The Creepy Thing That Happened On The Five Nights At Freddy's Set
The animatronic monsters in "Five Nights At Freddy's" are creepy enough in the film. But wait until you find out what the crew saw them do behind the scenes.
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00:00 The animatronic monsters in Five Nights at Freddy's are creepy enough in the film, but
00:05 wait until you find out what the crew saw them do behind the scenes.
00:09 One of the best decisions the creatives behind Five Nights at Freddy's film adaptation made
00:13 was hiring Jem Henson's Creature Shop to manufacture its merrily murderous mascot animatronics
00:19 as real-life puppets, and not CGI creations.
00:23 "And all the animatronics had such a personality."
00:27 Both the movie and the original video games take place at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a Chuck-E-Cheese-style
00:33 family entertainment center populated by giant animatronics who like to sneak around and
00:38 murder people under the cover of night.
00:41 It would be one thing if Mr. Fazbear and his friends were obviously computer animated in
00:46 the film, but the fact that they're as tactile as the flesh-and-blood humans they're stalking
00:51 makes the horror of the situation that much more immediate and perceptible.
00:56 Comic horror in general thrives on practical effects for similar reasons.
01:01 Part of what makes the ventriloquist dummies work in films like Magic and Dead Silence,
01:05 besides their creepily uncanny human-like appearances, is that nagging question that
01:10 sticks in the back of your mind when you're looking at them.
01:13 What if it's not just the person who's controlling them?
01:16 What if this very real thing is actually alive in some way?
01:20 Luckily, when you're at home, you can remind yourself it's just a movie, and nothing's
01:25 going to leap out of the screen to get you.
01:27 Unless it turns out you secretly exist in the Ring universe, in which case, best of
01:32 luck to you.
01:33 Of course, things were a little different for director Emma Tommy and her crew on the
01:37 Five Nights at Freddy's set.
01:40 "Hello?"
01:42 As terrifying as the Five Nights at Freddy's murder bots are on screen, it appears that
01:46 the film's cast and crew had a grand old time working with them in person.
01:51 Youngster Piper Rubio, who plays Abby in the film, even went so far as to hug her homicidal
01:56 co-stars goodbye whenever she left the set after a day of shooting.
02:01 However, when interviewed by Entertainment Weekly, Tommy admitted there was one time
02:05 that she found herself giving one of the animatronics a double look when it seemingly moved of its
02:10 own accord.
02:11 In her own words,
02:12 "They did have a life of their own at times.
02:15 Each of the different, moving parts on the animatronic was puppeteered by a different
02:19 person.
02:20 You had the eyes controlled by someone, the arms controlled by someone else, the ears
02:24 and jaws controlled by a different puppeteer."
02:27 She then went on to recount a particularly unsettling occurrence.
02:30 "I remember standing next to one of the puppeteers with a remote control in their hand, and the
02:35 animatronic all of a sudden twitched its eye.
02:38 I looked at the puppeteer and I was like, 'Did you do that?'
02:41 And she said, 'No, it just needed to let us know it was alive.'"
02:45 Lest anyone take her too seriously, Tommy quickly clarified she was joking.
02:50 She elaborated,
02:51 "I kid, but they are imperfect, and wonderfully so, and we definitely embraced the quirks
02:56 when they would do stuff that we didn't necessarily command them to do exactly.
03:01 We sometimes thought it was gold and used it, so it was super fun in that way.
03:05 It felt like a real live element."
03:07 Like Tommy, the late Jim Henson not only appreciated the power of animatronics, but he also recognized
03:13 they could serve a myriad of purposes.
03:17 Sometimes they would be frightening, like the ghastly Skeksis in Henson's cult classic
03:21 fantasy film The Dark Crystal.
03:23 "I, I, I am still in power."
03:30 And at other times, they could be adorable, as was the case with the various googly-eyed
03:35 characters Henson and his fellow puppeteers came up with for the series Sesame Street
03:39 and Fraggle Rock.
03:41 They could even be a little bit of both, like the Fieries, who try to pull teenage Jennifer
03:45 Connelly's head off in Henson's cult hit Labyrinth.
03:50 Jim Henson's Creature Shop has only continued that tradition in the decades since its founder's
03:54 death, crafting intimidating yet lovable giant practical critters like the Wild Things from
04:00 Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are.
04:03 When it came to Five Nights at Freddy's, Tommy told EW she knew Freddy and his gang needed
04:08 to be scary at times, while also being friendly and communicative to work with, especially
04:13 when it came to Rubio.
04:15 She added,
04:16 "They needed to be everything, all in one, and no one was better to bring that vision
04:20 to life than Jim Henson's Creature Shop."
04:23 It's good to know Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, and Foxy were far better co-workers in the real
04:27 world than they were for the characters in the film.
04:30 5.
04:31 The Creature Shop type Movie Genre Superhero release date 05/26/19 director Tommy Henson
04:32 Cast Tom Henson, Bonnie Henson, Freddy Henson Studio Walt Disney Pictures Complete Coverage
04:33 Five Nights at Freddy's 5
04:34 The Creature Shop type Movie Genre Superhero release date 05/26/19 director Tommy Henson