00:00Lights, camera, stop motion.
00:04For 36 weeks an army of creatives has been hard at work shooting Aardman's latest feature,
00:11a Shaun the Sheep Halloween spooktacular.
00:15283 puppets were used in the production, each one handmade.
00:21This feature sprouted a new challenge for the puppet makers.
00:25There's a lot of fur work on Beast of Mossy Bottom, which is something that we don't normally associate with
00:31Aardman,
00:31so that's been a really wonderful challenge.
00:33The directors didn't want the Beast to look like he'd just come out of the hairdressing salon or to look
00:38like a plush toy.
00:40And the fact that they want him to look a bit shaggy and dishevelled really made it much easier.
00:46And it's not just the characters that are handmade.
00:49We're responsible for anything you see in front of the camera,
00:53which hasn't got eyes, that's kind of how we look at it, so all props, all sets.
00:59The torch falls off in the forest and a spider crawls over it,
01:03but if you see the size of this, how are we going to get a spider to animate over that?
01:08This is an example of a scaled up version of the torch that was on the side of Shaun's head.
01:16Aardman's studio is a series of mini film lots, each containing its own scene,
01:22and a dedicated team working on every detail, from hand-blown miniature glass beakers,
01:29to this tiny science book filled with scientifically accurate pages.
01:39Essentially the shot that you do is a live performance, so the animators are like our actors really,
01:44and you get some really authentic, genuine acting, and that's one of the best things about stop motion.
01:50Animation director Claire Rolls oversees a team of 30 animators charged with bringing the characters to life.
01:57To animate them we have to literally move them a tiny bit at a time and take a picture.
02:03So we're working with 24 frames to make a second, that means like 24 still images that play back so
02:10fast you see them as movement.
02:12An animator on most of our feature films will only be doing maybe a second or two a day, depending
02:18on what their shot is.
02:20But as a team, we're working to a kind of team target of about just over nine seconds per animator
02:27per week.
02:28It's slow work. The more complicated the scene, the longer it takes to capture.
02:35It needs to stay holding onto these ropes, but do a backflip.
02:39I actually have to try and figure out how to do that, so that's the frame I'm on at the
02:43minute.
02:43And then the whole shot will hopefully take just over two days, maybe, I hope.
02:49Aardman is a trailblazer of stop motion animation.
02:52It is the studio behind Oscar and BAFTA winning favourites Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit.
02:57The running time of this film is one hour, 20 minutes and 33 seconds.
03:03To make it, 170 people were working across 47 units.
03:10It's like a little mini Hollywood in Bristol.
03:12The whole world changes around us, but there's lots of things that stay the same.
03:16Maybe that's partly what people like about it, there's a familiarity to it.
03:21Sean the Sheep, The Beast of Mossy Bottom will be in cinemas from the 18th of September.
03:26Sean the Beast of Mossy Bottom will be in cinemas from the 18th of September.
03:54We'll see you next time.
03:56Bye-bye.
