Shaun The Sheep: Farmageddon

Shaun The Sheep has a close encounter of the herd kind in new movie Farmageddon

Somewhere, on an induStrial eState in Bristol…

it’s an unlikely location for first contact, but the headquarters of stop-motion legends aardman animations is playing host to an alien visitation. in the second bigscreen outing for Shaun the Sheep – the breakout star of

Wallace & Gromit caper A Close Shave, who now headlines his own internationally successful tV show – an extraterrestrial is landing on the farm. in fact, Red Alert can confirm an official sighting: she’s blue and pink, stands a few inches tall, looks a bit like a dog with tentacles, and is made of a substance that closely resembles plasticine. “lula’s very much got that aardman look about her,” says

Farmageddon: A Shaun The Sheep Movie co-director richard Phelan. “But she also has the ability to glow and float and mimic – things which are outside of Shaun’s normal world. it was a huge challenge bringing a new character like this into the story because she has to fit with characters that have been around for so long.”

if Shaun befriending a telekinetic, shape-shifting alien with the ability to mind-meld feels like a major gear shift from the earthbound adventures of the ovine hero’s first movie, that was entirely the point.

“we didn’t want to do the same story again,” explains Phelan. “in the first film Shaun left the farm on an adventure to collect the farmer from town, but the main thing with this one was trying to find a new angle, thinking about how we could have an adventure on the farm. So we decided to bring in an alien, and that then brings with it lots of ideas to do with science fiction: secret government organisations, crop circles and uFo enthusiasts. we could also go into outer space and have huge adventures there.”

“Visually, we wanted to make it fit with the sci-fi genre,” adds fellow director will Becher. “we wanted to make it very cinematic, so we’ve tried to take the cinematography and art direction onto the next level from the first one.”

“we also cast the widest net we could for influences,” continues Phelan. “i think because of our ages we went back to the ’80s and looked at a lot of Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter films. But then we also went back to old B-movies, and there’s references to hG wells as well. we even looked at techniques where the [space travel] has gone like Arrival and Interstellar.”

although new technology like 3d printing can help with some of the model-making,

Farmageddon is still based around the principles that aardman used to bring morph to life over four decades ago – animators moving plasticine figures frame-by-frame to create the illusion of movement. this makes wandering around the studio an unusual experience.

with animators generally producing a second-and-a-half of footage a day, the pace is slow, while the atmosphere is more like you’d find in an office or factory than on your average film set – when there’s no need to keep quiet for a take, background noise just continues as normal. But one advantage stop-motion animation has over its computergenerated cousin is the chance to build stunning, physical sets – albeit on a much smaller scale to what we’re used to. So despite the fact that a wayward size nine could easily become a weapon of mass destruction here, lula’s homeworld is every bit as detailed as something you’d see in Star Trek or Star Wars – the use of uV paints gives the planet a beautiful fluorescence that feels genuinely alien.

the attention to detail is particularly important in Shaun’s world(s), because with no dialogue to fall back on, the animation and set design arguably have to work harder than they would on any other movie. with all the characters communicating in noises and facial expressions, every storytelling nuance has to be created in the performance.

“our animation team stand out for the fact that they can do so much visually,” explains Phelan. “it’s about performances with those nuanced looks and expression changes which really help us sell what the characters are going through. it’s taken years to hone the craft, and i think we’re definitely exploiting that as much as we can on this film.” Before we head back to earth, however, it’d be remiss of

Red Alert not to ask about the glorious, punning genius of that Farmageddon title – a name so good that you’d forgive aardman if they’d built the entire movie around it.

“in literally one of the very earliest meetings we had when production on the first film was ending, we had a big brainstorm and we talked about bringing an alien to the farm,” recalls Becher. “[Wallace & Gromit creator] nick Park said, ‘You could call it Farmageddon.’ and everyone just went, ‘that’s perfect! we’ve got our title! now we

have to find our story…’”

Those nuanced looks and expression changes sell what the characters are going through

Farmageddon: A Shaun The Sheep Movie is in cinemas from 18 October.