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A Grand Day Out

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A Grand Day Out
Original cover art of the A Grand Day Out VHS. (United States)
Directed byNick Park
Written byNick Park
Steve Rushton
Produced byRob Copeland
StarringPeter Sallis
CinematographyNick Park
Edited byRob Copeland
Music byJulian Nott
Production
companies
Distributed byThe National Film School Distribution Company[1]
Release dates
  • 4 November 1989 (1989-11-04) (Bristol Animation Festival)
  • 24 December 1990 (1990-12-24) (Channel 4)
Running time
23 minutes[2]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£11,000[3]

A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit, later marketed as A Grand Day Out, is a 1989[4] British stop-motion animated short film directed and animated by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol. In the film, Wallace and Gromit spend a bank holiday by building a homemade rocket to the Moon to sample cheese.

The short premiered on 4 November 1989, at the Bristol Animation Festival at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol.[5][3][6][7][8] It was first broadcast on 24 December 1990, Christmas Eve, on Channel 4.[9][10] A Grand Day Out is followed by 1993's The Wrong Trousers, 1995's A Close Shave, 2005's The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and 2008's A Matter of Loaf and Death.

The short was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 1990 Oscars, but it lost to Creature Comforts, another stop motion animated short film made by Nick Park and Aardman Animation, released in the same year.

Plot

Cheese-loving inventor Wallace (Peter Sallis) decides to visit the moon with his dog Gromit for their bank holiday, as "everybody knows the moon's made of cheese." They build a rocket in the basement and pack for the trip, and Wallace remembers to bring crackers moments before liftoff.

On the moon, Wallace and Gromit set up a picnic and sample some of the moon landscape, but find its taste unfamiliar. Looking for a different spot, they encounter a coin-operated robot that resembles an oven. Wallace inserts a coin, but nothing happens; after he and Gromit leave, the robot comes to life and gathers their dirty plates left at the picnic spot.

The robot discovers a skiing magazine and yearns to travel to Earth and experience the sport. It repairs a broken piece of landscape, issues a parking ticket for the rocket, and is annoyed by an oil leak from the craft. The robot sneaks up on Wallace and prepares to strike him, but the money Wallace inserted runs out, and it freezes. Wallace takes the robot's truncheon as a souvenir, inserts another coin, and prepares to leave with Gromit.

Returning to life, the robot realises that the rocket can take it to Earth and excitedly follows Wallace and Gromit. Wallace panics, thinking that the robot is angry over the pieces of moon he is taking, and he and Gromit retreat into the rocket, only to discover that they forgotten to light the fuse. Unable to climb the rocket's ladder, the robot cuts into the fuselage with a can opener, but accidentally ignites some fuel. The resulting explosion blasts it backward and allows Wallace and Gromit to lift off.

The robot is left on the moon. Initially dejected, it fashions metal from the rocket fuselage into skis and is soon happily skiing across the lunar landscape. It waves goodbye to Wallace and Gromit as they return home.

Production

Nick Park started creating the film in 1982, as a graduation project for the National Film and Television School. In 1985, Aardman Animations took him on before he finished the piece, allowing him to work on it part-time while still being funded by the school. To make the film, Park wrote to William Harbutt's company, requesting a long ton of plasticine. The block he received had ten colours, one of which was called "stone"; this was used for Gromit. Park wanted to voice Gromit, but he realised the voice he had in mind – that of Peter Hawkins – would have been difficult to animate.[11]

For Wallace, Park offered Peter Sallis £50 to voice the character, and his acceptance greatly surprised the young animator. Park wanted Wallace to have a Lancastrian accent like himself, but Sallis could only do a Yorkshire voice. Inspired by how Sallis drew out the word "cheese", Park chose to give Wallace large cheeks. When Park called Sallis six years later to explain he had completed his film, Sallis swore in surprise.[11]

Gromit was named after grommets, because Park's brother, an electrician, often mentioned them, and Nick Park liked the sound of the word. Wallace was originally a postman named Jerry, but Park felt the name did not match well with Gromit. Park saw an overweight Labrador retriever named Wallace, who belonged to an old woman boarding a bus in Preston. Park commented it was a "funny name, a very northern name to give a dog".[12]

According to the book The World of Wallace and Gromit, original plans were that the film would be forty minutes long, including a sequence where Wallace and Gromit would discover a fast food restaurant on the Moon. Regarding the original plot, Park said:

The original story was that Wallace and Gromit were going to go to the Moon and there were going to be a whole lot of characters there. One of them was a parking meter attendant, which was the only one that remained – the robot cooker character – but there were going to be aliens, and all sorts. There was going to be a McDonald's on the Moon, and it was going to be like a spoof Star Wars. Wallace was going to get thrown into prison and Gromit was going to have to get him out. By the time I came to Aardman, I had just started doing the Moon scene and somebody told me, "It's going to take you another nine years if you do that scene!" so I had to have a check with reality and cut that whole bit out. Somehow, I had to tie up the story on the Moon and finish the film.[13]

Reception

Awards and nominations

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film, but lost to the short Creature Comforts, which was also a creation of Nick Park.

References

  1. ^ "Annual Report 1990" (PDF). Channel 4. p. 20. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 September 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2015. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ "Aardman Animations and the NFTS Present Wallace & Gromit in Nick Park's A Grand Day Out". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 22 January 2017.
  3. ^ a b Jeffries, Stuart (16 September 2005). "Lock up your vegetables!". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
  4. ^ "A Grand Day Out (1989)". British Film Forever. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
  5. ^ Martins, Holly (September 2000). "13th BBC British Short Film Festival". Netribution. Archived from the original on 29 July 2001. Retrieved 15 August 2015. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ Media Monkey (4 November 2009). "Wallace and Gromit's 20th birthday present from Google Doodle". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 March 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2015. Park unveiled Wallace and Gromit to an unsuspecting public on this day in 1989 at an animation festival at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  7. ^ "2012 Annual Review" (PDF). Nick Park on A Grand Day Out when shown at Bristol Animation Festival in 1989. 2013. p. 4. Retrieved 15 August 2015. Nick Park on A Grand Day Out when shown at Bristol Animation Festival in 1989
  8. ^ "Gromit! It has been 25 years". The Telegraph. 4 November 2014. Archived from the original on 7 November 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2015. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ Midgley, Neil (26 November 2010). "Christmas telly is a reassuring British tradition". The Telegraph. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
  10. ^ "A Grand Day Out". Wallace & Gromit. Archived from the original on 7 February 2008. Retrieved 22 August 2015. A Grand Day Out was finally finished and transmitted on Channel 4 on Christmas Eve, 1990 - 6 years after production began!
  11. ^ a b Nigel Farndale (18 December 2008). "Wallace and Gromit: one man and his dog". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 18 December 2008.
  12. ^ Nigel Kendall (20 December 2008). "Nick Park on Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death". The Times. London. Retrieved 26 December 2008.
  13. ^ Andy Lane (2004). The World of Wallace and Gromit. BoxTree. p. 53. ISBN 9780752215587.
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