Stop Motion feature film: Aardman's Chicken Run

Since I was a child, and for as long as I can remember, I have been a big fan of Aardman animations. This love started, like many other Aardman fans, with Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, shown to me my a friend of my parents when we went to visit. Although for a long time I had only seen the Wallace and Gromit shorts, my personal favorite Aardman film Chicken Runm directed by Peter Lord, soon hit the cinema, and I was instantly hooked, loveable characters, an amusing plot based upon the PoW camp escape stories popular post-world war 2, the amazing soundtrack, and of course, the stop-motion animation.

When the film was released on DVD, I began watching it religiously, and I still watch it occasionally, and every time I find something new happening in the background. But I soon found myself in the special features sections, and I was captivated by the behind the scenes parts, learning that each  character had at least 3 models to work from, the main characters would have more. One of the reasons there were multiple models was to work with a shot depending on wether it was a human character or a chicken who's point of view was taken. For example, the roll call scene where the chickens line up while a goose stepping Mrs. Tweedy marches past them, examining a clipboard, would involve three scale models. For the long shots, there would be scenes where the humans could be seen full body, with tiny chickens at their feet. For the mid shots on the humans, the animators would use slightly bigger models that wouldn't have any legs, and the models of the chickens would be bigger and more detailed. And finally for the shots that concentrated on the chickens, the animators would use a larger model that they could easily animate the facial features on, and the humans would really only have their boots visible.