Chicken Run cracks the mould

Sarah Shannon10 April 2012

In a dark chicken shed somewhere in the north of England, the hens are planning a revolt. Led by the opinionated but plucky Ginger and egged on by the irascible rooster Rocky they are, well, hatching an escape plan.

Chicken Run, billed as the Great Escape with feathers, is the first feature film from animators Aardman. It's a love story and an action adventure rolled into one. It is also populated entirely by Plasticine creatures made by the team which first brought us a hapless Yorkshireman called Wallace and his enterprising dog Gromit.

Nick Park and Peter Lord, joint producers and directors of Chicken Run, say they have always hankered after a move into the world of film but were anxious to make sure they waited for the right moment. It nearly came in 1990 when Park won his first Oscar for the charming animation, Creature Comforts. Disney approached him to talk about transferring his Plasticine creatures to the big screen but he decided he didn't feel ready.

Then four years ago Park came up with a short sketch about a chicken trying to tunnel its way under a fence using a spoon. Aardman quickly realised its huge comedic potential and decided it would be good material for a film.

Although the talent working on the project is homegrown, the finance and background support is coming from Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio.

Peter Lord said: "We knew about jokes and telling stories but we didn't know how an animation would play with an audience over 80 minutes. DreamWorks' backing gave us the confidence to do it. It's a huge mental leap to imagine a Plasticine character, a few inches tall, 20ft-high on a cinema screen."

Once the idea was formed and the script was written, sketches were drawn to work out how the hens should look and storyboard artists began to set out the plot, movement by tiny movement.

During these early stages of development Park and Lord realised the practical difficulties of a cast made up of chickens and roosters. The same physical characteristics which mean chickens can't fly - a major theme of the film - made them hard to turn into animated creatures.

"The conventional cartoon character has a big head and a small body," Lord explained. "Chickens have little heads, huge bodies and spindly, fragile legs. It was a big problem for us." Since the body shape of the chicken was unsuitable for a purely Plasticine model, the animators developed a metal skeleton which was covered in latex skin. The armature had to be reinforced to bear the weight of the Plasticine head and wings.

Each chicken was created using a special blend called the Aardman mix which is stronger than normal Plasticine. They were made to look strongly individual so that the cinema-goer can easily differentiate between them. Rocky the Rooster, for which Mel Gibson provided the voice, was given a spotted neckerchief which doubled as a useful disguise for the seam of his detachable head.

Different eyes and beaks could be attached to the chickens' heads to suit every movement. Rocky had around 60 interchangeable beaks to suit different facial expressions, and to allow him to form vowels and consonants. When the colour of each individual chicken was decided upon, it was mixed using a converted chewing gum machine.

Plumage was particularly trying. "We wanted to use Plasticine, but its texture is so far from feathers," said Park. Instead the team created moulded feathers called fluffles which were fixed on and hand-painted in minute detail. Buxom Bunty, the chief egg-layer, had 3,077 feathers covering her bottom. Fixing them on took a day.

Getting the script, the set, and the voiceovers right were all added complications. As a result the filming process was incredibly slow. The longest single shot in the film sees Ginger walking past a number of the chickens as they make frantic escape preparations. Although it lasts only 23 seconds, the shot took three weeks to film.

Throughout the picture there are wry allusions to The Great Escape, the film which inspired the makers. Expect a scene with an unruly bird locked in the cooler, a motorbike chase and, of course, plenty of tunnelling.

On top of that the film is stuffed full of the little details which made Wallace and Gromit so watchable. Mrs Tweedy, the evil chicken farmer, wears a dress patterned with chickens' footprints. Even her buttons have a chicken motif. The tiny bundle of knitting belonging to a fowl called Babs was made with cocktail sticks doubling as knitting needles.

The birds' voices are provided by leading actors. "We must have listened to every conceivable American actor for Rocky, because we wanted a certain presence as well as a voice," said Park. "Mel Gibson was a pretty irresistible choice."

Julia Sawalha, best remembered as Saffie in Absolutely Fabulous, provides Ginger's voice. "Ginger is very kind-hearted, though she comes across as a bit bossy at times," said the actress. "But it's only because she wants the best for her mates. She's got guts and I love playing characters like that."

Timothy Spall plays Nick the rat, Jane Horrocks is the imperturbable Babs and Miranda Richardson plays Mrs Tweedy.

Chicken Run is on general release from 30 June.

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