| By Jacqui Gal Currently in the final stages of production and due for release on November 3, Flushed Away marks the third collaboration between UK studio Aardman Animations and DreamWorks SKG. In Flushed Away we enter an underground world where empty sardine cans, broken windshield wipers and old tires, cast off as junk on the streets of Kensington, prove vitally useful as building blocks for a world inside the London sewers. And this intricate rodent microcosm, filled with colorful characters and props, could only truly come alive with the help of CGI. Yet, following the successes of the clay animation features Chicken Run and (Oscar-winning) Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the production team were loathe to abandon a winning stop-motion formula. So how was a fine balance achieved? "We kept the cameras and the characters as we would, had we been making puppets," explains Aardman's Sam Fell, who co-directed Flushed Away with fellow Englishman David Bowers. "We could have been a lot more flashy in a lot more places but we tended to look to our old techniques and learn from where we'd been. We rigged all the CG characters as we would do puppets, and we didn't use any secondary animation like cloth or hair with computers. We got the animators to do it by hand."
Flushed Away traces the journey of Roddy St. James, a pampered society mouse (voiced by Hugh Jackman; Scoop, X-Men, Swordfish) who had never set foot in the world outside his home in Kensington, London. When Sid (voiced by Shane Richie, from the British series "EastEnders") crashes Roddy's cushy pad and sends him hurtling down the toilet to the underground world of London's sewers, he meets Rita (who has the voice of Kate Winslet; Finding Neverland, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Titanic). Sir Ian McKellan (of X-Men and The Lord of the Rings fame) is the voice of the villainous Toad. "It had to be part of a family with Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit," explains Bowers, "especially because we were moving into a different medium and were making it in L.A. It had to be real and authentic and sincerely done. Everyone, on both sides of the Atlantic, has been committed to that." The use of CGI allowed the filmmakers to add a wealth of intricate details to scenes while sticking to a modest production schedule that spanned five years from story development to completion. Had they attempted the project in clay, it would likely have taken twice as long. Nevertheless, the solid commitment to creating a stop-motion-looking film was meticulous and unwavering. "Even with the water effects, we made all the boat animation seem like it was shot in a tank," explains Fell. "We made them bounce around a little and seem like they were radio-controlled boats. It looks a bit Thunderbirds at times." "and there's a scene where Spike, one of our villains, is electrocuted," adds Bowers. "When his skeleton shows, though, what you see is an Aardman puppet rig with little screws, instead of a skeleton." More than a social commentary on the evil of class distinction, the directors call Flushed Away "an interesting spin on the fish-out-of-water film." "It's along the lines of The African Queen, but with Hugh Jackman playing Katharine Hepburn and Kate Winslet playing the Humphrey Bogart character," says Bowers. The directors also cite Sullivan's Travels (1941) and Romancing the Stone (1984) as influences, while a boat chase scene is a nod to James Bond. Seamless Splice of Studio Styles Turning inspiration into a feature film was going to take a singular vision, which is not always easy when two distinct production teams collaborate. With DreamWorks, says Bowers, the combined efforts worked seamlessly. "A lot of studios have an in-house style, but with DreamWorks, all the films are distinctive. Look at Antz and Madagascar and Shrek; they are all so different. The crew is so versatile; they were able to pick up on the Aardman style quickly. "We had very British characters and storytelling, but DreamWorks gave us the keys to the Maserati of production machines." crediting DreamWorks' commitment to maintaining an Aardman feel to the film, Bowers adds, "We had an incredibly talented CGI studio at our disposal. And a lot of Aardman key crew came over, which helps to blend the styles." Although one might expect a few details to be lost in the transatlantic communication, the directors describe the DreamWorks team as "like the League of Nations," while Aardman draws talent from all over Europe. If anything, the singularity of vision and purpose was a little too ingrained by the end of shooting. "Our crew was very good at making everything look a little weathered and dirty and realistic," says Fell. "When they went to work on Over the Hedge, they were told, 'It's not like that here; in our world everything is clean.' Our crew had to undergo some rehabilitation." David Bowers began working at Aardman in the story department for Chicken Run, after having started his animation career as a teenager "with a few blobs of plasticine and a camera" and later working on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Sam Fell has been working as a freelance animator at Aardman since the early 1990s and signed on as director of commercials there in 1996. Flushed Away is his first feature film. | 
