Eat ham and jam and spam a lot...in Camelot! It's the "Knights of the
Roundtable" scene like you've never seen it before!
Credits:
Studio: LEGO Studios and Python
(Monty) Pictures
Animation: A Spite Your
Face Productions (SYF), production a successful London animation company
Directors/Animators: Tim Drage and Tony Mines
Owners of the special anniversary edition DVD of
Monty Python and the Holy Grail may already be familiar with a marvelous short
animated film recreating a scene from Holy Grail entirely with LEGO toys. Tony
Mines, of Spite Your Face Productions, explains the origins of this popular
short film.
The deal with the Python film started when either Terry Gilliam or John
Goldstone (not sure which) found this great Japanese
website where the guy had made a bunch of LEGO models of scenes from Holy
Grail.
They saw that, and approached LEGO for the possibility of doing an
animation in the same vein, for the Holy Grail DVD. At the time, Spite
Your Face were already in negotiations with LEGO to do some other
animations, and the project just fell into our hands. So basicaly, we scored
the deal off the back of this Japanese guy's hard work.
The turnover on the project was very fast, with the coding date for the
disk in less than a month. I dare not reveal quite how quickly we made the
film, for fear that future clients may expect us to work that fast ever again
- but suffice as to say that it was slightly less time than God took to make
the earth.
The first stage in the process was deciding which scene from the film to
recreate. There was a lot of discussion about it, but for us, the Camalot
sequence was the only real option. The original film is very textural and
visualy rich, but it's also essentialy a series of sketches and talking heads,
not at all suited to dynamic animation - and that visceral quality is almost
impossible to translate using smooth plastic blocks. All the 'action' scenes
in Holy Grail operate on two basic principles, (a) that fake limbs are funny
and (b) so is copious amounts of gore.
Again, not something that works in plastic, or that LEGO would particularly
allow. The Camalot sequence on the other hand, is not only lively, but has a
logical beginning and end point that makes it work as a self contained movie.
We began to break down the sequence, watching it over and over, and turning
it into a storyboard. We found to our delight that much of the original
sequence consists of repeated footage or a return to the same three or four
shots. This helped us in terms of budget and schedule because it meant we
could make similar use of loops and repetition, though I really shouldn't be
telling you this stuff.
We also began to break down the geography of the location, so as to build
an accurate set. The DVD has a featurette about the original locations, which
when we eventualy saw it, verified most of our assumptions about the
geography. We even used the same trick of redressing the same 'alcove' to be
two different parts of the room (one with the minstrels, one with the choir
singers).
As
well as the interior set, we also built a model of the castle exterior, which
we filmed outside as an excuse to sit in the sun all afternoon. We actually
carried said castle to the top of Tumbalum, a mountain in Wales that overlooks
Caerleon - a village many believe to be the site of the 'real' Camalot. The
footage, however, turned out to be rubbish - and the shot you see in our film
is so manipulated that we needn't have bothered.
Finally we constructed 'likenesses' of the characters using a mix of
existing lego-men parts, and hand-printed labels based on the tunics in the
movie.
The
animation process itself was relatively straightforward. A table with some
models on it, a camera, and the painfully laborious process of moving tiny
lego-men by infinitesimal increments, one frame at a time. The exception to
this is a close-up shot of some lego-men's feet 'tap dancing'. This was filmed
in live-action and involved removing the lego-men's legs, as they cannot
inherently 'stomp' each foot independently.
Another thing we are often asked about is how we made the knights 'jump'.
This, in most cases, was acheived by supporting the knights from behind, with
the 'back wall' on the table and the camera pointing down. Most other 'aerial'
objects are supported by blu-tack, and the swinging curtain is lined with
poseable wire.
Beyond
that, is none of your business.
The Python film was very enjoyable to work on, not least because we at SYF
have grown up with the Python team as a huge influence. Through this film we
got to work with the Pythons and put the Python name to one of our films, plus
we got to meet Terry's Jones and Gilliam. For us it was one big plus. It's
been downhill ever since!
For more misinformation visit:
www.spiteyourface.com
Tony Mines, Director Spite Your Face Productions Ltd.
