[Music] Charlie and the Chocolate Factory merged practical and digital effects so seamlessly that
even though the film is nearly 20 years old it's often difficult to tell what was done practically
and what was done digitally the things people thought were real were done using CGI what people
thought was CGI was done robotically or with what's otherwise known as animatronics and what
people thought was animatronic was actually done for real take for example the nut sorting room
well this is one of those scenes that looks 100 real but deep down you know that it can't possibly
be so I mean squirrels are fast and wild and there's no way you're going to be able to get them
all to sit still on little stools at least in this part this is true but the squirrels you see in
this scene are actually real and they are actually acting 40 squirrels went through an intense
three-month training camp in order to train them to do what was required for each shot training
started by first getting them to run out of their cage cross a room and then onto a tube this then
transitioned into running from their cage across a little stool they would use on set then they
trained them to sit still whilst interacting with a nut next they were trained to open
the shell remove the nut and place it in a bowl the only problem is the skrill's first instinct
is to eat the nut so in order to stop them from doing this the nuts they used were actually made
of from plastic and dental acrylic something that squirrels apparently don't like and on average to
get each squirrel to successfully open and remove the nut without trying to eat it took at least 2
000 repetitions but now even though they could get the squirrel to sit on the stool remove the
nut put it in a bowl and to test the nut for freshness with the help of a nut stuck on a
blue stick it was still impossible to get all the squirrels to do it at the same time so they made
12 animatronic squirrels with a whole range of movements and these grills alongside some CG ones
were used in the background of the shots as you can see right here with this guy okay for obvious
reasons the attack scenes had to use digital squirrels if only just so that they can probably
choreograph the action but that doesn't mean that all the squirrels in the sequence were CGI real
squirrels were also trained to run up farruka and then jump off her shoulders and head however a
squirrel's claws are incredibly sharp and so in order to protect the actress playing verruca a
stuntwoman was used but because of the framing of the shot farruka's face would be visible so the
stuntwoman wore a latex mask sculpted using photos of Veruca for reference these squirrels were then
composited with the photoreal CGI squirrels to complete the final shot now as you'd probably
expect the chocolate room itself was an actual physical set built on Pinewood Studios 007 stage
and the chocolate Lake and chocolate waterfall were also real in fact months were spent trying
to achieve the correct color and consistency for the liquid chocolate before making a total
of 1.20 25 million liters at a cost of around 32 cents a liter that's like 100 concrete trucks full
of the stuff and a total cost of close to half a million dollars on Brown chocolatey looking water
unfortunately because the Practical set was mainly built from styrofoam blocks on wooden platforms it
kind of ironically wasn't very practical because certain pieces couldn't be stepped on or they'd
break this meant that the shooting could only take place in very limited areas of the set so for this
part of the chocolate room song scene where the Oompa Loompas walk all over the set and all the
Oompa Loompas were actually CGI in fact every Oompa Loompa that appears at any time during
the film that is under a quarter of the screen size is CGI now earlier on in this scene Augustus
falls into the chocolate Lake and even though the chocolate Lake and augustus's full were both done
practically the mixing machine and the tube that sucks him up are CGI and Augustus was filmed in
front of blue screen and then composited into the shot as we said before any time an Oompa Loompa
appears under a quarter the size of the screen it's CGI but when they are full size they are
actually played by a real actor called Deep Roy in order to have multiple versions of Deep Roy
acting out the dance in different positions the VFX team either had to lock off the camera and do
multiple takes of Deep Roy doing the routine in all the different positions all they had to use
a motion control camera and do multiple passes a motion control camera is a camera they mounted
on a special dolly or rig that has Motors or servos so that any movement you make with it can
be precisely recorded and then repeated as many times as needed and for Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory they needed to repeat it a lot this shot alone required close to 60 passes and to achieve
all the Oompa Loompa song scenes it took two teams six months and close to 3 000 different passes the
UMP Olympus in the movie are supposed to be 76 centimeters tall but Deep Roy measures 127
centimeters this wasn't a problem when the empress was CG and when it was Deep Roy himself they could
use oversized props or Force perspective to maintain the illusion but what about when
the Emperors had to appear alongside other actors well for this they used animatronic puppets a wide
variety of animatronic Oompa Loompas were designed and built to have different characteristics
depending on the shots they were going to be used for the ones for the TV room had to have
heads with radio-controlled servos so they could be seen to monitor the screens for the boat scene
one animatronic puppet had to be able to beat a drum and the others had to have a mechanism that
allowed them to be pulled forwards and backwards with the movement of the oars and finally the
harvesting Emperors of the chocolate room had to be so realistic that they wouldn't stand out
when placed next to the real Deep Roy and this sequence is perhaps one that best explains the
effects of this entire movie in that by perfectly combining animatronics practical effects and CGI
it's almost impossible to tell what is real what is digital and what is just a puppet