Trivia
Trivia you may or may not know about wallace and gromit!
Curse of the were rabbit trivia:
To prepare the Aardman animators for animating the Wallace and Gromit characters and world, ten short films were made by the various animating teams. They were released online under the title Wallace & Gromit's Cracking Contraptions (2002) (V); the first, "Soccamatic", was a free download, but the other nine were only available by subscribing or by ordering the DVD.
Hutch only speaks phrases spoken by Wallace previously in the movie and preceding short films.
DreamWorks wanted Aardman to replace Peter Sallis, the voice of Wallace since the first animated short, with a well-known actor that American audiences would recognize. According to Entertainment Weekly, they politely but firmly refused; instead, they got Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter to play roles.
WILHELM SCREAM: By a villager, as the were-rabbit begins his rampage after picking up Lady Tottingham
The greenhouse in Lady Campanula Tottington's house is made of real glass. Her gardens feature 100 types of trees and plants and 700 varieties of vegetable.
Nick Park admits that Wallace bears a resemblance to his father.
Each character needed several versions to cover a range of emotions and poses. There were 43 versions of Gromit, 35 Wallaces, 16 Victor Quartermaines and 15 Lady Tottingtons, as well as 20 differently shaped mouths. A single line of dialog of only a few words could take a whole day to animate.
The film required 2.8 tons of Plasticine in 42 colors and 1000 baby-wipes per week to wipe it off animators' fingers.
There were 30 miniature sets.
The hairdressers' shop in the town is called Close Shave, in honor of the Oscar winning Nick Park short which marked Wallace & Gromit's third adventure Wallace and Gromit in A Close Shave (1995).
The tax disk on the full size version of the van shows the color of the van as being "Preston Green." This name was decided upon by the Art Director and one of the founders of the International Austin A30/A35 Register in honor of Nick Park's home town of Preston, Lancashire, England. It is also a reference to the ferocious dog in Wallace and Gromit in A Close Shave (1995).
When the film was released in Portland, Dorset, UK, the posters had to be altered to remove the word "rabbit". There is a local superstition that prohibits the use of this word (they use terms such as "underground mutton" or "furry things" instead) because burrowing can cause dangerous landslips in the local stone quarrying industry. The film posters in Portland use the alternative slogan "Something bunny is going on."
The movie contains a considerable amount of CGI of all kinds, from drifting fog through to the bunny rabbits in the Bun-Vac. In all, there are over 700 shots that contain some kind of digital effects work.
The Victor Quartermaine character was once known as Tristrum, and was originally written into the script as Lady Tottington's son.
Lady Campanula Tottington is named after Nick Park's favorite flowers (campanula).
The Latin motto of the Tottington family inscribed on the manor house translates roughly as "Manure Liberates Us All". (It was originally meant to be "Free Manure for Everyone").
All the wallpaper created for the sets are entirely hand-painted.
Special software had to be created in order to photo-realistically recreate the texture of genuine Aardman plasticine in the computer. The software had to create the possibility for slight imperfections, e.g., fingerprints to appear on the fake plasticine bunnies and ripple effects of the characters moving their plasticine arms and legs.
The entire feature production crew consisted of 250 people.
The crew used 44 pounds of glue every month to assist in sticking down the sets.
Took five years to make.
In Wallace"s bookcase there are several titles which refer to cheese. They are "The Hunt For Red Leicester", "Brighton Roquefort", "How Green Was My Cheese", "Brie Encounter", "Swiss Cheese Family Robinson", "East of Edam", "Grated Expectations", "Fromage to Eternity", and "Waiting for Gouda".
The van that Wallace drives in the movie is an Austin A35, made by the Austin Motor company from the late-50's to 1968.
The license plate of the Anti-Pesto van is "HOP 21T", which can be read "Hop to it".
Aardman collaborated with the UK based International Austin A30/A35 Register (aka Flying-A.net) to produce a road version of the model van for promotional purposes. Based on a 1964 Austin A35 van, the full size vehicle was fully restored then subjected to a painstakingly careful battering, rusting and discolouring to faithfully reproduce the dents and scrapes as seen in the movie. The work was completed in six weeks.
During filming, Aardman managed an average of 3 seconds of usable footage per day.
