How One Man Became the Farmer in the Dell

John Stephenson loved working with those adorable pink little piggies in the 1995 film “Babe.”

But the director found that the pigs who inhabited his film version of George Orwell’s novel, “Animal Farm,” behaved, well, like swine.

“The pigs were huge,” Stephenson recalls. “They were fully grown beasts. They are monsters, actually. It was virtually impossible to get them to do anything. They were handpicked to be ugly.”

Filmed last year in Ireland, “Animal Farm,” which airs Sunday on TNT, features state-of-the-art animatronic technology developed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in London, as well as a cast of hundreds of live animals. Alan Janes and Martyn Burke adapted the screenplay from Orwell’s 1945 political allegory of the corruption of power in the Soviet Union.

“Animal Farm” marks Stephenson’s debut as a feature director. The senior vice president and creative supervisor of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Worldwide, he has overseen the shop’s work on such films as “Babe,” “Lost in Space,” “Dr. Dolittle” and even “The English Patient.”

Originally, he had turned down the chance to direct the TNT production because he felt it was unfilmable. “The original story is really a series of speeches made by animals,” says Stephenson, an unabashed animal lover.

“On face value, I didn’t think it would make a particularly great film, to be honest. But it didn’t take long for me to get into it. What we did was sort of lessen the content of the animals standing up and making speeches, and put in a little more action.”

Stephenson also beefed up the role of the compassionate collie dog, Jesse, who narrates the piece. “I made a couple of changes to turn it into a film, but having done that, I have tried to be exceptionally true to the original intent and material,” says Stephenson.

At first, Stephenson planned to shoot on the back lot of London’s Shepperton Studios. But, he says, it didn’t seem “quite right” because he wanted to make a “very real film, something very much to do with the elements and nature.”

Scouting locations in Ireland, he found a beautiful valley near Dublin. It was also isolated from civilization.

“We had to dig a well and put in electricity, telephones, roads,” says Stephenson. “We built our own studio in the valley and then had to put up stables for all the animals. We had to build a set to shoot it. It was quite a big operation.”

But one that saved them time and money. “It saved us enormously because once we were there, we didn’t move at all. I have to say, the place had a real kind of soul that was very important to the spirit of the piece.”

After finding the location, Stephenson cast his animal stars. “I wanted them to look like normal farmyard beasties,” he says. “Nothing exotic. For each animal, I had to have two or three standbys.”

Each animal had to be carefully measured for the animatronic models. “We sculpted them all in London. What I did was that I wasn’t absolutely faithful to the real animals on this occasion, because my ‘Animal Farm’ characters needed to have large personalities,” he says.

Synthetic material was used to create the characters, most especially silicone. “It’s very good for filmmaking because it reflects light. It’s very like skin and slightly translucent. You can backlight it and see membranes and veins in the material.

“Each strand of hair was stuck into the material with a needle. Pigs are surprisingly very, very, hairy things,” says Stephenson.

Animals Aren’t Terribly Expressive as Actors

During the six months the animatronic models were being crafted, the real animals were being trained. “One of the things that nobody will ever realize is that it’s very difficult to have more than two animals working together at the same time,” says Stephenson. “Real animals don’t actually do very much. All of those shots where you see big groups of animals doing things together, they are all composites. They had to be pre-planned.”

Because of his tight shooting schedule, every shot was storyboarded before the production went to Ireland. “We had to stay pretty faithful to those boards in order to make the schedule,” he says. “One thing, I am ever so experienced in dealing with those sorts of effects. I always maintain the success of doing a film like this is about making the absolutely right choices upfront.”

He also has distinct ideas about how to shoot effects sequences so that the real animals and the animatronic models blend together seamlessly. Practically every scene in the film involves both live animals and animatronic ones. For example, when the wise old pig, Old Major, addresses the creatures on the need for “animalism,” the close-ups of the animals are animatronics and the long shots are real animals. Scenes involving the animals talking are either animatronics--especially the sequences involving Napoleon and Squealer--or computer graphic effects done in post-production.

“A lot of people, when they shoot an effects movie, they tend to try and highlight the effect. They tend to try to glorify it into something that the audience wants to see as an effect. I try and hide all the effects so they are not there. So it always feels like it’s live and happening. That’s a good trick.”

Though Stephenson completed the 12-week shoot in November, the post-production was so complicated that he didn’t finish the film until this past July.

“It wasn’t an easy film to make,” says Stephenson. And it isn’t an easy film to watch, especially for youngsters. “I think the original intention was to make a slightly more cuddly film than I made. It’s not a Disney film. I did resist a lot of attempts to sort of lighten it.”

Stephenson can’t wait to direct again. “But I have a horrible feeling that everyone is going to refer to me as the man who directs animals,” he says with a sigh. “It would be very nice to direct two men in a room!”