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A Close Shave

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A Close Shave
Original USA VHS artwork cover.
Directed byNick Park
Written byBob Baker
Nick Park
Produced byCarla Shelley
Michael Rose
StarringPeter Sallis
Anne Reid
CinematographyDave Alex Riddett
Edited byHelen Garrard
Music byJulian Nott
Production
company
Distributed byBBC (UK, TV)
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (US, VHS)
DreamWorks Home Entertainment (US, DVD)
Release date
  • 24 December 1995 (1995-12-24)
Running time
31 minutes (NTSC)
30 minutes (PAL)[1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£1.3 million[2]

A Close Shave is a 1995 British stop-motion animated short film directed by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol, featuring his characters Wallace and Gromit. It was his third half-hour short featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace, and his quiet but intelligent dog Gromit, following 1989's A Grand Day Out, and 1993's The Wrong Trousers.

To celebrate the film's premiere on Christmas Eve 1995, BBC Two's Christmas presentation that year (broadcast from 17 to 22 December) featured Wallace and Gromit. The main ident featured the two (Wallace wears a red crown and Gromit wears a green crown) eating Christmas dinner, with a large blue 2 (the channel's logo) situated in the middle of the table, covered with flashing Christmas lights.

Several Christmas themed stings also involving Wallace, Gromit, and the 2 were shown between programmes. The animation of these idents appeared slightly different from other Wallace and Gromit shorts. Following in the footsteps of its predecessor The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in March 1996.[3]

Plot

In the middle of the night, a small sheep escapes from a mysterious lorry (US: truck) and enters the house of Wallace and Gromit, who are currently running a window-cleaning business. The next morning, Wallace and Gromit are unaware to notice the sheep chewing at their food and furniture, and their new Porridge Gun, before leaving for work.

While they clean the windows of a wool shop, Wallace meets and falls in love with Wendolene Ramsbottom, the shopkeeper. Wendolene mentions that she inherited the shop from her father who was also an inventor and owns a sinister dog named Preston, who runs a sheep rustling scheme to supply the shop. After returning from work, they finally discover the little lost sheep, who has wrecked their furniture and decorations.

Wallace puts the sheep into one of his inventions: the Knit-o-Matic, a machine for washing and shearing sheep and knitting the wool into jumpers. Gromit programs the machine to give a wash, but a fault causes the sheep to be sucked into the rest of the machine and sheared. When the sheep emerges, Wallace names him "Shaun" (a pun on the word "shorn") and dresses him in the jumper it knitted. Preston spies on the scene while hiding in a flood drain and after they leave, he sneaks in and steals the design blueprints for the Knit-o-Matic.

The next day, Wallace pays Wendolene another visit. Gromit attempts to investigate and discover what Preston is doing, only to get captured by Preston and framed for the sheep rustling. Gromit is arrested and sentenced to life Imprisonment while Wallace finds his house inundated with sheep. Wallace, Shaun, and the other sheep rescue Gromit from prison and hide out in the fields. Wendolene and Preston arrive in the lorry to round up the sheep. Wendolene turns against Preston and demands that he should put an end to the rustling, revealing that Preston intends to use the sheep to make "dog meat". Preston locks Wendolene in the lorry with the captured sheep and drives away.

Wallace and Gromit, who have been spying on the scene, give chase on their motorcycle. The sidecar Gromit rides in detaches, rushes down another road and off the edge of a 2,000-foot cliff. Gromit saves himself by activating the sidecar's ability to turn into an aeroplane, and flies after Wallace's motorbike and the lorry. They attempt to catch Preston, but fail as Wallace instead gets himself trapped in the lorry. The captives are transported to Preston's factory, where Preston has used the stolen blueprints to build a giant replica of the Knit-o-Matic machine. The captives are loaded into the wash basin, with Shaun escaping, and Preston pulls out the nozzle to suck them into the shearing machine.

As they fight against the suction, Shaun activates some neon signs to reveal the factory's location to Gromit, who then flies in and attacks Preston with the porridge gun. Shaun then pulls the nozzle away to suck Preston into the Knit-o-Matic, which Gromit programs to give a "Close Shave". Wendolene reveals to a confused Wallace that Preston is actually a malfunctioning "cyber dog", created by her father to serve the family, which has "turned out evil".

Preston breaks out of the machine with his fake fur completely ripped off, revealing his robotic form. The machine plops a sweater made of his fake fur on him; he blunders around and raises the platform everyone is on up to level of the conveyor belt of his "Mutton-O-Matic" mincing machine. Gromit swings over them on a rope, knocking Preston and himself onto the conveyor belt. Preston rips apart his sweater at this point and they both start running. Wallace attempts to turn off the machine, but inadvertently loads everyone else on as well (except Shaun). As they all fight against the belt, Shaun swings over them on an anvil and pushes Preston into the machine, crushing and deactivating him.

