Laika’s latest stop-motion animated feature, “Wildwood,” is the Oregon-based studio’s most ambitious film to date, featuring 231 puppets, 54 hero characters and 136 locations.
Written and direct by Travis Knight (“Kubo and the Two Strings”), the picture, opening Oct. 23, follows Prue, a 12-year-old girl who launches a desperate rescue mission to save her baby brother, Mac, after he’s abducted by a murder of crows. Her quest takes her into the Impassable Wilderness — an enchanted forest just outside Portland.
The frightening aspect of the abduction scene was one of the most complex things to capture. For the fog that helps the crows disappear into the wilderness, Knight looked to Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival” as his inspiration. And for the sudden appearance of the hundreds of crows, he chose Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” “Travis really wanted a sense that these birds were threatening,” facial animation lead Benoit Dubuc says. “If you have a few of them swarming around you, that’s scary. But if you have a thousand around you, that’s terrifying.”
To create the effect that Mac was being carried by birds, head of animation Brad Schiff says, “We had fish hooks with monofilament on the puppet pulling up his costume, so that when they put the digital assets in, it would feel like the crows were holding on to him. Sometimes it was his shoulder, sometimes the back of his onesie. It created that sense of interaction between the practical and the digital.”
Schiff adds, “[Earlier], we introduced mechanical contraptions inside the puppets, so you could get diaphragms to expand and contract to make them feel like they were breathing.” That animation adds that extra sense of emotional realism to the characters.
This innovation allowed animators to enhance Prue’s emotional intensity during the chase. “When Prue is panicked and riding her bike, not only is she moving, but you can actually feel her breath,” says Schiff. As the animators are animating these puppets, they’re not just controlling the exterior of the puppet, but also the interior of the puppet. It was that animation that adds that extra sense of emotional realism to the characters.
Performance rigging tech also improved at the studio. “Rigging used to be just about defying gravity, but now we can use it to control the puppets with little winders to get them to tilt forward, backwards, and get microscopic increments that we’ve never been able to get before, “Schiff explains. “It’s these small details that make the characters feel alive and grounded in the world,”
Facial animation was another innovative breakthrough for the team. Dubuc says, “The facial animations are created digitally, then 3D-printed and the faces are added frame by frame to the puppets.” He adds, “For one second of film, we might print 24 individual faces so we’re able to get the nuance, subtlety and range.”
Knight has said the film is a love letter to Portland. Those familiar with the city will see recognizable places as Prue hurtles down streets in a race to save her brother. But the aerial shots also required precise attention to detail. The key was for audiences to feel they were flying over the city. CG supervisor Terrence Tornberg notes, “We have specific callbacks during the aerial shots, like Mount Hood in the background or the St. John’s Bridge. Our crew lives in Portland, so it was important to root the sequence in reality while still making it work for the story.”
Due to the complexity of the production, the crows were digitally designed, while Prue and Mac were practical handmade puppets. “Terrence oversees the rendering to make sure that these digital puppets look like practical puppets,” says production designer Nelson Lowry.
Yet before the crows could be digitally designed, they were sculpted, and the character department built different parts of the crow — feathers, beaks, eyes and feet — to be scanned. These builds were used for blocking sequences and rehearsals.
“Wildwood” was a herculean effort with the scene taking five years to complete. Lowry explains, “We had to reinvent our processes in so many ways to meet the demands of this project. It was the largest and most complex film we’ve ever done.”
Schiff recalls receiving the first plates in May 2021 and completing it a mere three weeks ago.
Watch the sequence below.