How to Direct Stop Motion Movies for Aardman with Will Becher

#animation #aardman #directing

This week on the podcast I chat to Director and Animator Will Becher.  Will is a Director and Creative at Aardman Animation in Bristol, he joined the animation team on Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit, becoming one of Aardman's youngest ever feature film animators.   

Will has since worked on series, commercials and features as lead character animator. He also directed the feature film 'Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddom'. I talked to Will about how he got to work on these amazing projects, what it is like directing stop motion animation and we chatted about the Aardman academy.

Find out more about the Aardman Academy: https://academy.aardman.com/courses

Check out the re-release of Jim's first solo directing feature The Witches Hammer - out now on amazon 
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B0F235F4T8/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

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Transcript

0:33

hi Jim here just dropping in before this week's episode to tell you about my latest movie The Apocalypse box it's a horror film and I'd love for you to check it out if you go to apocalypse box.co.uk you can find all the links on where you can watch the movie right let's get on with this week's[Music] episode hi Jim here and you're listening to the honest filmmaker podcast career advice from people in the business this week I'm speaking to director and animator will beer will is a director and a creative at ardman in Bristol he joined the animation team on Wallace and grommy at the curse of the we rabbit becoming one of alman's youngest ever feature film animators will has since worked on series and commercials and feature films as lead character animator he also directed the Sha of the Sheep movie farmer gedon I talked to will about how he got into the industry we chatted about some of the amazing projects he's worked on while he's been at armman he also talked me through what it was like directing a stop motion feature film and he told me about the Alan Academy enjoy I'll start where start with most people did you uh go to university did you study how did you get into animation um yes I did I went off to study at Edinburgh College of Arts and um it was one of the few courses at the time that seemed to teach whatever type of Animation you wanted to do so I've always sort of been a massive fan of stop motion that was very much you know what I had in my mind when I went there to try and get a job eventually somewhere like Hardman and um it was a threeyear course up in Scotland loved it every minute of it and it was really a sort of film making course actually rather than a it was called animation but we learned everything about making short films cool and you by the looks of your IMDb you after that course you did a couple of short films did you is that what you moved on to next yeah I um so I did AIT I managed to get a bit of work experience at Aran throughout my degree so in the summer holidays basically I would come down to bristor and i' I'd be sort of pressing out chicken wings or um making eyeballs that kind of thing um and then when I graduated I made a short film in order to get work you know more work at armman and in those in between jobs which you know I had quite a few of at the beginning I just wanted to make stuff and so yeah these short films sort of came from that really they came from a bit of space but also the desire to keep learning and and sort of developing wow and um when you actually got that job at armman what was that like I mean it was it was just a mixture of Terror fear um massive excitement um I still remember very vividly the day I sort of came in through the doors and it's such a it's such a sort of you don't know like everything in the film industry you sort of don't know what it's like inside the studio because no one goes there it's not like they don't have open days so I just remember this the smell and the which was um weirdly it was like a mixture of baby wipes and Clay uh and um I also just remember thinking this is like this feels like college because everyone here they're like five years older than I am but they just have this sort of energy about them and this um vibe that I loved straight away I felt very much at home here and do you because the thing I always wonder about the album stuff is there like a Bible or do you get debriefed or is there a rule book because it it's all got that sort of same Vibe so how's how do they make sure that it does yeah that's that's a really good question I mean to so I've worked here now for a well just over 20 years and I think uh it has changed you know a lot in that time in terms of the scale so when arban first started back in the 70s it was very much you know three or four filmmakers who all had a similar sensibility although one was quite surreal and and you know but they loved humor and I think that tied everything they did together they were all working in stop motion with Clay nothing nowhere else really in the world was doing it there was one or two studios in America so I guess it it was born from that um and and then as things got bigger and bigger they needed to start creating sort of rules and and my boss the head of Animation Lloyd Price he was here you know really early on and started to sort of train people up so they went from just four sort of school boy filmmakers who had ideas for films who were doing everything themselves to a a feature film company back in 2000 with chicken run and that was when they sort of for the first time they had to really massively scale up um and the Bible is something so on the last project I've just finished I was working on um Wallace and grommet just coming out Christmas and it was my job as a supervisor to create that same Bible for the animators um 35 animators all with a lot of knowledge about ardman Styles but some of whom have not worked with Wallace and G before some of whom have and I have to sort of tie all that together in one document um that that explains everything from how they blink you know how long we might hold a pose