have morphed between the two models but we chose not to because of the old vintage horror movies.
Did I mention we could have done the were-rabbit in CG with [seemingly] real fur? But we wanted it to have that King Kong look. Thats part of this films humor: for it to be real fur and look a bit moth-eaten. It didnt matter to us if the fur twitched from frame to frame.
According to Park, DreamWorks Animation head Jeff Katzenberg gave the Aardman production a relatively free reign. Jeffreys always been a big fan of the shorts, thats why he came to us. He flew over in his private jet and gave us his objective comments. With DreamWorks experience in making full-length films, he often had quite good comments. He gave us notes on where he thought the story was lacking and could pick up a bit, that kind of thing.
It was a balance between him saying dont forget, weve got a new audience for this while at the same time we wanted to keep it very kind of quirky and British. Jeffrey was very respectful but he knew that it was up to me at the end of the day. Hes not slow to give his opinion, but if I wanted to stick with something, hed go with it.
WALLACE AND GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT strikes a canny balance between its 1940s horror movie-inspired narrative and the numerous throwaway gags peppered throughout the film, many of which go by at almost subliminal speed. Im amazed how much people do get, actually, said Park. I thought I cut that too tight, people will never get it and they do. Theres this one bit a few people mentioned that even I dont see: a sticker on the back of Wallace and Gromits van saying Eat Cheese Now, Ask Me How. You know, like those Lose Weight Now, Ask Me How signs?
