Interviews
‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ – Jim Henson Creature Shop’s Robert Bennett on Designing the Film’s Animatronics [Interview]
This Halloween, the animatronic denizens of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza are heading to the big screen in Five Nights at Freddy’s, with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop responsible for bringing them to life through animatronics and puppetry.
Universal Pictures will release Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s in theaters and on Peacock beginning Friday, October 27, 2023. Five Nights at Freddy’s is directed by Emma Tammi (The Wind, Blood Moon) and written by Scott Cawthon, Emma Tammi, and Seth Cuddeback.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Five Nights at Freddy’s Project Supervisor and Lead Designer, Robert Bennett (“The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance,” Come Play), ahead of the film’s release about bringing the iconic characters to life.
Speaking with Bennett made one thing clear: starting with the game’s creator, Scott Cawthon, every element of this film was made with the intent to remain true to the games. Because Jim Henson’s Creature Shop worked so closely with Cawthon on the creatures, the design process was streamlined.
Bennett explains, “We actually got the files from the game directly from Scott Cawthon, and then we worked closely with Emma and Scott to develop different colors and textures to bring them into the real world. He was there from the very beginning until the very end. He was on set with us, and who better knows the FNaF universe than him? He was the one that we all went to to make sure that we were staying true to his vision.”
(from left) Bonnie, Freddy Fazbear and Chica in Five Nights at Freddy’s, directed by Emma Tammi.
Most of Freddy Fazbear’s characters are brought to life via animatronic suits worn by creature performers. Donning the animatronic suits are Kevin Foster (Ford vs. Ferrari, Iron Man) as Freddy, Jess Weiss (“Mayfair Witches“) as Chica, and Jade Kindar-Martin (“Interview With the Vampire,” The Walk) assumes the role of Bonnie. However, Foxy proved to be a much more elaborate character to pull off for the Creature Shop.
“Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy are suits that a stunt performer would be inside, and then the head would be performed by a puppeteer off-stage,” Bennett tells us. “But Foxy was a full animatronic, and when Foxy was completely up and going, it took six puppeteers. There’d be one on each leg, one on the arms, one on the torso, the head, and then there was a big arm that moved him up and down and could roll him down the hallway.
“The issue with Foxy, with his design, is he has holes all over his body, and it’s just cheaper to have the thing there than to have someone in a green suit, then you have to replace it. And just for the performers to have that on set and have this full animatronic that they could light from any angle, I think it helped the feel of the movie.”
While the expansive lore from both the games and Cawthon meant a faithful depiction on screen, Bennett teased that audiences can expect to see a new design in the mix.
He tells Bloody Disgusting, “There’s so much lore and the world, once again, it’s so rich that we really were able to pull from his library, and we made sure that anything that we were looking at was something that was sent from him that was an official license by him. But in the trailer, there’s the mask with all the saws and everything, and that’s a new design, and it was fun just to go in there and figure out where they’re going to be and what’s going to look the most menacing.”
Josh Hutcherson as Mike in Five Nights at Freddy’s, directed by Emma Tammi.
Movement is just as important as design here, and Bennett breaks down the creature team’s approach for principal photography.
“When we build them in the shop, we build them so that they can be almost deconstructed. If the shot is just a waist up, we can do just waist up,” Bennett states. “Or if it’s just Foxy walking, we can just have the legs walking. So as we’re designing the animatronics, we try to take into account that there will be requests on set on the day that we might have to retrofit them really quick for the shot and then put them back together for the next shot.”
More than just production demands, Bennett and crew had to ensure the animatronics moved authentically to the game and the characters’ originating period.
He explains, “It’s these animatronics that were made years ago, and now you’re a little bit in the future, and how do they age? How do you make that believable where it instantly looks like this really dingy animatronic that’s been sitting in a room? That’s what we spent a lot of time figuring out, where the textures and the shapes and the colors and how things would read with light.”
(from left) Freddy Fazbear and director Emma Tammi on the set of Five Nights at Freddy’s
But does making a movie about animatronics that spring to life at night and torment the security guard create any eerie scenarios on set?
Bennett recalls, “I know that there were several times where there would be a signal between one of the remote controls and a servo would glitch, and Emma would be like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so amazing. Can we do that again?’ Well, we’ll try. But they were built so well that we could make them look like they were glitching if they needed to, or we could make them look pristine if they needed to, but it was very fulfilling to be on set 10 o’clock at night in a hallway with this crazy animatronic hanging over you.”
When asked if fans might be surprised by any new details or lore in this film, Bennett reaffirmed just how committed the cast and crew were to remaining as faithful to the game as possible.
“I know that everyone in the production tried to stay as true to the game as they possibly could in every facet, from the sets to costumes to everything. I can’t really say anything without giving anything away, but everyone had the fans in mind while we were doing this project, so I think they’re going to love it.“
See Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy unleashed in Five Nights at Freddy’s on Friday, October 27.
Exclusives
‘Tarot’ Filmmakers Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg on Practical Creature Effects and ‘Insidious’ Inspirations
An evil curse gets awakened in Screen Gems horror movie Tarot when a group of friends recklessly ignore a sacred rule: never use someone else’s deck. Writers/Directors Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg unleash a variety of Tarot card-inspired entities on the group through practical effects, and create an unexpected connection to Insidious along the way.
