The Original Film
The original Creature Comforts short film was five minutes long and was conceived and directed by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations featuring the voices of British non-actors in the same vein as the "man on the street" Vox Pop interviews. It was produced as part of a series called Lip Synch for Channel 4. The film won Nick Park the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1990.
The film shows various animals in a zoo being interviewed about their living conditions. These include a depressed Gorilla, a Brazilian Mountain Lion and a young Gorilla who complain about the cold weather, the poor quality of their enclosures and the lack of space and freedom. By contrast, a Bush-Baby and an Armadillo praise their enclosures for the comfort and security they bring, and a family of Polar Bears talk about both the advantages and disadvantages of zoos for the welfare of animals. Rather than the subject being one-sided or biased towards one view-point, there is a strong balance of opinions in the film, with some interviewees who are happy with their living situation, some who are not, and some who have a neutral opinion.
The voices of each character were performed by residents of both a housing estate and an old people's home. Stop-Motion animation was then used to animate each character, and the answers given in the interviews were put in the context of zoo animals. The Polar Bears were voiced by a family who owned a local shop, while the Mountain Lion was voiced by a Brazilian student who was living in the UK, but missed his home country.
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