Production
Filming began on August 25, 1998 and ending on November 6. Because of the extensive CGI work and other post-production requirements, the film was not delivered to TNT and Hallmark Entertainment until June 1999.
Fourteen animals were built to represent the animals of Animal Farm at Jim Henson's Creature Shop in London: four pigs (Old Major, Snowball, Napoleon and Squealer), two horses (Boxer and Mollie), a sheepdog (Jessie), a donkey (Benjamin), a raven (Moses), a goat (Muriel), a sheep, a rat, a chicken and a duck.
Ten dogs were cast into the film from Fircroft Kennels. Their Border Collie, Spice, played the role of Jessie.
In early screenplays done by Martyn Burke for this film, Jessie was set to be a male character, rather than a female.
It should be noted the patterns on Napoleon's skin are similar to that of his incarnation in the 1954 animated film of Animal Farm. It is unknown whether this is intentional or merely a coincidence.
Read more about this topic: Animal Farm (1999 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)