Little Shop of Horrors (film) when it was rediscovered on a VHS workprint that contained alternate and extended takes and sequences. The film's version of Audrey II was an extremely elaborate creation, using puppets designed by Lyle Conway. While developing the mouth of the plant for the dialogue scenes and musical numbers, Oz, Conway and his crew were struggling to figure out how to make the plant move convincingly. "We kept trying and trying and it didn't work." The solution presented itself while reviewing test footage of the puppet. When the film ran backwards or forward at a faster than normal speed, the footage looked
Little Shop of Horrors (film) much more convincing and lifelike. They realized they could film the puppet at a slower speed, making it appear to move faster when played back at normal speed. "By slowing it down it looked it was talking real fast. We then went 'holy cow, look at that. We can do it. The frame rate for filming the plant was slowed to 12 or 16 frames per second, depending on the scene, and frequent screen cuts were used to minimize the amount of screen time the puppet spent with human actors, and when interaction was totally necessary, the actors (usually Moranis)