Gromit is exonerated from all charges of the thefts, Wallace has rebuilt Preston back to be a completely harmless dog with a remote control, and Wendolene comes by to thank him. However, when Wallace invites her in to have cheese, Wendolene reveals that she dislikes cheese, which brings her out in a rash. This is greatly to Wallace's dismay ("Not even Wensleydale?") and Wendolene says goodbye and leaves. A distraught Wallace decides to console himself with some cheese, only to find Shaun eating it. Wallace keeps calling Gromit to stop Shaun, but Gromit ignores him while Shaun happily munches away on the cheese.

Cast

Credits

  • Voices: Peter Sallis and Anne Reid
  • Key Character Animator: Steve Box
  • Character Animators: Loyd Price, Peter Peake, Gary Cureton, Nick Park
  • Assistant Animators: Sergio Delfino and Ian Whitlock
  • Floor Manager: Harry Linden
  • Art Director: Phil Lewis
  • Assistant Art Director - Props: Trisha Budd
  • Scenic Artist: Tim Farrington
  • Set Construction: Cod Steaks
  • Model Coordinator: John Parsons
  • Model Sculptor: Linda Langley
  • Model Makers: Jason Spencer-Galsworthy and Zennor Witney
  • Model Technician: Del Lawson
  • Mechanical Models: John Wright and Jeff Cliff
  • Photography: Frank Passingham, Tristan Oliver, Simon Jacobs
  • Camera Operators: Sam James and Paul Smith
  • Camera & Animation Assistant: Nick Upton
  • Gaffers: Ian Jewels and John Bradley
  • Animation Systems Engineer: Allan Yates
  • Technical Crew: Alan Gregory, Bob Gregory, Glenn Hall, John Oaten
  • Storyboard Artist: Michael Salter
  • Graphic Design: Richard Higgs
  • Optical Effects: Computer Film Company, G.S.E.
  • Production Consultant: Peter Thornton
  • Assistant Film Editors: Tamsin Parry and Bridget Mazzey
  • Foley Artist: Jack Stew
  • Dubbing Editor: Adrian Rhodes
  • Dubbing Mixer: Paul Hamblin
  • With Special Thanks To: Beth MacDonald, Toby Hannam, John McAleavy, Elizabeth Buttler, Mike Booth, Susannah Shaw, John Marshall, Charles Copping, Douglas Calder, Adam Vernon, John Truckle, Tara Bacon, Darren Robbie, Ben Cook, Sophie Wright, Beverley Issacs, Curtis Jobling, Barry Shutler, Maxine Guest, Lisa Bilbe, Stuart Markovic, Janet Legg, Viv Paeper, Arthur Sherriff, And The Staff Of Aardman Animations
  • Director Of Photography: Dave Alex Riddett
  • Film Editor: Helen Garrard
  • Music: Julian Nott
  • Written by: Bob Baker and Nick Park
  • Executive Producer For BBC: Colin Rose
  • Executive Producers: Peter Lord and David Sproxton
  • Producers: Carla Shelley and Michael Rose
  • Director: Nick Park
  • An Aardman Animations Production

Sequels

After A Close Shave, Wallace and Gromit's next major outing was in a set of ten 2½-minute shorts called Cracking Contraptions, each showing one of Wallace's inventions, usually with disastrous results. These appeared on the internet, and were also released as a limited edition Region 2 DVD, later on the Curse of the Were-Rabbit DVD. The sequel to A Close Shave is the feature film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). The next major short was A Matter of Loaf and Death, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on Christmas Day 2008.

Spin-offs

Shaun, the youngest of the flock of sheep in this feature, proved to be a very popular character, and in March 2007, was given his television series on the BBC, entitled Shaun the Sheep, which has been broadcast worldwide.

The first two series (80 episodes, each approximately seven minutes long) are available on DVD. Each episode contains slapstick and situational humour, with Shaun as the leader of the flock dealing with everyday farm issues, while exhibiting a high level of intelligence and human like behaviour, to a level much like Gromit.

In April 2009, Shaun the Sheep itself spun off another series, aimed for toddlers, entitled Timmy Time. Timmy was a baby sheep in Shaun's flock, and the series was an educational one about his time at playgroup. In February 2015, Shaun the Sheep received his own feature film, entitled Shaun the Sheep Movie. A second film began production in January 2017.[4]

References

  1. ^ "A Close Shave". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 27 November 2014.
  2. ^ "Production History - A Close Shave". Telepathy. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  3. ^ "The 68th Academy Awards (1996) Nominees and Winners". The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 25 March 1996. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  4. ^ Tartaglione, Nancy (25 October 2016). "Aardman, Studiocanal Reunite Flock For 'Shaun The Sheep Movie 2' – AFM". Deadline. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
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