With Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget now available to stream on Netflix, TVBEurope reveals some interesting facts about the film’s production.
- Aardman created a unique additional studio in Bristol to scale up its film production in 1997, with Chicken Run the first film produced there. The sequel was also shot in the very same space.
- Factoring in alternative scenes and changes, more than 100,000 storyboards were created during the course of the production.
- The Aardman crew working on Dawn of the Nugget totalled around 350 people, while the production comprised 45 units at its peak.
- The film contains around 1,400 shots in total, only 28 of which are fully computer-generated.
- The longest shot is the opening pan across Chicken Island, which is 784 frames, or 32.67 seconds. It took 80 working days to shoot the animation.
- To prevent the chicken puppets from having too much of a sheen on camera, each one had finely sifted icing sugar puffed onto its surface, creating an even matte effect.
- More than 800 chicken wings were made for the production, while over 150,000 feathers had to be hand painted. Most puppets have a set of 14 mouths, but new character Molly had the largest mouth set, of 24
- A total of 119 sets were built for the production, along with 130 animatable props, including a corn conveyor and a windmill.
- The film’s final shot includes an Easter Egg imposter chicken: Nefarious penguin Feathers McGraw, from the second Wallace & Gromit adventure, The Wrong Trousers.
Read our interview with director Sam Fell and production designer Darren Dubucki in the December issue of TVBEurope.
