I'm Charlie Chiodo, and I have a brother, Stephen.
Hi, my name is Stephen Chiodo, and I have a younger brother, Edward.
The Chiodo Brothers is a family business. Three brothers.
It's a group of siblings that create stop-motion effects in Los Angeles.
We like to think that the Chiodo Brothers bring something special.
[screaming]
Holy--
[nose beeping]
[narrator] With a relatively un-Christmassy résumé…
-A pipe bomb, Jobriath. -…this was the chance of a lifetime.
We've made movies since we were kids, and the Rankin/Bass special inspired us.
[gun fires]
[screaming]
Yeah, makes sense.
And appropriately, their first shot involved
the long, dangerous tusk of Mr. Narwhal.
The way Jon had described the scene where the Narwhal appears,
he wanted the tusk to come up and rise out of the water
like the Chrysler Building.
And guess who did the voice for Mr. Narwhal.
Bye, Buddy.
"Hope you find your dad."
Nope, it wasn't him.
Jon Favreau did the voice of the Narwhal.
-Hope you find your dad. -Thanks, Mr. Narwhal.
With the Chiodo Brothers hard at work,
Jon Favreau's Rankin/Bass homage
was really starting to get its…
-legs potentially crushed. -Sorry!
Something abominable was about to happen.
[monstrous growling]
There was some piece of bad news.
Uh… we got in trouble with clearance.
The legal department at New Line started to get worried.
They got nervous we had stolen too much
from Rankin/Bass.
-What? -What?
There was a question about if they had the rights to duplicate the costumes.
This must have been cleared by now. Who's producing this thing?
Legally, we thought we had made a deal and everything was cool,
so we went off and made the movie.
But the legal department at New Line, well, they had other ideas.
And all of a sudden, we had lawyers in our midst.
[growling]
Lawyers with you on the set.
Lawyers with you in the art department saying, "Where's your reference?"
"Where did you get this idea from?"
We're trapped!
They were like, "How influenced are you?"
[gasps]
And we said to them,
"Really influenced."
There was no hiding the movie's Rankin/Bass connection.
-True. -Favreau came in
and threw the book on the frigging table in his first meeting.
[narrator] But this time, the book was being thrown at them.
The producer came to me and said that the film might not be releasable.
[Joe] And I remember Jon sitting on top of Elf's miniature sofa
with his head in his hands like this.
[narrator] Well, in order to weather this legal storm,
-production leaped into action. -What do we do?
[Joe] Suddenly, the blue Buddy outfit shows up.
We tried this for one whole day.
We shot with the original costume,
then Will would go change,
and shoot the same thing again with the other costume.
But there was a big problem with this.
We were downfield on the thing.
If they couldn't clear the green costume,
they'd have to reshoot everything!
Oh, my gosh!
No one wanted that.
Do you mind telling me what you do wanna do?
One of the outs was, "Oh, let's just…"
Digitally alter the coats or… I don't know.
[laughing]
[screaming]
[narrator] However, in the end, threats to upend production
were a little bit… toothless.
Basically, some fast legal work had to be done.
Ultimately, we proved ourselves to be free and clear.
Thankfully, some smart people figured it out.
[narrator] Well, with that monster tackled,
it was time to shoot the New York interiors,
which they shot in… well…
It wasn't a Kmart, but it looked like a Kmart.
It was a closed-down mental institution.
That's it! A mental institution.
-[thunder crashing] -[evil laughter]
I was like, "This is perfect for New Line."
It was production designer Rusty Smith's job
to make it perfect for Elf.
[Rusty] We had to repurpose this draconian mental institution.
It was great for the police station,
but it is one of the creepiest places I've ever been in my life.
Why would it be any other way?
[laughing]
[narrator] But when the storm clouds cleared,
they actually found this building to be quite versatile.
It was here that they shot…
The orphanage. We shot Greenway Press.
Francisco, that's fun to say.
The Hobbs apartment.
-What shall we put on first? -Lights.
I love when he's decorating the tree…
-How do we get the star on? -[Rusty] …to put the star on.
I got it.
It's what's called a "Texas switch."
You see your principal actor, Will Ferrell.
He goes back to take a look at it,
and then the stuntman takes a running jump off the sofa,
and it falls over.
All done in one take.
You know that that's not really me, right?