In this episode of the ScreenUK Podcast, co-director Matthew Walker and executive producer and chief creative director Sarah Cox go inside the making of Aardman’s most ambitious Shaun movie yet.
With Matthew Walker bringing the perspective of a co-director who came to Aardman through a lifelong love of stop-motion, and Sarah Cox overseeing creative development across all of Aardman’s projects, this is a rare and detailed look at what it actually takes to make a Shaun the Sheep film - and why this one pushed the studio further than any before it.
Together they discuss how a Valentine’s Day short about the Farmer going on a date slowly became a full-length horror-comedy, the town hall scene that riffed on Jaws with a cat dragged down a blackboard instead of fingernails - and had to be cut anyway, the 12 identical Beast puppets needed to survive a single shoot, and what it takes to record a cast including Nina Sosanya, Justin Fletcher, Paul Whitehouse and Danny Dyer when no one is allowed to say an actual word. Plus: the tiny glassware hand-blown by a chemist called Terry at Oxford University, the sea shanty performed with a double bass made from a fishing box and some line, the cargo ship that measured 15 ceiling tiles long, and why making Shaun’s Halloween world meant rethinking almost every lighting decision the studio has made across 50 years.
Click below to have a watch!
Check out other episodes of the ScreenUK Podcast:
