Stories about A Minecraft Movie’s viral “Chicken jockey!” audience response meme continue to roll out on a regular cadence. Minecraft Movie star Jack Black showed up at one screening to warn the audience not to yell or throw things during the scene where his character Steve shrieks at the arrival of a baby zombie riding a chicken, which his new buddy Garrett (Jason Momoa) has to fight in a wrestling ring. Director Jared Hess told Entertainment Weekly that he loves the audience reaction videos: “It’s just fun to experience things as a group of human beings. I think people are starved for that experience.” So when Polygon sat down with Wētā FX’s effects team to discuss their work on the movie, we naturally had to start with the chicken jockey character.
VFX supervisor Sheldon Stopsack and animation supervisor Kevin Estey told us that that while Wētā only handled initial work on the jockey — “our department was involved in the character design for the vast majority of all characters, and the chicken jockey was one of them,” Stopsack said — they were present for the motion-capture performance sessions at Wētā where Hess worked with the actors body-doubling for the digital characters. They both agree those sessions were a blast to watch.
“We were fortunate enough to be a small group watching them piece together the motion capture for it on our mocap stage here,” Estey said. “There was a lot of laughter in seeing Jared work through with the stunt performers and actors on what would be happening on the digital side of that sequence. They had only shot the live-action component [with Black and Momoa] a few weeks prior.”
Estey says the baby zombie’s movements were mapped out by “one of their smaller-statured stunt performers,” riding “what basically amounted to a seesaw horse with wheels on it” around the stage. “It was padded so that when they were doing different performances — jumping off the back of it, slamming into the front of it, doing the head-butt — no one would get injured,” Estey said. “It was quite fun to see them play it out. One of the most fun parts that didn’t make the film was Jared was loving the idea of the baby zombie being up on the ropes, doing a big dance routine.”
“Part of the mocap was a little bit the theme of the movie — a lot of things were improvised, and there was a lot of exploration, playing with ideas,” Stopsack says. “We had the baby zombie hyping and pumping up the crowd, and playing to the music — all little fun things, and really enjoyable, because the crew and we were laughing and exploring ideas. Obviously only parts made it into the movie, but that reflects the idea of the movie: Just having a good time and trying to find fun ideas.”
“And also just seeing how Jared as a director likes to work,” Estey said. “Being able to do that for all the sequences was really refreshing, and it gave us a chance to see what type of a director he was, what his creative desires were, what his sense of humor was. So it really helped set a tone for us.”
All of which means that somewhere out there is behind-the-scenes footage of the chicken jockey actor riding a toy horse around and dancing on the ropes. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll eventually get to see the raw video when A Minecraft Movie hits digital release.
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