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