''Humdrum'' is a 1998 British animated comedy short film directed by Peter Peake. It was released in 1998 and produced by
Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations Limited (also known as Aardman Studios, simply Aardman or Aardman Animation and stylised as AARDMAN as of 2022) is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films made using stop-motion and clay an ...
and received an
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
nomination for
Best Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year ...
and a
BAFTA nomination in the same category.
Plot summary
The film features two anonymous Scottish-accented
Shadow Puppets (voiced by
Jack Docherty
John Docherty (born 1962) is a Scottish writer, actor, presenter and producer.
Career
He first performed at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the comedy sketch group The Bodgers which he formed with George Watson's College schoolfriend ...
and
Moray Hunter
Moray Hunter (born 6 October 1957, Hawick, Scotland) is a Scottish comedian, writer and performer. He starred in the Channel 4 sketch show, '' Absolutely''. Alongside Jack Docherty he played one half of the eccentric double-act, Don and George ...
) who are sitting around a table with nothing to do. They explore and reject several options including watching television (the only thing on is 'some weird animation thing'), listening to the radio (but 'it's all the same rubbish these days' - in this case
La Cucaracha
La Cucaracha ("The Cockroach") is a popular Mexican folk song about a cockroach who cannot walk. The song's origins are unclear, but it dates back at least to the 1910s during the Mexican Revolution. The song belongs to the Mexican genre. The s ...
) and playing chess (the white pieces have been eaten due to a bet). This is briefly interrupted when the doorbell rings and one character answers it to find a pesky dog (who is, in fact, a double-glazing salesman) before the other persuades him to enter into a game of shadow puppets. The first character is frustrated by his acquaintance's appalling representation of a
cow
Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...
and later his failure to recognize a rather fantastic
rabbit
Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit speci ...
(His misled guesses include a 'fireman chasing an igloo' and an 'Otter with two sausage strapped to his head'). After an amusing outburst from the poor fellow, his annoying partner accuses him of being 'shirty'. This leads him to explode, furiously crying "I'm stuck indoors playing 'Guess the misshapen beast' with someone who clearly wouldn't recognise a rabbit if it came to his house for tea, said '
What's up Doc?' and started burrowing into his head! There are blind people with no fingers who are better at shadow puppets than you! No wonder I'm a tad miffed!" An awkward silence follows this, until the doorbell rings and the first character goes to answer it and finds the second character's 'cow' shadow puppet, which moos. Despite being disappointed with being wrong about a cow's appearance, he simply responds to this with a cheery "Not today, thank you." and closes the door in front of the camera, thus ending the animation.
Cast
*
Jack Docherty
John Docherty (born 1962) is a Scottish writer, actor, presenter and producer.
Career
He first performed at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the comedy sketch group The Bodgers which he formed with George Watson's College schoolfriend ...
*
Moray Hunter
Moray Hunter (born 6 October 1957, Hawick, Scotland) is a Scottish comedian, writer and performer. He starred in the Channel 4 sketch show, '' Absolutely''. Alongside Jack Docherty he played one half of the eccentric double-act, Don and George ...
Film technique
The film employs a distinctive
stop motion
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...
cutout animation
Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The props would be cut out and used as puppets for stop motion. The world's ea ...
technique to animate the shadow puppets, making them move in ways that traditional shadow puppets cannot but retaining the impression of being projected onto everyday backgrounds.
Credits
*Lighting Camera: Andy MacCormack, Jeremy Hogg, Toby Howell
*Design: Peter Peake
*Music:
Andy Price
Andy Price is a British television and film composer. He has scored more than 50 films for television and more than 25 productions for theatres around the country, including the Bristol Old Vic, National Youth Theatre and the RSC.
Price has com ...
*Editor: Nick Upton
*Script Doctor:
Richard Goleszowski
Richard Starzak, previously known as Richard "Golly" Goleszowski, is an English animator, screenwriter, and film director.
Life and career
Starzak was born in Suffolk in 1959 and grew up in Ipswich, attending Northgate Grammar School. After co ...
*Dubbing Editors: James Mather, Ben Jones
*Dialogue Editor: Tamsin Parry
*Sparks: John Bradley, John Truckle
*Technical Boffs: Janet Legg, Alan Yates
*Titles: Marc Day
*Cutting Room Assistant: Maggie O'Connor
*Production Assistants: Lisa Pavitt, Margaret House-Hayes
*Heap Big Thanks to: The Puppet Factory, Big Fat Studios,
Pete Atkin
Pete Atkin (born 22 August 1945) is a British singer-songwriter and radio producer, notable for his 1970s musical collaborations with Clive James and for producing the BBC Radio 4 series, '' This Sceptred Isle''.
Early life
Born in Cambridge, ...
, Maxine Guest, Claire Jennings, Terry Krejzl, Helen Nabarro, Lynda Ware
*Producers:
Carla Shelley
Carla Shelley (born 26 June 1965) is an English producer for Aardman Animations and Birdbox Studio.
She produced ''A Close Shave'', ''Humdrum'', '' Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'', ''Arthur Christmas'', and '' Early Man''.
Sh ...
, Michael Rose
*Associate Producer: Julie Lockhart
*Executive Producers:
Peter Lord
Peter Lord CBE (born 1953) is an English animator, director, producer and co-founder of the Academy Award-winning Aardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay-animated films and shorts, particularly those featuring pla ...
,
David Sproxton
David Sproxton, (born 6 January 1954) is a British entrepreneur, best known as one of the co-founders, with Peter Lord, of the Aardman Animations studio. Sproxton was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) on 17 June 20 ...
*Written and Directed by: Peter Peake
See also
*
List of stop-motion films
This is a list of films that showcase stop motion animation, and is divided into four sections: animated features, TV series, live-action features, and animated shorts. This list includes films that are not exclusively stop motion.
Stop motion ...
*
Silhouette animation
Silhouette animation is animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes. This is usually accomplished by backlighting articulated cardboard cut-outs, though other methods exist. It is partially inspired by, but for a numb ...
(a similar technique but with the light coming from behind)
External links
Homepage*
''Humdrum'' on Vimeo
References
{{Aardman Animations
1998 films
British animated short films
Stop-motion animated short films
1998 comedy films
1990s animated short films
British comedy short films
1990s stop-motion animated films
1990s English-language films
1990s British films