for to what looks right and wrong you know down to the tiniest little bit of play on a on a on a curve on an ear and um looking back on the stuff that you've done just to understand because animation is something I do not know anything about logistics wise do you are you making the things or are you just moving the things how what you know on these different roles how's it all work yeah on a feature film it's very much everyone has a specialism so the animation team won't be making any of the puppets we've got a whole puppet team um with we've got an art Department who who build the sets and the props puppet team build everything to do with the the actual characters um then cameras lighting you know it's it's a huge team so the animators themselves um they are given a puppet and what they have to do is create a performance from that so they're purely animating but there is a bit of um well there's a lot of sculpting involved as well so the animators AR and generally have to understand clay and how works and how to move it and you know when an animator's working it'll be it could be they're on their own in their unit for a day or a week or even several weeks just physically animating if something goes wrong with the puppet or the set or or the lights we've got this resourceful team you know at the end of a walkie-talkie who'll come and fix stuff um but if you go away from features you very quickly become a bit more of a generalist so someone making a commercial for example or a series you just have to get on and do more yourself it's it's much more like everyone mucks in and people love that as well you know it's quite it's part of the variety that makes it interesting yeah and you've also done correct me if I'm wrong here because again this is not my area uh so would you on a big feature film might you be responsible for one particular character sort of yeah so we we tend to um start small so using you know Wallace and gromet as an example we start with just the directors myself uh and the other heads of department and then as we get towards production we'll start bringing in a couple of animators who are sort of the most experienced character animators and they will do the development work um that will all feed into the Bible and we're sort of finding even though they're established characters at armman every film we make we've got new processes we've got new types of performance so we've really refining the characters each time and then those animators generally you know they might click with a certain character and they'll become the character lead and all the way through the shoot every animator will probably animate every single character but our character leads will will do the sort of the most important shots they're the ones that the directors just know if there's a if there's a complicated thing to create with a certain character we go to them first so it's like you you very much cast the animators like actors you're like this person is really good at you know menacing tiny movements very tightly sculpted feathers mcra you know there's only maybe five or six of the animation team that we would naturally put into those shots and then looking at obviously you directed the Sha the Sheep movie um which was a big deal in this house with my kids back when it came out um so you're directing so I am understand I can talk to an actor and I can get them to elicit certain performances how on Earth do you direct something that takes so long to come together yeah I mean again I it's a good question because we don't really consider it because we've been we've been learning the process like since since day one I guess since um you know Pete and Dave first did their first bit of performance and then started to delegate you basically learn all the tools there are in order to sort of direct performance through animators um so one of the things we would do is we quite often record a live action video so the directors will go into a unit with a video camera they'll do a sort of and there's some clips of these online there's some really funny ones with Nick Park dressed as a a hog um but essentially it's like it's a really quick way of establishing what the performance is going to be and it's a great way to discuss it because then the animator is going to go off and animate it and it's so organic the process of moving a puppet frame by frame you can never repeat it the same way twice but also you can interpret the same piece of performance loads of different ways just like an actor would so a lot of it's just that conversation between the directors and the animators like before the shop starts um and the other thing which we do a lot is we we create the whole film in storyboards like really quite detailed to the point where there're semi-animated and that allows us to sort of you know the whole crew then refer to that we call it the animatic we refer to that as a way of of knowing what the context is for every shop because we're shooting out of order quite often we've got 40 different units so 40 different locations uh half of them are going to have Wallace in them so all at the same time we've got 40 different locations in the film different points in the film it's it's like a part of the biggest challenge when you're directing is just to be able to walk from one location in the film to another and know exactly what is going on at that point it must go wrong sometimes so does it do is there ever a situation where you I don't know if he get this far down the line where a scene comes in it's it's it's been put together and it's like oh this isn't quite right start again or how do you approach that yeah it does happen of course and it's a sort of creative process and it's actually part of the in a way it's a benefit of animation and stop motion because you have a bit more time so whereas on live action you might film a scene you probably do it a couple of times you'd have multiple cameras we build we build the plan we build the the sort of animatic storyboard and we refine it and refine it and refine it to the point where we know which shot is going to go where and how long it lasts to the to the frame not to the second to the actual frame um and so most