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The Making Of (Part I)
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THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT
 Just
over 16 years ago, movie audiences were introduced to an eccentric,
cheese-loving inventor named Wallace and his loyal canine companion,
Gromit, in a clay-animatsed short titled "A Grand Day Out." The
short film comedy--which takes Wallace and Gromit to the moon and
back in the quest for an unlimited supply of cheese--was the brainchild
of a young stop-motion animator named Nick Park.
Six years in the making, "A Grand Day Out" had started as Park's
graduate project when he was a student at the National Film and
Television School in Beaconsfield, England. Midway in the production,
he connected with Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who had already
made a name for themselves in the field of stop-motion animation,
under the Aardman Animations banner. Impressed with the work Park
was doing, Lord and Sproxton invited him to bring his film to Aardman,
where they could collaborate on multiple projects.
In 1990, "A Grand Day Out" was nominated for an Academy AwardŽ for Best Animated Short, competing with another Park creation, "Creature Comforts." The latter took the OscarŽ that year, but Wallace & Gromit would soon get their due. In 1994, Park's second Wallace & Gromit film, "The Wrong Trousers," won the Academy AwardŽ for Best Animated Short. Two years later, the Wallace & Gromit short "A Close Shave" brought Park back to the OscarŽ podium to accept his third Academy AwardŽ in the same category. All three Wallace & Gromit
shorts also won BAFTA Awards.
With each new adventure, Wallace & Gromit built on their devoted fan following, which began in England and gradually spread around the globe. Now, for the first time ever, the inventive entrepreneur and his faithful, four-legged friend are headlining their first feature-length movie, "Wallace & Gromit:
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit."
"It's really a dream come true," director, writer, producer Nick Park states. "Wallace & Gromit
were my college creations, and it is quite something to think that they are starring
in their first full-length feature film."
 "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" marks the second collaboration between DreamWorks Animation and Aardman. The two companies had previously teamed on Aardman's first feature-length film, "Chicken Run," which was an unqualified success. An unabashed fan of Aardman's work, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg notes, "I saw my first Wallace & Gromit short about 15 years ago and, like everyone else in the world, I was captivated by the characters. There is something wonderfully absurd and appealing about them. I think the charm of Wallace & Gromit
comes from Aardman's unique style of animation. It's such a visual medium--it
doesn't matter what language it's translated into; it's funny and delightful
and witty."
Producer Claire Jennings observes, "It seems, over a long period of time now, wherever Wallace & Gromit have gone, people have taken them into their hearts. People around the world love them. It will be interesting to see how a new generation takes to Wallace & Gromit."
Producers David Sproxton and Peter Lord acknowledge that having a known commodity
actually added to the pressure of expanding Wallace & Gromit's world. "In a way, 'Chicken Run' was easier because it had entirely new characters," says Sproxton. "Nobody
knew anything about them, so we were free to show them in whatever light we
saw them."
Lord continues, "So many people know and love Wallace & Gromit...and, of course,
there are also people out there in the world who have never seen them before.
We knew we needed to tell a story for those people as well as for our loyal
fans."
 To
stay true to the history and traditions of Wallace & Gromit, Park, Lord and Sproxton assembled a creative team that has spent many hours in and around the animated duo's 62 West Wallaby Street address. Helping to lead that team was Park's fellow director, Steve Box, who had served as an animator on both "The Wrong Trousers" and "A Close Shave." "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" marks
Box's feature film directorial debut.
"Making a 30-minute Wallace & Gromit movie is time-consuming and requires a lot of patience and care. Making an 85-minute feature is like making the Great Wall of China with matchsticks," Box laughs. "It's
a monumental feat, actually. It was five years of solid work, because every tiny,
little thing matters so much. But I think the biggest challenge of taking these
characters from 30 minutes to 85 minutes was finding the story."
Mark Burton, who had worked on "Chicken Run" and more recently co-wrote "Madagascar," and Bob Baker, a co-writer on both "The Wrong Trousers" and "A Close Shave," collaborated
with Park and Box to craft the story and screenplay for the movie.
"It took a while to come up with an idea we felt was expansive enough to suggest a full-length movie," Park recalls. "Steve and I sat for hours on end with the other writers, and we suddenly hit on this idea about a Were-Rabbit. You know, the Wallace & Gromit movies have always referenced other film genres, and we thought a great genre to borrow from would be the classic Universal horror movies. But, in our movie, instead of a werewolf, we have a Were-Rabbit...and instead of devouring flesh and blood--in Wallace & Gromit's world, it's got to be something more absurd--we made it vegetables. It's a vegetable-eating monster so, in effect, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" became
the world's first vegetarian horror movie."
Untitled Document
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