John Byrne goes behind the scenes at the famous Aardman Animations Studios in Bristol, where The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists was both created and filmed.
I have no idea what Santa’s Grotto looks like – the real one, that is – but I’d imagine it’s no less amazing than the studio belonging to Aardman Animations, the people who brought us Wallace and Gromit, Morph and the powerful poultry saga that was Chicken Run.
Based, rather incongruously, in a humdrum industrial estate just outside the beautiful British city of Bristol, the studios could be any old place of work if it wasn’t for the odd giveaway, such as the clay models on display in the reception area.
While obviously an extremely cool and creative place to work, it’s also got a progressive, Google-ish work ethic, as I’m ushered to relax in the studio’s play area, where staff are allowed to unwind when the mood takes them.
Naturally, I spend my waiting time rooting around the internet, before being ushered into a dark room, for a screening of some early, raw and hilarious clips from Aardman Studios’ latest stop-motion movie (and first in 3-D), The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.
After that, three was the grand tour of the studio, which involved every step of the process, from the creation of the model pirates (the number of face and jaw pieces required for each major character is incredible), to the developmental/computer stage, to the sets that range in size from shoebox to warehouse.
Aardman really are the masters of stop motion animation, and it’s easy to see why: the attention to detail is staggering, while the dedication of its creative staff is nothing less than awe-inspiring, and everywhere TEN went, the staff were attentive, friendly and very eager to explain their role in the making of The Pirates!
Based on a series of books by British author Gideon Defoe, Aardman’s third stop-motion movie is – as the title suggests – about a bunch of sea dogs, led by their rather pompous captain (voiced by Hugh Grant), who meet a young Charles Darwin while also trying to capture the Pirate of the Year award.
Alongside Grant, the film stars Martin Freeman, David Tennant, Ashley Jensen, Imelda Staunton, Salma Hayek, Brendan Gleeson, Brian Blessed, Lenny Henry and Jeremy Piven. That’s a serious cast!
According to director Peter Lord, a co-founder of the studios who also helmed Aardman’s Chicken Run, there was even a situation where the sea created by the production team was ‘too good’. As he puts it: “Part of the fun of our things is that the audience know they’re watching puppets. They know it’s handmade, they can see they’re puppets.
“And then we made this computer sea that was completely perfect, and absolutely indistinguishable – to my eyes – from the real thing. And it looked absolutely weird. It looked wrong . . . Because reality’s not what we do. We like to exaggerate . . . So we tried all sorts of stupid things like making the water particles big, then that made the pirates look very small. We calmed the sea down and then it looked like we shot the scene in a cheap tank. So we’ve just gone for a simplified, and exaggerated, sea.”
And as for the story itself, Lord is eager to praise the books’ author, Gideon Defoe, while also insisting that the movie wasn’t influenced in any way by the hugely successful Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. “That never crossed my mind,” he insists, looking quite puzzled at the thought.
Suddenly beaming, Lord explains: “The joy of it is that Gideon has come up with a pirate world that is absolutely unique. Its tone and its logic is absolutely unique. It’s quite modern, really. It has no claims to historical accuracy at all.
It’s kind of a modern world with its pirate king and pirate of the year awards and strange things like the pirates’ utterly unexplained obsession with hams. So there are all these odd things which are in our world that don’t deride from anything; it’s an extraordinary parallel pirate universe.”
Being Irish, I tell Lord that, through my emerald glasses The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists seems a very English world as well as being very Aardman, given its obsessions with hams that echoes Wallace’s fondness for Wensleydale cheese in the Wallace and Gromit tales.
Laughing, he agrees. “It does seem to be a very English story. True to itself; its world. It’s playful, it’s mischievous. We do delight in undermining and undercutting things, that’s part of the fun which, again, is rather English.”
Oh, and it’s great fun.
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists is currently showing nationwide
