http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4702653.stm How are squirrels trained to act? By Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine "Hero" squirrels get the close-ups Forty squirrels were trained to crack nuts in the new film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. How? Even with sophisticated computer-generated technology available, director Tim Burton refused to take any short cuts with the famous Nut Room scene in Roald Dahl's novel. It had to be as life-like as possible, Burton decided, which meant squirrels cracking and sorting nuts on a conveyor belt. In the film, they are seen sitting on stools testing the quality of the nuts until their work is rudely interrupted by one of the humans, in an action they take strong exception to. ************** Me i love the old willy wonka film with gene wilder the music & story was so good and the midgets or umpa doompas were hilarious The new movie judging by the trailer is using adult size men to play the midgets, with computer generated effects to make them look small maybe tim burton the director is anti-midgets I can not think of a worse director to be picked to direct this movie classic his ridiculous attempts at batman case in point But i thought i would never see the day when computer generated midgets replace real midgets shame on you burton And if these squirrels with bushy tails are such good actors How about one replacing that nut in the white house called bush
First off, why's this in the world events folder? At first I thought you were gonna compare training 40 squirrels to training Muslim extremists, lol. But the guy who plays the Oompa Loompa is Deep Roy. He's 4'4", not a fully sized adult. However, yes, he does play every single one of the Oompa Loompas, and that can be done without having to use CGI. Has anyone seen the movie? It does seem a bit weirder to me using Tim Burton's style for this movie even though it's said that it's supposed to be creepy. Come to think of it, Gene Wilder's was creepy too, but I think all the musical numbers made it not seem as such. I'll just wait till it comes out on video to check it out. That's pretty crazy though, training 40 squirrels to do all that, heh. - N