of the time you can sort of get a sense of how that scene is working just by watching the storyboard but we're constantly editing refining and it's been really interesting watching Nick and Merlin work on this film from this angle so I've directed and I've worked as an animator and now I'm sitting in between those two roles with the directors quite a lot seeing how they work and then with the animator seeing how they interpret that brief um and so what is brilliant which which I've taken from this job is that you you're never really finished you're never like you don't just lock it and go that's it that's what we're going to shoot every single stage is an opportunity to sort of finesse and improve and tweak to the point where the animators might be shooting something they might have an idea they'll talk they'll get Nick or Merlin to come into the unit discuss it and yeah if it seems like it'll work that then goes into the shop and so with props um same with sort of gags anything and then and then the edit comes together so we replace the animatic with those shots as they happen and there's a sort of constant edit like the edit team work on these films they're the first in the last out and they're working all the way through and they're always editing so in the fine cut you get the more you know you get to look as a whole a whole film and sort of yeah say that that scene isn't right and we had it on far mageddon we've had it on every film there's always crunch points where something's not right and yeah we lose stuff you know we might cut we might cut a whole scene it's unlikely because normally we'd know before we got to the end of shooting it all but it does happen and it always is hard for the animators and you know I really see that on this film you do a performance as an animator you're putting your heart out there you're like a you are it it's it's painfully slow you get through it you present it and there's that nervous thing does it work does it not work and if it gets cut it's just it's like it's just it could have taken weeks probably took months you know what with the build and the the um all the work from all the crew that go into it so yeah it's it's a bitter pill but everyone I think understands that it makes the film better and that's the most important thing if if animation comes out it's not because the animation's bad it's because the story works better without it I'm assuming there's not many people like you about there's not many people who've directed an animated stop motion feature film would that be right um it's a niche I suppose in that you know some are like armman a very big company we've got other companies like you know Leica um and companies that come together for the Tim Burton films or the Wes Anderson films they're all St stop motion they all have a similar sort of collection of people that that work on them but I suppose it is a small you know you could count it on two hands Poss no I mean it's under it's around 20 people I guess um and the animation team are very unique you know so there aren't that many animators in the world we can't just look through a directory and pick more we literally we we know most of the animators working in the industry and they tend to move around to the jobs so you know we work with people who are now in America and a lot of European animators come here so it is quite a this specialism um to get to this level of animation and would you say um careers wise is there is there space for new people in that in that environment is there is there are you looking for people or is it a case of oh we've only got so many spots do you know what I mean yeah I would say it's highly competitive um and it always has been and I'm always on the brink of like is there going to be another film you know like literally since the day I graduated I've been like I'm on a film hooray I'm on a film I can't believe it and then the film finishes like is there going to be another film um it has for me you know it's been a consistent career and a lot of the people I work with um but it's a freelance industry so it's not like you know there's a lot of college is teaching animation um but not necessarily the skill set that we would require um and you know to go to go back yes there are opportunities because we're always there is a sort of cycle in that animators that worked a long time become directors or they go off and write or you know there is a sort of natural progression um and we use we do see quite a few Junior animators coming in at the you know the lower end doing their making their chicken wings and and making the eyes it's just slow you know slow progression but there's definitely space for more and I mean the what I'm part of now my most recent sort of development has been to do more with the Aran Academy which is a an inhouse sort of training scheme to help develop and diversify the industry a bit so it's been really nice to sort of see the enthusiasm and the talent because ultimately if you're talented and you can do the job then you you're going to probably find work because there aren't hundreds of people that do it and that do it really well yeah um so talking about the academy tell me a little bit about it is it can anyone do it is it something you need to have certain qualifications to get into how's it all work yeah it is so the way it's been set up so Mark I'm here became a sort of head of the armman academy a few years ago it's open to anyone in the world so I think what makes it unique is that there are no barriers of age or location you can be a part of it there's certain elements of it that you can do online um and there sort of online animation courses there are other courses but the the online animation courses are where someone will sign up they'll then do a sort of 12 week training course essentially they get sent an armatur uh the software that they need and they'll set up in their own home and basically animate through these different tasks and then they'll have a mentor from armman one of the animators at armman who will check in every week and sort of give them feedback so that's a really nice thing because it feels like we're sharing some of the arment S of knowhow but