Laika has spent 20 years building up to Wildwood
Across several decades in Hollywood, Caleb Deschanel has seen a lot. He served as cinematographer on films like The Passion of the Christ and The Patriot, worked on sequences in The Godfather and Titanic, and directed a few episodes of Twin Peaks. Even still, nothing could quite prepare him for his first stop-motion project: working as the cinematographer on Wildwood, the latest release from Coraline studio Laika.…
Key points
- Laika CEO Travis Knight optioned the rights to Wildwood in 2011, but production did not begin until a decade later.
- Wildwood required nearly 50 animators and more than 200 puppets, making it Laika's biggest production to date.
- The film features a 12-minute battle sequence and a chase through Portland in which Prue's brother is carried off by a murder of crows.
Laika's Wildwood is now in theaters, capping a project that CEO Travis Knight first optioned in 2011 and that did not enter production until a decade later. Knight, who also directed the film, said he has worked on it in some form for 16 years.
Based on the book by Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, the film follows a girl named Prue who enters the "impassable wilderness" around Portland to find her baby brother and discovers a fantasy realm of magic, talking animals and warring factions. It is the biggest production in Laika's history, using nearly 50 animators and more than 200 puppets.
Craft and new materials
Head of animation Brad Schiff said the studio mixes "old-school craft with modern technology," developing new techniques with each film and pushing successful ideas further on the next. On Missing Link, a diaphragm mechanism gave the main character the illusion of breathing, and it has become standard for Laika puppets since.
Costume designer Deb Cook pointed to the studio's accumulated library of techniques rather than any single innovation. Wildwood's costumes use more flexible fabrics and a new, lighter and more durable silicone, part of an effort to move away from foam latex, which head of characters and practical effects Oliver Jones described as smelly and prone to shrinking and crumbling.
When I started I thought it was one thing, and then I quickly found out that it was another thing.
— Caleb Deschanel