The film comes exclusively to movie theaters on May 3, 2024.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Cohen and Halberg ahead of Tarot‘s release, where the pair shared more about the film’s practical effects-driven horrors and revealed how Tarot drew from Insidious in a specific way.
To start, though, the filmmakers reveal just how closely their horror movie sticks to the source novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams. The short answer is, well, it doesn’t at all!
Cohen explains, “It’s so different. We never even read the book and took nothing from the book. The only thing, the studio had a title that they liked, and so that’s why there was an association. Then we changed the title. So, now there’s literally zero connection to the book.“
“Sony had come to us wanting to make a horror movie about astrology, but there’s nothing that’s inherently scary to us about Zodiac signs. So, we came up with the idea of combining tarot readings and tarot cards with astrology, and that’s what ended up becoming the movie. There’s such incredible iconography in these cards that we really had a plethora of amazing characters to choose from,” Halberg adds.
Adain Bradley ‘Grant’ and Jacob Batalon ‘Paxton’ in Screen Gems TAROT
With a group of seven friends, expect to see their fates sealed by a number of cards. In other words, expect to see a wide variety of Tarot-inspired creatures tormenting the protagonists. The filmmakers stressed the importance of practical effects for their creatures.
Cohen tells us, “From the get-go, we said every creature is going to be practical. We were thinking of [David] Cronenberg, of Alien and The Thing, and we want our actors responding to real things, not a tennis ball. It always just looks better. You get better performances. With the designs themselves, if you look at the tarot cards and these specific characters, there’s nothing inherently terrifying about them, even though we associate the cards with being supernatural and terrifying. And [it’s] why we partnered with Trevor [Henderson], who was the only designer we met with. We were like, this is our guy because he has this ability to make the familiar feel unnatural.
“His designs are really grounded. I am sure you’ve seen a lot of his stuff where it’s like a hallway, and there’s something there, and something’s off about it, but it really feels like it’s in the space. We knew that he has a special brain for creating unique creatures, and he hadn’t done a movie, which is just shocking to us. Then, we knew that in order to pull that off, we would need a design team with equal skill. That was Dan Martin and his amazing team who worked hand in hand with Trevor to bring those to life.”
Larsen Thompson ‘Elise’ in Screen Gems TAROT
Great designs and practical effects are one thing, but it also falls to the performers to infuse these monsters with personality to make them memorable. That was also at the forefront of the filmmakers’ minds.
“In order for the creatures to translate, underneath all the prosthetics, you have to have great actors,” Cohen confirms. “We met with a lot of people. We were looking for people who were talking to us about the psychology and the movement and how they could move in a way that we hadn’t seen before or incorporate dance. We were looking for those outliers, and basically, everyone we hired approached the part as if there were no makeup or prosthetics. It’s like, ‘I am the Magician, so this is what I want to do. I’m going to have a limp. My body’s going to do this. I feel like my head is hunched.’ And we would watch these actors just embody these roles. It was really just picking great people, honestly. It’s hard to act through prosthetics and create emotion and fear and other things. You have to have an incredible control to be able to do that.”
Halberg elaborates,” Even though we enhanced some of the creatures with visual effects, we didn’t want to rely on that. So we needed people, like Spenser said, who each brought their own unique feel to these characters. They were just as important as all of the other actors in the movie and are so crucial to making sure that these sequences are scary and believable.”
Humberly González ‘Madeline’ in Screen Gems TAROT
One of the many Tarot creatures in the film is the Magician, who comes with an original song by the film’s composer, Joseph Bishara. While Bishara has delivered no shortage of great contemporary horror scores, including The Conjuring and Malignant, horror fans are likely more familiar with Bishara as the Lipstick Demon in the Insidious franchise. Cohen and Halberg can be counted among Insidious fans, so much so that they wanted an original song from the Lipstick Demon himself.
They explain, “We actually, in prep, we called Joe, and we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do some kind of an old-timey song there.’ We knew something creepy, very Shining-esque. Then we had the idea to do a song called ‘I Saw You’ to be a pun on that whole thing. And actually use saws as the instrument. We found these YouTube videos, and our DP, I think, Elie [Smolkin] had found these videos of someone playing a saw. We were like, that’s terrifying.
“So we called Joe, and we said, ‘You know Tiptoe through the Tulips, how that’s like in Insidious?’ That’s the thing you leave the theater thinking about, and it gets under your skin. We were like, ‘Can you do that for us with an original song?’ He said yes. What you hear in the movie is basically what he played for us the first time. He was just like, ‘I have an idea. I’ll talk to you guys in a week.’ And then that was what we heard, and it was amazing.”
With so many entities and horror sequences, Halberg can’t pick a favorite. Instead, she offers one last tease, “I hope people come away with the realization that each of the sequences is so unique and different, and that each of the creatures is so special because we took a lot of time trying to craft each of these kills or scares to be their own thing and to feel different.
“Hopefully everybody can choose their own favorite.”
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