During the character design phase, the look of Lady Tottington changed as many as 40 times.
Even before the release of the film, the only producer of Stinking Bishop cheese in the world had their orders increase over 500%. The producer only makes 22 tons of the cheese annually and has no intention to grow in size.
The author's name on the front of the monster encyclopedia that Reverend Hedges shows to Quartermaine is "Claude Savagely".
At one point, Wallace is reading a magazine called "Ay-Up!", a spoof of celebrity-spotting magazine Hello! Ay-up is regional greeting, mainly in the north of England.
The code for Gromit's High-Security greenhouse is "8425", which can spell "Halt" on a telephone. Note: later on the "8" is not punched.
The pet name "Totty" is also English slang for a desirable woman.
When Gromit is sitting in the van and turns on the radio, the song playing is "Bright Eyes", the theme song from Watership Down (1978), another English animated movie about rabbits.
The rune stones shown in the vicar's cupboard when retrieving the golden bullets represent harvest and defense.
Entries in the Vicar's Monster Book are jokes: 1) "touristis trappus" for the Loch Ness Monster (joke about it being a major tourist attraction) ; 2) "enormious flippis-floppus" for the Bigfoot; 3) "numerous pendulus udderis" for the Were-Cow ; 4) "carrotus appetitus giganticus" for the Were-Rabbit.
Stage lights were used for filming rather than film lights because they are smaller and easier to control. During the course of the production over 900 lamps were used.
Torch bulbs and other small lamps were used as "practical" lights on the sets and over 15,000 were used on the fairground.
Sounds of real Austin A35 van were recorded, including the sound of its doors and windscreen wipers.
The grass is made from fun fur imported from the USA.
On average, each character got a new pair of eyes every two months.
Voted number 25 in channel 4's (UK) "Greatest Family Films"
At the fairground, there's a little notice in front of the Hot Dog stand that says "Hot Dogs, and Cats and Burgers", a reference to DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.
When Lady Tottington wants the Were-Rabbit to escape, she says "Run, rabbit, run!" Which is the title (and lyric) of a ditty written by Noel Gay and Ralph Butler for Noel's show, "The Little Dog Laughed". WWII era comedy duo Flanagan and Allen made the song popular by adding lyrics referring to Adolf Hitler. PC Mac whistled this song during the original version of the opening sequence (see "Deleted Scenes" on the DVD).
The Were-Rabbit had an internal mechanism that allowed the animators to move the model with minimal touching of the fur covering, thus avoiding the tell-tale impressions left by their fingers.
Shortly after this film was released, the Aardman warehouse in Bristol, England burned to the ground, destroying hundreds of plasticine characters and sets, virtually the entire history of the company. Nick Park was quoted as saying, "Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn't a big deal."
During the scene where Victor chases the were-rabbit through the town's back gardens, there is a poster on one of the walls for a show called "Rock around the Crop" featuring Carl Gherkins and Roy Aubergine.
The name of Wallace & Gromit's pest control company is a triple pun. "Anti-pesto", aside from the obvious pest control pun, also refers to "antipasto," which is an assortment of Italian appetizers (including vegetables) and to "pesto," a sauce-base made up mainly of basil, garlic, oil and, of course, cheese.
The church stained-glass window that the were-rabbit leaps through depicts Saint George, the patron saint of England, fighting a dragon.
During one shot, where the camera pulls out of the vicar's room where he keeps his occult objects, there are two portraits briefly visible on the wall. The people in the pictures are the two directors, Nick Park and Steve Box.
At the beginning when Wallace is being launched from the bed there is a sign(or scarf) on the wall: 'Wensleydale Lovers Society' this is a tribute to the story of unintentionally saving a small British cheese maker from bankruptcy by Wallace mentioning Wensleydale in Wallace and Gromit in A Close Shave (1995).
The line "Run, rabbit, run!" is also a reference to the song "Breathe/In The Air" from Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon album.
Features more human characters than the previous short films did.
Many of the plot points of this movie - villagers closely guarding vegetables for a local contest, trying to grow abnormally large vegetables, a large carrot used as a shop sign - were used in "Last of the Summer Wine", also starring Peter Sallis. The episode in question, "Last of the Summer Wine: Greenfingers (#4.6)" (1977), is from Season 4, airing in 1977.
