Interview with “Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie” directors Will Becher and Richard Phelan
Aardman’s latest feature Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie – a sequel to the studio’s 2015 hit Shaun the Sheep Movie and latest extension of the internationally beloved Shaun the Sheep television series – hits UK cinemas this Friday. Directed by Richard Phelan and Will Becher, the ‘sheepquel’ is produced by Paul Kewley, written by Mark Burton and Jon Brown, with Mark Burton, Richard Starzak, Peter Lord, Nick Park, Carla Shelley and David Sproxton serving as Executive Producers. The film continues Aardman and StudioCanal’s production partnership following the recent success – grossing $106 million worldwide – of the first film.
Strange lights over the quiet town of Mossingham herald the arrival of a mystery visitor from far across the galaxy…
When the intergalactic visitor – an impish and adorable alien called LU-LA – crash-lands near Mossy Bottom Farm, Shaun soon sees an opportunity for alien-powered fun and adventure and sets off on a mission to shepherd LU-LA home.
Her magical alien powers, irrepressible mischief and galactic sized burps soon have the flock enchanted. Shaun takes his new extra-terrestrial friend on the road to Mossingham Forest to find her lost spaceship, unaware that a sinister alien-hunting agency is on their trail.
Can Shaun and the flock avert Farmageddon on Mossy Bottom Farm before it’s too late?
In anticipation of its UK release Skwigly were delighted to get an opportunity to catch up with the film’s directors Richard Phelan and Will Becher.
Richard Phelan
How did you start your career at Aardman after graduating from the National Film and Television School?
After I graduated from the National Film and Television School I made a short film called Damned, which is about a beaver who is mistaken for a God. It was seen by Paul Kewley and Richard Starzak, the creators of Shaun the Sheep, and they asked me to come for an interview. Richard asked if I’d like to storyboard on series 3 and so I did; we got on really well and he asked if I could be a writer for Series 4. I was the head of story for Farmer’s Llamas and senior artist for the Shaun the Sheep Movie and so on Farmageddon I was asked if I’d like to direct it. So it was this natural progression from meeting Richard and Paul after I graduated to now.
What was It like jumping from Senior Storyboard Artist on Early Man to Director for Farmageddon?
It was fantastic. It was great to work with Nick. He’s a comedy genius and he’s got a distinct vision of what he wants his stories to be so it was a nice change from Shaun the Sheep and learn to be a director. It was enjoyable working with so many talented people and then be asked “We’re developing Farmageddon. Would you like to direct it?” I just jumped at the chance. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. It was a great privilege and I felt ready to do it. It felt like the right time.
How did you find the experience of being a Director for not just an Aardman production but for a feature-length animated film?
It was amazing. It was incredibly challenging. There were lots of bits behind the scenes that I wasn’t really aware of as a story artist, like how many discussions we’d have with other departments. It was really enjoyable as my job as a story artist was to constantly pitch ideas so those skills were easily transferable to go to the art department to pitch what Luna might look like. There was constant communication to share ideas and take all the advice from these departments. It’s the work of many rather than the work of one.
Were there any new challenges in the Director’s chair that you weren’t expecting?
Handing over or letting go of things to other departments to say “I think it should be like this” and letting them run with it and the anticipation of what that’ll be like and not being able to jump and say “let me try”. Learning to trust the skills of the people in the animation team and you have nothing to worry about and how it could be pushed a bit further and learning that as a director you don’t have to do everything.
Before directing the film together, did you know Will or work with him previously?
We’ve both been in Aardman for over ten years and so we’ve worked on many projects together, seeing each other around the studio. He just got off from working as the animation director on Early Man and he got to work closely with Nick so he got a lot of experience and understanding of the animation side of it. I came from a story background so us teaming together worked really well and we got a very similar sense of humour and sense of storytelling. It was a really good partnership.
And what was it like to work with your Will?
He’s fantastic. He’s funny and he’s really level headed. We were really encouraging each other and having healthy competitions to see who can come up with the funniest idea and push each other. After the film was storyboarded we did live action videos where we act it all out and so me, Will and the animators would be one of the characters in the shot to direct each other to look for different ideas. It’s really useful and fun work.
