- [Narrator] The new Netflix film "Robin Robin"
pushes the envelope of what's possible
with stop motion animation
and follows in the creative footsteps
of classic Aardman films like "Wallace and Gromit",
"Shaun the Sheep" and "Chicken Run".
- The symbiosis with technology has massively helped.
We're able to do things now with stop motion
that wouldn't have been possible not so long ago.
- [Narrator] The film's young directing duo
champion new textures and new visual effect techniques
while staying true
to the artisanal spirit of Aardman Studios.
- [Dan] The "Robin Robin" world is all handcrafted.
Every snowflake in it has been shot in camera, hand animated
because we didn't want any CG in the film.
- [Narrator] Let's break down the timeline and the technique
of the new stop motion Aardman flick.
- The whole production took about two years
from when we were green-lit
to when we finally delivered the final film.
Probably about a year of that was writing and storyboarding.
- [Narrator] From the script,
the film went through the prep and design phases.
Before any puppets were built out of needle felt
the characters were crafted on paper
and there's no undo button
on the set of a handmade film like this
so Dan and Mikey had to get their story straight
with a rigorous pre-production regimen
that took nearly an entire year.
- One thing that we did right from the beginning
was to make a color script of the whole film,
to use color to help tell the story.
You've got to know exactly what you're doing
when you get in the room and start filming with an animator.
You've got to know exactly to the second
what you're gonna shoot.
Because of that it means
that you effectively make a rough version of the film
before you go onto set, before you even start shooting.
That version, we call it an animatic,
is made from storyboards
and edited together with scratch sound and music
and we'd often do the voices of the characters
if we hadn't recorded them by then.
So, you get this rough impression
of what the film is gonna be.
- [Mikey] I think we had initially eight months
to build that animatic.
- [Dan] Because of the nature of stop motion
you need to be shooting scenes all at once.
- [Narrator] So that required
crafting at least five different puppets of each character
in at least three different scales.
So that's 75 puppets, including nine robins, 11 magpies,
20 mice, four cats, four squirrels, three frogs,
and three hedgehogs. [explosion booming]
- Our job on a day-to-day basis was so much fun
of going into all these different rooms
with different parts of the world being rendered
at different stages.
- [Mikey] Pretty much every set
was built specifically for a particular set of shots.
- [Dan] The art department are busy the whole time
crafting the next set.
That's sort of the traditional stop motion sets
is that they're always able to break apart
and move around
partially because you've got to get animators into the set.
- [Narrator] Here's Dan
mapping out the path of one of the characters,
walking the action much like on live action set.
- [Dan] The blocking process was a really important part
of being able to figure out exactly what you're gonna get
at the end of the shot because with stop motion
it's very hard to do a retake.
- We weren't allowed.
- We weren't really allowed on this project
because of the schedule.
- Once the sets in place you then have the process of,
you have the riggers.
There's a huge rigging department,
there's a lot of scaffolding
that goes into moving these puppets around.
And then we have the camera department,
which was led by our incredible DOP, Dave Alex Riddett
who was the DOP on "The Wrong Trousers"
and has a huge tradition of making films at Aardman.
And he would then light the set,
so he would paint with light
so there's lots and lots of camera set up
and lots of lighting preparation that goes in then
before the animator is finally able to step up to the stage.
And then we had about an eight month shooting window,
so we filmed for eight months.
- [Narrator] A team of 14 animators
each banked about eight seconds of footage per week.
- We don't shoot anything sequentially.
- Well, one shot in particular,
it was a big shot and a big set piece of the film,
which is Robin's song right at the beginning of the film
where she dances her way through their rubbish dump home.
It was a pretty long shot, it's over 20 seconds
and also involved a camera move and a lot of choreography,
there was a lot of puppets in it.
Probably took about a week to set up the motion control
and get the camera working right.
After that you'd have all the lighting tweaks,
which took probably another few days or maybe a week.
And then once the animator's ready, they'll come in
and for that particular shot he did a block
which took him about a week.
That whole one shot,
it was probably like five weeks in one unit
that you've got to make sure that that camera move is right
and that it's not going too fast
and it's gonna leave them behind.
So, he was in there every day for two weeks
animating this sequence
and we just sort of locked him in there [laughing]
came back in two weeks
and he'd made this absolute masterpiece.
♪ We're on our way ♪
♪ To break into a house ♪
- The fundamental basics of stop motion
have probably remained the same for a hundred years,
which you have something, you move it a little bit,
take a picture, move it a little bit, take a picture,
move it a little bit.
- There's 12 frames per second,
so 12 images every second are taken.
As an animator they've got this great ability
to plan things out very meticulously
but also capture a real spontaneous energy.
We had this process where we would take each shot
and act it out ourselves.
When you can act little moments out yourself
there's a really immediate nature to that.
You'd take that video reference
and when you brief the animator on the floor
before they film it.
So, we actually do have a version of the whole film
with pretty much just me and Mikey
acting out every character in it, which is sort of insane
but probably for many people
probably more entertaining than the finished thing.
- [Mikey] Some shots would be made up
of multiple, multiple exposures
and we use a program called Dragonframe,
which uses references.
We're able to use overlay images with the camera
to make sure, if we're shooting multiple plates,
that this element is gonna match up with this element.
- [Dan] But with the software that we've got,
you've got a live playback
of every frame that you've taken so far.
So a big part of the animation process
is watching back what you've filmed
and anticipating the next position of the character.
- [Narrator] That depth you see
is achieved by shooting various planes
and elements such as snowflakes, snowdrifts and silhouettes
separately on green screen,
which would then be composited later
by a visual effects team.
- Every element in the film is something that's been filmed
rather than making CG backgrounds or anything like that.
- I think the most we had was 60 plates,
a plate being a piece of character animation
or an element or a lighting exposure.
- And we were really inspired by the Russian filmmakers
in the early years of stop motion, like Yuri Norstein,
and his film of "Hedgehog in the Fog"
where you get this really incredible sense
of depth and atmosphere.
If you saw how it was done,
it would be done in quite a lo-fi way.
- [Narrator] The team used a stereoscopic technique
of shooting two frames at slightly different angles at once
in order to capture depth
that would be useful later in post.
- [Mikey] So, although we weren't making a 3D film,
what this gave us was the depth information
that we wouldn't usually have with a stop motion,
you usually just come away from a scene with a flat image.
But by shooting it stereoscopic
we were able to then use that depth information
to embed all of our elements and so we could have
raindrops passing behind the blades of grass,
and trees disappearing into the mist,
and characters moving through it all
without the need of green screen or rotoscoping.
[firetruck siren blaring] - I'm not a terrible mouse.
- [Mikey] There was the cleanup of the neckline
and the eyelids of Robin, our main character.
And there's, of course, the integration of all the elements,
the snow and the mist and the fire and the water.
We also had the rigs to remove
so there was the scaffolding
that upholds all these characters as they're moving along.
The elemental buildup of things like rain was quite complex.
- [Dan] The magic of stop motion is that it's all this craft
condensed into these frames that you're watching altogether
and there's a magic and a level of intensity to that
that we just love.