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.
Interviews
‘Rubberhead’ Director Nick Taylor on FX Maverick Steve Johnson, Practical Effects, and Seven-Year Journey
Horror journalist, producer, and podcast host Nick Taylor moves into the director’s seat for his feature debut with illuminating documentary Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson.
It chronicles the wild life and career of SFX maverick Steve Johnson, based on the multi-volume book series Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs and Special FX, and those familiar likely already know Rubberhead isn’t your standard horror documentary.
Johnson is responsible for so many memorable movie monsters, having worked on Fright Night, Poltergeist II, An American Werewolf in London, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Night of the Demons, to name a few. He’s also extremely candid in ways that feel atypical in this industry, open about his failures as much as his successes.
“It was a natural progression for sure,” Nick Taylor tells Bloody Disgusting of his transition into filmmaking ahead of Rubberhead‘s world premiere next week at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 23. “I think with my podcast, I got adept at interviewing people and pulling creative lessons out of them, which was the point of my podcast. I wanted this movie to be sort of a creativity pill for artists where if they’re starting a project or feel creatively stuck, they could watch this movie and be inspired and get actual practical creative lessons.”
Taylor’s background in PR and marketing also organically led him down this path.
He charts the course from book promo to documentary director: “But also Bloody Disgusting had a lot to do with this movie because in the very beginning when I first met Steve, I was helping him promote his book and I said, ‘Hey, I got a marketing background and a journalism background. Let me help you promote this book. I’ll just pitch stories from your life to the media, and we’ll see what happens.’ And John Squires wrote an article about Steve making Slimer under the influence of tons and tons of cocaine, and that went fairly viral.”
“For a week, it was story time with Steve,” Taylor continues. “He would tell me a story from his life, and every story was about a major movie, a major director, lots of drugs and alcohol and insanity. I would write them up, and I think John published about three or four of them. So huge shout out to John Squires because that was really great. So yeah, there were definitely a lot of outgrowths of my journalism background that definitely contributed to this movie.”
Rubberhead condenses the multi-book series into a cohesive feature film with a breezy runtime, sparking the obvious question as to how Taylor approached condensing Johnson’s life down to an under 2-hour documentary film.
“That was one of the more difficult parts of all of this, because we had enough for a series or an epically long six-hour fan documentary,” he answers. “But from day one, I did not want to make a fan documentary. I love them. They’re a lot of fun, but I did want the movie to stand on its own two feet as a character-driven portrait of an artist and a time period and a technology, that being practical effects. I did want to be objective. I didn’t want to make this too long. I wanted to make it re-watchable. So I think we just really had to focus on what the narratives were that we wanted to tell. So there were some basically almost cliché archetypical mythic narratives present in Steve’s life. We could have made this way longer, but we wanted to keep it short. But luckily that’s why you have special features.”
Johnson quickly proves to be an engaging subject thanks to his self-effacing wit and frank self-reflections; expect no shortage of stories about how drugs factored into the height of his career or the failures it wrought.
That rare quality was an asset for Rubberhead, Taylor confirms. “He does not shy away from anything about the drugs, the addiction, the bridges burned, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. He just is honest about all of it. He’s had a lot of time for reflection, and he’s done a lot of reflection, so he doesn’t shy away from any of it, which is huge because it’s very refreshing. I don’t think a lot of people are that way, at least in this industry from what I can see. So I think it was hugely beneficial. We wanted to lean into that, and we wanted to make this sort of a gonzo Hunter S. Thompson sort of wild tale through Steve’s overall life.“
Condensing his life into this doc was a slow and steady process for Taylor, too. “It’s been almost seven years. It’s been a labor of love. We’ve been as indie as it gets. We would shoot what we could when we could, and then we would edit when we could. Then after a while it all came together.”
In a way, making Rubberhead brings Taylor’s horror fandom full circle. It turns out that the very film that sparked his interest in the genre and practical effects also comes with an amusing Steve Johnson anecdote.
Taylor explains, “My gateway for sure was Beetlejuice. I saw that at a very young age; I think I was four or five. I felt somebody had shown me, my soul. I get a little emotional thinking about it. There was something about that movie that felt so strange and unusual, but also felt so familiar. It was spooky, but it was fun, and it was lighthearted, and it had humor, but it also had this macabre celebration to it that I just really got into as a kid. I felt somebody had shown me my own soul. And funny story, Steve got fired from Beetlejuice because Tim Burton gave him his hand-drawn designs and Steve’s like, ‘Oh my God, these look like kids did them. This is not what you want. I know what you want. I’m going to redesign these for you.’ And Tim Burton was like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re not.’ So yeah, funny story.”
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