Laika spent 20 years building Wildwood

Over the course of several decades in Hollywood, Caleb Deschanel has seen a lot. He has been a cinematographer on films like The Passion of Christ And The Patriotworked on sequences in The godfather And Titanicand directed a few episodes of Twin Peaks. Yet nothing could really prepare him for his first stop-motion project: working as a cinematographer on Wildwoodthe latest version of Coraline Laïka studio. Even though he knew that stop-motion was a long and complex process, he was still surprised by the amount of work that went into making these films. “When I started, I thought it was one thing, then I quickly found out it was another,” Deschanel says. “It was a lot more complicated than I expected.”

Wildwood It took a long time to arrive. Laika CEO Travis Knight initially optioned the rights to the book of the same name, written by Decemberist leader Colin Meloy, in 2011. But production didn’t begin until a decade later. “I’ve been working on it in one form or another for 16 years,” said Knight, who also directed Wildwoodsaid. “The reason I stuck with this movie, the reason I had to make this movie no matter what, is because of what it meant to me personally. At its core, it’s a story about love and loss and heartbreak, it’s the impossible things that love asks of us, and it meant something to me personally in a very deep way.”

It is also the largest production Laika has ever undertaken. Wildwood tells the story of a young girl named Prue who must venture into the “impassable wilderness” surrounding Portland in order to find her little brother. When she enters the forest, she discovers a fantasy realm reminiscent of Narnia, complete with magic spells, talking animals, and warring factions. It took nearly 50 animators and more than 200 puppets to pull off, and the film is full of ambitious sequences, like a 12-minute battle with dozens of soldiers and a chase scene in bustling Portland, where Prue’s brother is swept away by a gigantic murder of crows.

According to animation head Brad Schiff, the studio’s philosophy is to blend “old-school craftsmanship with modern technology.” With each project, he says, Laika develops new techniques. If something works well, they take the idea even further on the next project. For example, in Laika’s previous film, Missing linkthe main character was equipped with a diaphragm so that when an animator turned a screw on the puppet’s back, the diaphragm could expand or contract, creating the illusion that he was breathing. This has since become the standard for puppets in Laika’s films.

These may seem like small details, but over the years they add up. For costume designer Deb Cook, there hasn’t been a single innovation on Wildwood what struck him was the large number of tools she had at her disposal. “Over time, we gathered a library of techniques that we were able to put into practice on this film,” she says. This was particularly important on Wildwoodwhich offers a wide range of costumes; in the urban sequences, everyone is dressed in modern clothing, while in the forest the characters have more fantastical looks.

For Wildwoodmany of the advances came down to materials. The costumes used more flexible fabrics, for example, and the team also designed a new process to create silicone that was lighter and more durable than previously used. “We did this so we could get rid of foam latex, which smells and shrinks over time, and five years later it falls apart,” explains Oliver Jones, head of characters and practical effects. “There are benefits to rethinking a lot of these materials that were probably our choice since King Kong.”

The scale of Wildwood also forced the studio to adopt another seemingly much more boring practice: being better organized. “They were misplaced,” Cook replies when asked if she has ever lost a puppet. “There is now a very sophisticated tracking system because there are so many moving parts and so many scenes around the studio.”

And while much has been said about the film’s large, elaborate sequences — Knight says the epic battle scene is “probably the most technically difficult thing we’ve ever done” — all of these techniques are designed to imbue more humanity into the puppet-portrayed characters. In this regard, small details like the flow of the fabric or the impression of breathing are of vital importance.

“We also have very subtle and intimate scenes, quiet scenes that don’t have a lot of flash, that have almost no sound design or music, where the only thing you experience is the heartbreak of a father talking about a secret he’s kept for 15 years, or a quiet moment of a woman mourning the loss of her son,” Knight says. “These are the moments when you have nowhere to hide and the performances of these little puppets – these little assemblages of steel, silicon and fabric that have no life of their own – come to life completely through the hand and artistry of the human behind them. These are the moments I am most proud of.”

In this way, the long road to Wildwood releasing in theaters makes a lot of sense. Laika has existed for a little over 20 years and, with each film, the studio has innovated to gradually advance its craft. Knight may have been thinking about the film for 16 years, but creating the version that will be released in 2026 wouldn’t have been possible without all the learnings spread across films like ParaNormand And Kubo and the two strings.

For Knight, it was particularly rewarding to bring it to life with a team of both Laika veterans and newcomers, including not only Deschanel but also a handful of young animators who Wildwood was their first feature film project. Some were young enough to CoralineLaika’s very first film, is what inspired them to get into this field. “I was really moved by that,” Knight says. “It also made me feel old shit.”

_{Wildwood is in theaters now.}