Shaun The Sheep (lost pilot of British stop-motion TV series; early to mid 2000s)

From The Lost Media Wiki
Revision as of 14:05, 1 October 2022 by Shoelost (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
ShaunTheSheepPilotScreenshotFull.jpg

A screenshot supposedly from the pilot.

Status: Lost

In 1995, the character Shaun the Sheep made his debut in Aardman Animatons' Wallace & Gromit short "A Close Shave". Like its predecessors it was produced entirely using the studio's signature hand-built stop-motion animation and proved to be a great success, winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film the same year.

Aardman soon realized they had a breakout star on their hands in Shaun, the intelligent but mischevious young leader of a flock of sheep that prove invaluable to Wallace over the course of the short. With Shaun's merchandise sales surpassing that of the leads, the decision to create a spin-off series was the natural next step.[1]At some point in the early 2000s, after production wrapped on Chicken Run and before it began on Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a pilot was made to pitch the series to broadcasters.

Production

Not much is known about the pilot's production save that it was evidently keyed to a somewhat lower budget than the final series, using smaller and less detailed sets and missing the framing device of the Farmer and his sheepdog Bitzer. From their appearance it seems that Shaun and the flock's models were simply recycled from "A Close Shave", with the exception of Shirley - originally just 'the big fat sheep' - the only character who would move unchanged from the pilot to the series.

Availability

This pitch pilot, like most such, was never aired on television or given any kind of official release. In 2004, the pilot was shown to the BBC, who would greenlight the series for production and airing on their spinoff channel for children, CBBC.[2] That same year various articles would be published by the BBC showing the only currently available screenshot from the pilot.

On April 17th, 2007, an article was posted on an Aardman exhibition featuring images of unseen material from Shaun The Sheep, including one evidently from the pilot. Whether the film itself was shown at the exhibition is unknown.[3]

In 2005, a fire broke out at Aardman's storage warehouse, destroying many of the delicate production props (excluding those from The Curse of The Were-Rabbit, which were either on tour or at Aardman's offices). This likely included the props from the Shaun pilot. Fortunately the master production tapes of all Aardman films remained safe in a separate location, the pilot film likely included.

In May of 2022, concept art of Shirley was released on the official Shaun the Sheep Twitter account, which further revealed that the concept artist for the pilot was Sylvia Bull.[4] A Twitter user called Random Sheep claimed to be the voice of one of the background sheep in the pilot; they also revealed Shirley's original nickname, which they assumed was changed to avoid negative stereotyping.[5]

Gallery

References