with people in other countries who potentially will help improve the industry around the world um and then there's another side to it which is the side I'm involved with which is again open to anyone um it's not qualification based it's all about the level of work your your portfolio um but I'm currently running these in studio courses so like a five week purely animation training where people come in we've got 12 students at the moment um who've basically come into the studio we've built a sort of Academy area where they they can learn and I'm there you know showing them what we do and how we do it and they're then working on their own performance and their own technique yeah and the the biggest thing that that started last year is a film making course so it's called in studio stopmotion it's an eight-month course six months of which is actually in the studio and the people that come to that basically have to apply with a film idea so they're applying with a film idea and then coming and making it in the sort of support and the environment of armman using somebody you know we have writers and puppet makers and art directors it's all really about teaching the individual how to make films using the knowledge that we have here so it's quite it's very exciting I mean it's it's new to me it's I'm I'm sort of five weeks in um but it ties in very much with my experience of being at Aran in that I've always learned um everyone's always teaching everyone else here so it's really lovely to to actually be able to share a bit wider and and can you tell when you meet one of the students is there a certain personality type that suits this sort of work can you can you tell instinctively like oh this person's they've got it or not not not really no I mean it would be great if you could um it probably would have made Lloyd's job easier for the last 20 years but um it's funny you know animators are a really interesting bunch of people CU some of them are really introverted and really quiet and shy and then they do this most amazing you know elaborate performance on screen whereas you also get very you know out there people quirky funny um they're also very good on screen so you can't tell necessarily but I think everyone who's been successful has been generally easy to work with that is a big part of it like anything in film making you've you're animating on your own but you've got to work in a team really well and you've got to communicate well and you've got to understand other people and you know you've got to have the technical knowledge of how much things move and when and how but much more important than that is the actual sort of your your acting ability um that's the thing that sets out the really topend features animators they are excellent actors and you can't always see that in the way they talk you know some of them there's there's an animator um I'm sure she won't mind Allison Evans who's been here for you know a long time I think we both started around we rabbit and she's very um you know she's she's just perfectly normal person very quiet you know you give her a brief she'll say yes yeah I can do that do that y sure there's no fuss you can give her anything and she can just deliver the most amazing animation it's just impossible you wouldn't know that by looking at her but we've got a whole team like that they're all different everyone's completely different in terms of Personality yeah so is it interesting um interesting to think I mean people think you have to be patient to be an animator I think that's a little bit of a red herring because animators actually aren't that patient quite often oh really yeah yeah I think when you're animating you're you're lost in the moment so you're not you're not aware of the time because you concentrate so much on something you know it's really takes a lot of concentration um but but you know there's not many egos in the animation business especially in stop motion so that's nice you know there's everyone's quite down to earth and yeah no one's no one's pushing anyone else out the way for work it's just it's a it's a family really um it feels like that over the years and just thinking about patience um so if I go into a studio I'm doing a character I'm doing a scene I'm spending a day in there how how much screen time do I get out that day can I actually watch it back that day how much do I get yeah yeah I mean we'll we'll take the first frame of a shot that's one 12th of a second so generally the average for our animation team is 5 Seconds a week each right so that's what what we're aiming for yeah um two seconds a day is what we'd sort of two to three seconds a day is what we'd hope for when we're shooting and then there's all the other times where we're setting up prepping you know testing rehearsing so that is a feature film you know you're going to work for a day you might at the end of it have just under two seconds of footage you can watch it um it's a snippet but you build it and build it and build it over over weeks uh it's like a it's like doing a painting or something you're like slowly adding it takes hours you add and add and add and then suddenly it's finished and you're like ah but um uh if you're working on a series you could actually shoot you know five to 10 seconds a day so really quite a decent amount um because it's just the level of performance is is you know it's not going to have to hold up on a big screen it's going to be watched once or twice having said that like the adman projects like Sean get watched over and over again but there's just something there's something enery you have to shoot fast with those um it's just it's locked into the budget we just can't afford to take any longer so yeah cool and then um so I'm so say I'm leaving I've done my a levels I'm leaving uh thinking about a uni course I'm looking at the Aran Academy what's what's the best things I can do for myself to sort of give me the best chance in this industry well it's the advice I had because I had exactly the same sort of quandry you know I I when I first got my foot in the door at armman I was just to everyone I was like how did you get here what what would you advise me to do and mainly people just said