Aardman Artists Create A
By Jeff Bragg in conversation with Andy Brunskill & Jimmy Grimes
pale moon hanging over a vast, languid ocean. A haunting melody from a piano. A tiny boat with a tiny girl adrift in memories of her father. And a lonely sadness so encompassing that it almost smothers. These are the feelings elicited by the achingly beautiful music video of Coldplay’s Daddy, directed by Åsa Lucander. But the people who actually brought the video and puppets to life were Aardman Animations (the company behind Wallace and Gromit) and puppeteers Andy Brunskill and Jimmy Grimes. Jimmy and Andy met doing War Horse. They spent three years on that show; after that, they started working on other projects together. Jimmy, the more talkative of the two, said that his interest in animation and acting brought him closer to puppetry. Andy claimed, “I wouldn’t have said 10 years ago, ‘I shall be a puppet person.’” His early interest in animation and his background in theater pointed him in the direction of puppetry. For Daddy, Jimmy and Andy initially worked from Aardman’s sketches to build the puppets. After discussions with the producer and director, Andy started engaging a team of builders (Jo Lakin, Hugh Purves) and Jimmy began working on the designs.
It was a seven-day shoot. The girl was built in two sizes. One was almost 16 inches tall; the other was around three and a half inches. Most of the time, the girl was a rod puppet so that the subtle movements could more easily be repeated for multiple takes. But for the scene where the girl falls into the water and sinks, fishing line was used to manipulate the puppet. They also used this technique when she falls
and catches herself on the kite, which they believed delivered a “very lovely quality” to the movement. They both believe that the slow pacing of the video’s action allowed a deeper story to be told and gave them the luxury of time to develop the girl’s emotional world. Tiny movements took on great power. Andy: “With a repetitive action, there is a danger that we can puppeteer something very easily to repeat an action, but the danger is that it becomes quite mechanical and doesn’t really feel alive. When we found the opportunity to have moments where one of the arms is slightly lagging behind the other or moments where you drift, and you just hold the oars but you’re not paddling. We were really interested in just finding that range.” Jimmy: “When Åsa described the storyboards, we saw the length of the song and how much time we had on each shot; suddenly the puppet’s not having to do too much acting. If you’ve got a long shot and the director’s happy to just give it that time, that’s when detail really does become quite telling. It really does add depth to the story. There’s a minute of her rowing, to draw people in, to get them to understand her physicality.”
Some shots were
Andy Brunskill (left) and assistant puppeteer Katie Williams with whale and smallest girl puppets. Photo courtesy Aardman/Parlophone
particularly difficult to do. When the girl falls from the boat and into the water, three puppeteers were needed. This made the shot either impossible to light or impossible to puppeteer. Andy: “Because the impression we’re giving is that we’re in the middle of the ocean, we were lit from all sides. Wherever we put
Some shots were particularly difficult to do. When the girl falls from the boat and into the water, three puppeteers were needed.
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