Episode 75 - Chicken Run (Peter Lord & Nick Park, 2000) (with Lynn Ferguson)
Chicken Run (Peter Lord & Nick Park, 2000).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
For Episode 75, Chris and Alex revisit the work of Aardman Animations, taking a look at their debut feature film Chicken Run (Peter Lord & Nick Park, 2000), whose narrative of meat pies and morality remains underwritten by the Bristol-based studio’s signature stop-motion style and very British sense of anarchy. Joining them for this discussion of the art of poultry-in-motion is Chicken Run’s very own Mac, the loveable Scottish genius engineer chicken voiced by writer, actress, and story coach and consultant Lynn Ferguson. Listen as the discussion turns to the Aardman community and how it functions within both industrial and narrative contexts; Chicken Run’s tempering of the epic, and the spectacle of table-top production; vocal performance (in both animated features and video games), and the need to give audio ‘angles’ to the animator; notions of Scottishness, discourses of nationality and fantasy storytelling; the power of ‘revolting’ animation and collectivities of rebellion and resistance; and pop singer Chesney Hawkes.
Suggested Readings
Halberstam, Jack. 2011. The Queer Art of Failure. London: Duke University Press.
Holliday, Christopher. 2020. “Between Plasticine and Pixel: Aardman’s Digital Thumbprint.” In Aardman Animations: Beyond Stop-Motion, ed. Annabelle Honess Roe, 223–240. London: Bloomsbury.
Meir, Christopher. 2020. “From Europe to Hollywood and Back Again: Aardman and Its Studio Partners. In Aardman Animations: Beyond Stop-Motion, 71-86.
Sergeant, Alexander. 2020. “Wallace and Gromit and the British Fantasy Tradition.” In Aardman Animations: Beyond Stop-Motion, 139-152.
Wood, Aylish. 2020. “Aardman! In an Entanglement with CGI!” In Aardman Animations: Beyond Stop-Motion, 241-256.