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Tragedy Strikes - Aardman Animations Studios Incinerated!
Meltdown for Wallace and Gromit

NOT since Ben Hur’s chariot went up in smoke when Cecil B DeMille’s original wooden studio caught fire has the film world suffered such a loss. Just as the makers of Wallace & Gromit were celebrating their number one success at the US box office, a storage warehouse containing characters and sets from their previous hits was burning down.

The three-storey Victorian building in Bristol contained the “entire history” of Aardman Animations. Sets from films such as Chicken Run and the Wallace & Gromit series were destroyed in the fire. Lucy Wendover, a company spokesman, was holding back tears as she described what had been lost. She said: “There was Wallace’s bedroom from The Wrong Trousers and Gwendoline’s wool shop from A Close Shave. I can’t want to go into the details of everything we’ve lost. It is such an emotional time for the company.”

The sets were part of Aardman’s archive dating back to its creation in 1972. It included scripts, storyboards, props and several characters created long before the Plasticine figures of Wallace and Gromit were a gleam in the eye of their Oscar-winning animator, Nick Park. In the beginning was Morph, the original animated character who appeared in the children’s television programme Vision On. Several early Morph figures stored in aluminium flight cases are among the casualties, although the box from which he emerged was safe in his creator David Sproxton’s office cupboard.

Also missing feared melted are the stars of the television shorts Creature Comforts, including Frank the sporty tortoise, Fluffy the hamster, Pickles the dog, who works as a social services carer, and Terry the nervous octopus. Mr Park, who is responsible for Aardman’s best-loved creations, was taking a philosophical view of the disaster yesterday. He said: “Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies today it isn’t a big deal.”

A lot better than I could have done in his place.

Ten fire crews fought the blaze as flames leapt 100ft into the air from the Aardman building in central Bristol in the early hours yesterday. Avon Fire and Rescue Service is trying to establish the cause of the fire and says it has not ruled out arson. The fire came on the same day that Aardman’s latest film, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, topped the US box office.

The film made $16.1 million (£9.1 million) on its opening weekend, compared with the thriller Flightplan, which was in second place with $10.8 million. Kieran Argo, 37, the company’s events and exhibitions manager, said: “It’s a bittersweet day. We were all meant to be celebrating the fact Wallace and Gromit went straight in at number one in the US box office and is proving to be a huge success. Yet we came in to find this news this morning.”

One of the largest items to have been incinerated was the pie-making machine from Chicken Run, which took thousands of hours to build. Mr Argo said: “It was one of the largest pieces of set we have kept. It took months to research, develop and build at huge cost and was the centrepiece of many of our exhibitions over the years.” One of the few bits of good news was that none of the sets from the latest film was damaged. Others items of Aardman history also escaped because they were on display elsewhere, including the rocket from A Grand Day Out and Hut 17 from Chicken Run.

By their very nature, film sets are not built to last, but the small size of Aardman’s creations meant it was able to keep much of what it produced. More than 250 people worked on The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, painstakingly sculpting six-inch-high Plasticine figures by hand rather than resorting to computer graphics. In comparison, little of Hollywood’s output has been preserved. One exception is Cecil B DeMille’s original studio, which was rebuilt after it burnt down in 1996. Among the casualties that could not be saved was the chariot used in the 1926 version of Ben Hur.

AARDMAN LOSSES

Among the pieces of Aardman history feared lost in the fire are:

* Plastic figurines, storyboards, sets, scripts and props from the Wallace and Gromit films A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave.

* Plasticine and latex figures of Wallace, his sidekick dog Gromit, Shorn the Sheep from A Close Shave and the Evil Penguin from The Wrong Trousers.

* All paraphernalia relating to Chicken Run — including the famous chicken pie-making machine.

* Plasticine figures of all the animals in the Creature Comforts adverts.

* Several early figures of the children’s TV character Morph

If you are not familiar with the superb work being done by Nick Park, you owe it to yourself to rent all of his work and view it. I have shown his animation to Vietnamese Buddhists, Fundamentalist Christians, toddlers and octogenarians alike and all of them have simply adored it.

Park has successfully marketed his work in the Chevron talking car commercials and Serta Mattress ads with the numbered sheep. As an artist and fan of high quality animation this is nothing short of a catastrophe. My heart goes out to Nick Park and all of his crew. How sad that just as their latest feature length film entered the American movie market in the TOP SLOT, they are confronted with this bittersweet victory.

I urge all of you at Rantburg to attend "Wallace and Gromit - Curse of the Wererabbit" as often as finances will allow. Parks and crew need all of the financial support they can get during this horrible turn of events. I hope others here at Rantburg will contribute their own reviews of Park's work.

Posted by: Mister Rogers 2005-10-10
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=131873