{"id":923081,"date":"2026-10-10T13:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T13:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/923081\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T13:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T13:26:09","slug":"wildwood-director-travis-knight-on-laikas-stop-motion-fantasy-epic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/923081\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Wildwood Director\u2019 Travis Knight On LAIKA\u2019s Stop-Motion Fantasy Epic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTravis Knight<\/a> took to the stage at Deadline\u2019s Contenders London<\/a> event to explain just how much work had gone into making LAIKA<\/a>\u2019s new release Wildwood<\/a>. Accompanied by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, composer Dario Marianelli and costume designer Deb Cook, Knight revealed that the legendarily difficult stop-motion process did not exactly make life easy when making a film set in various different magical realms, with murder upon murder of vicious crows, and full-on epic battle scenes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor those who don\u2019t know,\u201d said Knight, \u201cthe way stop-motion works is that we build thousands and thousands of tiny little [animations]. We put them under set lights, we move them a microscopic distance, take a picture, move them another microscopic distance, take another picture, and you repeat that process over and over and over again until either a movie emerges or society collapses, whichever comes first. And with this one, it actually could have gone either way because it took us 16 years to make this movie. To put that in perspective, Barack Obama was a fresh-faced president in his first term at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStop-motion is very painful\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s the absolute worst way there is to make a movie, but I think that it has its own unique beauty and that comes from the fact that it\u2019s made by hand. It\u2019s crafted by these incredible artists and craftsmen who build the world with their own hands. It\u2019s very challenging, but it has a unique feeling. And I think it felt like that was in the DNA of what this story wanted to be: It felt like it was handcrafted. I am a firm believer of the notion that the process of creating art leaves fingerprints on the art itself. And so the fact that we had this whole incredible group of artists and craftsmen who poured years of their lives in devotion into carrying this thing into existence, I think you feel it in the movie itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUnusually for the studio, Wildwood \u2014 potentially the first in a series based on the 2011 novel by Colin Meloy \u2014 is LAIKA\u2019s first film to be rated PG-13. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t really any hesitation in terms of where we were going with the movie,\u201d said Knight, \u201cbut I think we wanted to make sure that we were treating it with great care, because we are exploring sophisticated themes, important themes, like loss and grief. And we wanted to make sure that we were treating that sensitively and with care. And I think that one of the things about animation and fantasy is that it provides us a couple of steps removed from the real world. So it allows us to give difficult feelings a shape. And so you go into this fantastic world and hopefully you\u2019re discovering things about your own life and it\u2019s being reflected at you through a different prism.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t think we should forget that young audiences have complex inner lives as well,\u201d he continued. \u201cYoung people know what it is to feel alone, to feel afraid, to feel powerless. And I think stories have an obligation to treat that sensitively and responsibly. We\u2019ve tried to do that with this movie. We ask difficult things, like how far would you go for love? When should you let go? What is the cost of holding on? And how do you keep your heart open when we know how much it costs us? I think the film ultimately arrives at a really light and joyful place \u2014 but we earn the light honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCheck back Monday for the panel video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travis Knight took to the stage at Deadline\u2019s Contenders London event to explain just how much work had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,490721,134,92194,344,223704,223705],"class_list":["post-923081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-contenders-london","tag-entertainment","tag-laika","tag-movies","tag-travis-knight","tag-wildwood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}