Claire Jennings is one of the world's leading animation producers, having produced Aardman's "Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of The Were-Rabbit" in 2005, and worked together with Willem Thyseen to produce "Father and Daughter" in 2001. Claire Jennings first began her career in 1989, working for John Coates at TVC London, during her five year tenure, she worked on such productions as "Father Christmas" and "The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends". Subsequently, she embarked on her productions in the UK, producing Academy Award-nominated animated shorts "Jolly Roger" and "The Canterbury Tales", which were nominated for and won BAFTA Awards, respectively.
Honestly though, she has a pretty darn impressive filmography (It was especially a pleasant surprise to learn that she had been a producer for "The Big Knights").
It was a pity that I couldn't stay all the way until the end (Especially when she was to finally receive her award), but I am glad I was able to catch whatever I could while I was there. I suppose there's still so much that I need to know when it comes to being a producer or director, both of them are so important, but have to uptake such different tasks from one another. I suppose one of the tasks that stood out the most to me when taking on the role of a producer is being the one to put together to team and to keep a fairly peaceful working environment (If there were to be any conflicts, she would see to getting it settled promptly).
It was humorously stated that during the making of "Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", Claire practically felt like a punching bag when settling matters between Aardman and Dreamworks studios. At times she had to aggressively convince Dreamworks to give them more time, it only makes sense for such issues to occur when two studios with completely different cultures attempt to collaborate with one another, and Claire Jennings did a fine job keeping them together while also making sure a quality animation came out of it all.
"Stressed Eric" was an idea brought forth by Scottish comedian Peter Baikie, while he has written for several live-action comedy shows, this was going to be his first animated project, and so Claire Jennings was hired to aid him in that area.
As mentioned in another post, Laika was clearly struggling a little when they started on their first ever animated feature film "Coraline", with the schedule and budget just not working out for the entire crew and progress coming along very slowly, Henry Selick decided that it was time to seek out the assistance of Claire Jennings. An experienced hand was simply needed as most of the crew for this film, despite how talented they were, had little experience in handling such a big project.
Being a producer, Claire's hard work is not as celebrated as it should be, due to always getting things done behind the scenes (We have already seen how much trouble the film "Coraline" was actually in, despite how seemingly magical and fun the Laika crew had made it sound in one of their making-of videos). But thankfully, since her return to the UK, Claire remains highly recognised by many people in the industry, and so most of them end up going to her instead of the other way round.
"It was creativity with a gun held to your head."
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