Directors Richard Phelan and Will Becher briefing on set. (Aardman/Studio Canal)
What parts did you play when you did those live action videos?
Oh everything! I’ve been Shaun, Lula, Agent Red. There’s been really funny ones where there were some dramatic moments where someone’s sad and I had to put my head on Will’s shoulder. Some of the animators are real clowns though. They throw themselves around the room as if chaos is happening and they get stuck in. Everyone plays every role.
Did that help you to direct the scenes?
Yes. The idea was that we would discuss the scenes with the animators to talk about where we are in the story, where we’re coming from and where we’re going and they would go to the live action references. We would act it out and rehearse it and then discuss it afterwards. We would watch back at what we’ve done and say “that hold there is nice” or “that tiny inflection is really good” and then we’d do more rehearsals. Once the animators are in the right mind set and we’d use the live action video and the storyboard to inspire them with what to do with the puppets. It’s a slow process, but it allows us to try different ideas before the animators bring it to life.
What was your favourite scene to work on?
My favourite scenes were big emotional turns with two characters on screen where we talked a lot about feelings and thoughts and where they’re coming from. The animators would do the most delicate performances that really imbued the characters with life at such emotional moments. And at the same time we had huge set pieces with characters in hazmat suits and robots and underground bases.
How do you direct the cast for a film with no dialogue?
It was a sort of man process in that we have a list of different baas and barks that we need the actors to do and say “can you give a happy bark?” “No not that happy.” We did multiple takes of different animal sounds. But Justin Fletcher is the voice of Shaun and he mainly wanted to do everything which was really helpful and Amalia Vitale who voices Lula brought this mischievous playfulness to Lula’s voice and it was really good fun. They were well up for it and for them to see how it was used in the film and you go “I can see why you need different versions of that.”
With Lula I was wondering what the process was from initial concept to how she appears on-screen in the final product?
We knew early on that she should look like she was part of the same universe of Shaun the Sheep and at the same time something enticing and we wanted a character with some of his same attributes like his cheekiness and confidence and she would be those magnified by a hundred. But we also wanted to give her lots of sci-fi powers and the story sort of ran away with itself and she could do everything. We had to strip those back to make it difficult for ourselves and think of what she could be and do. At the same time the design department, one of our artists, drew the idea for her head to look like a UFO and her body would look like a rocket thruster and it was a very simple shape. One of our other artists gave her a palette that would appeal to children straight away. It was good fun.
How did the idea to put Shaun in a position of responsibility develop?
We thought in the first film Shaun sort of went to find his father figure and it was very much about the parent/child relationship with the Farmer. This time we wanted to explore the relationship he had with Blitzer as siblings and so we thought one of the easiest ways to try that would be to swap the roles with Shaun from being a younger brother to being an older brother with a younger sibling. He could realise that Blitzer isn’t a killjoy and actually looks out for him so they don’t hurt themselves as she’s a magnified version of Shaun so she can be pure chaos and he realises he has to grow up a bit.
What was it like to try something different with the ET approach to storytelling?
We’re huge sci-fi fans and we never made a sci-fi film before and we thought “what would be an Aardman sci-fi film?” We could spoof and parody and try to make people laugh. Me and Will were fans back in the eighties of Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis films. The aim was to try and capture how they made us feel and then give that to an audience because there’s a sense of wonder at being in the cinema watching these films. If we could bottle that and give it to an audience that was the quest we were trying to do with Shaun and Lula. And so it was really a love letter to the films we grew up watching.
Will Becher
What was it like to have been an animator for both Aardman and Laika Studios?
I grew up watching all the Aardman commercials in the eighties and it was a really prolific time for them. Somehow ingrained in my DNA was their art style and that’s really what inspired me to get into animation. I started making films at home. I spent my A Levels and my University years trying to hone down the craft of animating and making stories. I always worked mostly with clay but I have occasionally done some puppet animation and non-clay animation. In the industry it’s actually quite small so a lot of the animators I worked with over the years have worked around Europe and America. Quite a lot of the team have been in the UK or are from the UK so after I finished work on Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, which would have been ten years at that point, Laika Studios needed some help to finish off ParaNorman and so I went over with a few people who just finished working on Pirates! and it was a great experience. It’s a really fascinating animation company in terms of development and the technical scopes they go into, seeing how they made their puppets and mouth replacements. It’s like engineering you wouldn’t believe. It was familiar in a lot of ways as a lot of us were aware of a studio set up as it was similar to Aardman’s. It was another company on the other side of the world who had a passion for stories with stop motion animation.
