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Nick Park
AKA: Nicholas Park
OCCUPATION: animator, director, and screenwriter; also producer
BORN: Nicholas Park in Preston, Lancashire, England, 1958.
NATIONALITY: English
EDUCATION: Attended Sheffield Art School in Sheffield, England. Majored in
communication arts (BFA 1980).
Attended National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield,
England. Majored in animation.
MILESTONES:
1971: Made first animated film at age 13 (date approximate)
1975: Professional debut on British television, "Archie's Concrete
Nightmare", an animated short
Began working on "A Grand Day Out" while enrolled at the
National Film and Television School
1985: Joined Aardman Animation in Bristol, England
1986: Earliest credit at Aardman, the Peter Gabriel video
"Sledgehammer"
1989: Produced "Lyp Synch", a series of short films for Channel Four
Television; Park animated, wrote and directed the five-minute
short "Creature Comforts" which earned his first Oscar in 1990
1989: Completed and released first Wallace and Gromit short, "A Grand
Day Out"
1993: Second Wallace and Gromit short, "The Wrong Trousers", aired on
BBC2 in December; film earned Park his second Oscar for Best
Animated Short Film
1995: Third Wallace and Gromit short, "A Close Shave" earned Park his
third Oscar for Best Animated Short
Created Reebok TV commercial featuring Wallace and Gromit
1996: Briefly made headlines when the clay models of Wallace and
Gromit were left in the trunk of a NYC taxi cab
Wallace and Gromit were selected to assist in fundraising for
the Royal Hospital for Children
1996: First project as executive producer only, Steve Box's 11-minute
short "Stagefright" (made for Channel Four)
2000: With Peter Lord, co-directed feature "Chicken Run"
BIOGRAPHY:
When Nick Park joined Aardman Animations in 1985, it was the
realization of an avocation that began when he was a child. Born in
1958 in Preston, Lancashire, this filmmaker began his career creating
animated featurettes while in his early teens. One of his early
efforts, "Archie's Concrete Nightmare", aired on the BBC in 1975.
Park went on to study at the Sheffield Art School before attending
the National Film and Television School. While still attending the
latter, he began work on "A Grand Day Out" (1990), a stop-motion clay
animation short featuring his signature characters, Wallace, an
eccentric inventor with a love of cheese, and Gromit, his faithful yet
put-upon dog. When Park joined Aardman, he simultaneously worked on
completing this first Wallace and Gromit adventure as well as on other
projects. The world first saw his work in Peter Gabriel's
award-winning music video "Sledgehammer" (1986). Along with the
Brothers Quay and Aardman co-founder Peter Lord, Park created the
dazzling visuals using a combination of claymation and traditional
animation. Over the next few years, he contributed to Aardman's series
"Lip Synch", which matched pre-recordings to animation, including
Lord's "War Story" (1990), which illustrated the remembrances of a
WWII veteran, and the Oscar-winning "Creature Comforts" (also 1990),
which depicted unhappy zoo residents commenting on and complaining
about their climate, diet and accommodations. Its success led to a
popular advertising campaign for electricity on British TV.
When "Creature Comforts" earned a 1990 Oscar nomination, Park was
in the unusual position of competing with himself as "A Grand Day Out"
was also nominated. That short, written and directed by Park, told a
fairly simplistic tale: Wallace discovers to his horror that he is out
of cheese and builds a spaceship to travel to the moon because
"everybody knows it's made of cheese". Paying passing homage to George
Melies' "Le voyage dans la lune/A Trip to the Moon" (1902), "A Grand
Day Out" was six years in the making. Like his work on the "Lip Synch"
series, it featured tiny plasticine figures with narrow eyes, wide
mouths, bulbous noses and oversized extremities, what have become the
trademarks of Park's animations. Wallace's personality owed much to
the exaggerated synchronization to the vocal work of actor Paul Sallis
while the mute Gromit was made xpressive through body language and
facial expressions. The work succeeds despite its sketchy tale because
of the animator's attention to detail (i.e., Gromit reading the
newspaper and absent-mindedly tapping his foot, the interior design of
the spacecraft).
Tapping into the resources of Aardman Animations, Park was able to
successfully build on his initial creation. Working with co-writer Bob
Baker, he fashioned "The Wrong Trousers" (1993), a quirky tale that
invoked Ealing comedies, Hitchcock's thrillers and heist films
(particularly 1954's "Rififi"). Park adopted a more cinematic approach
in the lighting (including a nod to 1949's "The Third Man"), score
(Julian Nott's homage to Bernard Herrmann), art direction, sound and
other technical matters. Adding a mysterious lodger, an expressionless
penguin, to the mix, the resultant parody of mystery-thrillers
features two brilliant set pieces: the actual heist (featuring the
penguin controlling Wallace's invention of robotic trousers) that
calls to mind nearly every genre film; and a chase sequence atop a
model train, that conjures memories of everything from "The Great
Train Robbery" (1903) to "The Seven Per-Cent Solution" (1976).
Produced over a two-year period, "The Wrong Trousers" earned Park his
second Oscar.
Expectations ran high as to what Aardman and Park would do for an
encore. Since the first shorts had aired on British TV, audiences
embraced the characters and wanted more. Park agreed to create a third
entry in the series. In April 1994, the head of the BBC animation unit
set an air date of Christmas 1995, leaving barely 18 months to produce
the film. Again working with Bob Baker, Park devised the story for "A
Close Shave" (1995). For the first time, the director ceded some
control and worked with a staff of over 25 camerapersons, animators
and model-makers. Park was unable to personally animate key sequences
(as he had in the past) and (in his own words) functioned more as a
director than on any other project to date. With references to such
movies as "Frankenstein" (1931), "Brief Encounter" (1945), "Alien"
(1979), "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) and "The Terminator" (1984),
the short was a mix of romance, sci-fi and mystery. The helmer
employed stylish camerawork and the overall piece was enhanced by
Julian Nott's atmospheric score. Using conventions of slapstick
(fleshed out with Wallace's Rube Goldberg-inspired inventions) and
subtle humor, Park told a tale of sheep rustling which included a
framed Gromit being incarcerated. A daring jailbreak and amazing chase
sequence follow, ending with a wonderful set piece that also alluded
to "Metropolis" (1926) and "Modern Times" (1936). The subplot romance
between Wallace and Wendolene, a distaff doppelganger, was both
touching and appropriately noirish. Again Park was cited by the
Academy, earning a third Oscar.
As the popularity of the characters has evolved (there are now
merchandising tie-ins like alarm clocks and the requisite clothing, as
well as boxed video sets), Wallace and Gromit have become a cottage
industry. Nevertheless, Park has temporarily abandoned them (as
perhaps subconsciously demonstrated when he accidentally left them in
the trunk of a NYC taxi cab during a press junket). He subsequently
served as executive producer on "Stagefright" (1996), an 11-minute
short by animator Steve Box (who contributed to both "The Wrong
Trousers" and "A Close Shave") and developed a feature length
claymation film, "Chicken Run" (scheduled for release in 2000), about
two chickens in love who plot an escape from a poultry farm in
Yorkshire. Park is co-director with Peter Lord. Park, however, has
promised to eventually revisit with Wallace and Gromit.
--Written by Ted Murphy |
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发表于 2003-5-27 20:48:06
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发表于 2003-5-27 22:59:27
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