you just need to practice that's the one thing there is a bit more you know knowledge out there on the internet about how to do it um I think practicing and building up a portfolio is is critical and you could do that at University I mean University gives you an environment surrounded by other people doing the same thing so that's what that offers um The arban Academy the different parts of it deliver sort of like insight and technical skills um and it's yeah it's what you want to do it's I think number one thing is try and understand the industry as much as you can and know where it is you want to go because when I graduated I made a short film which sold me exclusively as an animator I mean that was the purpose of it it's like I'm not going to make it too ambitious I'm G to set it a character in a room and it's all about performance and for me that was the key thing if I'd wanted to go into props production you know any any other side bit that's what I'd have needed to do to focus on and I think you know some of the other jobs around animation art so well known um we're trying to make it clearer what the jobs are but if you watch the credits of a feature film there are 250 people and 30 of them animators you know a tiny amount really there are so many skills involved so yeah research is is the thing like research and then if that's what I want to do what skills do I need to get there and then you just work on those skills I would say yeah and I also noticed on Sha the Sheep I think it was the movie you've got some voice credits so so what what did how how how did you end up being a voice on the film what did you actually voice I've got this this sort of slightly sad desire to do voices which I quite often do around the studio and and I think to the point where you know Nick Nick and Merlin I I did quite a few of the voices in the early stages of edit and um none of them quite stuck but I just like doing voices it's just it entertains me different voices like Impressions but what we do in the process of making any film is it's the crew that provide the voice soundtrack first so when we do the animatic it's the crew normally someone in edit or a couple of people in edit they're very good um actors and then the directors will do a lot as well um and then once that sort of storyboard is lock is it's like yes that's working then we go off and record the actual proper actors and that's what the animators work to so so we always have the finished voices before the animators shoot um so on farmageddon it just happened that myself and Rich who were directing you know we we provided the snails that was um the the two snails there was one tall and thin one one shorter one um that was us and then we also did some of the hazmats which are the sort of yeah the army of white white sort of clad sorry not white they're um yeah they're in the Hazmat yellow Hazmat outfits they we needed a a sort of group of voices so we did some of those um and it's stuck because I guess you go for the best voice for the character so that's exactly what we needed yeah we and we do hundreds of takes I mean it's like it's insane if you you assume you go and record a voice actor and you say you're going to be showing the sheep can you can you do a bar as if you've just seen someone falling off the edge of something and then 200 bars later you go back to to you know the edit room you pick through them all and one is right so it's just a very um it's a very lengthy process but a really important part of the Alum films partly you know because often there isn't actual dialogue so those sounds become even more important um right so I've just got a couple of fun questions now I ask he says fun questions um so in your opinion what's the best animated film ever made oh um I love can I give you one stop stop frame one and one two I think so my my favorite stop frame film is Nightmare Before Christmas good choice just I just it was the moment in my life where I fell in love with animation and i' gone to this film festival in Cardiff and um it was an Animation Festival and they premiered this this film there and I sat there and just everything about it the the the lights the music the character it's just a really wonderful thing and it's become such a sort of cult film but for the Stop Motion Community it's still one of the best animated films in terms of performance it's just brilliant um and and 2D it's got to be The Lion King the original sort of Disney Lion King I just again I think I love the the energy of it the vibrancy and for me both those two films they really do what animation is capable of they create characters and worlds that just wouldn't work for me in any other medium it's like it's the perfect way to create this experience this story and these characters so yeah I love both of those yeah big nightm Before Christmas fan let's pray to whoever God you believe in that they never try and do a live action they just need to leave it alone it alone I don't mind I'd wear a sequel I'll watch a sequel if it's stop motion but please don't make a live action vote no definitely not um and the last question which I ask most of my guests is have you got a motto um have I got a motto well I don't I don't carry around a motto although I'm thinking if I had a really good one I should probably have it tattooed somewhere but um I think it's going to be can I make one up one up yeah let's pretend this is do I I don't have one like in my head it might be it might be a some people have them I guess it's more of a thing that you an approach to life or an approach to yes yeah okay well I do yeah I do have that I think my Approach is to always enjoy the moment um and you know it can be very stressful film making but there is it's just the best you know do feel like the luckiest person alive sometimes to be in this environment working in this industry and so it's just to enjoy soak it up and enjoy every minute I hope you enjoyed that episode if you'd like to hear from more industry professionals how they got into the business and how you can do the same or you just want to listen to some cool stories from movie sets around the world then please do subscribe to the honest filmmaker podcast[Music]