How did you become a director with Richard on Farmageddon after working as an animation director on Early Man?
When I first started making films at home, my degree film was seen by Nick Park who saw the potential so when I joined on as an animator, in the back of my mind I always wanted to make films as a director. So whenever I had a gap between projects I tried to make short films with the support of Aardman. That’s where I ultimately wanted to go, that was my area of interest. Then I got the opportunity to direct for the last series we made of Shaun the Sheep and I directed ten episodes which was my first time directing on a big production. That was the first time Aardman put me in that role.
Following that I worked with Nick on Early Man and as an animation director I was really involved with briefing the art department and working with the animators in the studio. I was working every day, honing my skills and Farmageddon was starting development during Early Man’s production. It was a project I really wanted to be involved with because I love Shaun and him as a character. He’s just so fun to work with. That was a couple of years ago now and me and Rich tried to work together, we worked in different roles and that fit quite nicely because we could learn from each other.
Did you know Richard before directing the film together?
I first met Rich when we started at Aardman and we actually worked on the same projects like the Shaun series and then the first feature. He was in story and I was doing the animation. We talked quite often and then I got to work with him closely on the last series of Shaun because I spent three months storyboarding before I had the role of director on that series. Rich was great, showing me the skills and some of the techniques we were creating from storyboard to series. By the time we came together on the feature we knew each other really well and knew each other’s personalities.
Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie (Aardman/Studio Canal)
How was yours and Richard’s working relationship throughout the production?
It’s been great. We balance each other out with our background and skills. We had a lot of common ground when it came to sci-fi. The other thing we did of course was work on Early Man where he was high in the story scene and I was the animation director so a lot of the comedy and ideas started from storyboards then translate to the studio floor. Throughout the film we worked, very, very intensely together for long hours, always sharing what we were doing. So when I would direct a sequence while Richard would direct another sequence, we’d come together from the start and the end of the day to make sure everything fits on-screen.
What new or familiar challenges did you face during the production?
Doing a follow up to a film that was very successful critically and at the box office. So from the offset there was a fair amount of pressure to make the film really good and as a first time director to take Aardman’s most famous character around the world and being trusted with that to make a feature film was huge. Once we got into the story process of what it was and how we’d make it in time went very quickly. I think one of the biggest challenge technically was creating the chase sequence we got with about three or four different set pieces. They were really complicated to make, especially if the sets don’t really exist from storyboard to building the set pieces to film it. That’s quite a challenge technically to make it feel fast paced.
The other thing was probably Lula, who is our new character, who’s an out of this world alien with galactic powers. We wanted her to feel spectacular and different to Shaun, but she also had to fit in with everyone who knows and loves Shaun as well. We spent a long time on her design and her performance, who’s voiced by a brilliant actress named Amalia. I feel like the responses we got so far meant we landed her just right.
What was your favourite scene or character to direct?
That’s really tricky as we got a lot of characters and scenes I like. I always gravitate towards Blitzer because to work with him is funny and he’s really good natured but he’s stuck right in the middle. We got a whole host of new characters from our secret government agency and that was fun as they got an army of people in hazmat suits who are really clumsy and silly and meant to be helping but really not. I think from a new character and their performance it was really fun and it went back to the old school black and white comedy capers.
There’s a lot of science fiction film references. What was your favourite one to do?
I’ve got a few, but there’s one that I always go to and it was a really great idea. It didn’t come from me but it was a funny visual and that’s a link to the film Arrival. The other one I liked was one of the subtle background gags in a lot of the shots. There’s a lot of references to the films we grew up watching and references to Alien. There’s so many of them.
Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie is out in UK cinemas this Friday