Travis Knight, CEO of Laika. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
In the age of artificial intelligence, Knight extols the virtues of stop-motion, an animation technique in which the movements of tiny physical objects are captured one frame at a time to create the effect of fluid motion when played back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a celebration of humanity because what you\u2019re seeing in this film is human creativity, human artistry, human effort on a grand scale,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cComputers can try to emulate things that we\u2019ve gone through, but a computer has never felt loss. It\u2019s never felt joy. It hasn\u2019t fallen in love. It hasn\u2019t had its heart broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Universal\u2019<\/p>\n
Wildwood is the story of Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and her quest to rescue her brother, who has been taken by the crows into the Impassable Wilderness \u2013 or the forests outside Portland, Oregon, which are hidden from mere mortals.<\/p>\n
With her friend Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), Prue discovers a fantastic world, but one in which ambition and grief are fuelling discord that could erupt in conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a big sweeping fantasy story,\u201d Knight said. \u201cBut it also is an exploration of mature themes and profound emotional things that everyone goes through at various times in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prue McKeel heads into the forest in Laika’s new stop-motion movie, Wildwood. Photo \/ IMDb<\/p>\n
Lee told AFP that Prue\u2019s journey resonated for her, and recalled some of her own challenges in adolescence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t go into a magical forest,\u201d Lee joked, but said she did understand \u201cthat idea of being a young person that feels so mature and so grown up, and feels like they have a really firm grasp on the world and reality, and then it\u2019s sort of all put into question.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd all of a sudden, you have to rethink everything,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Tremblay also said he could identify with Curtis, who tries to emulate the courage he sees in his favourite comic book and game characters.<\/p>\n
The actors whose voices are featured in the film also helped shape how their characters move. Their gestures were filmed as they recorded their lines, so that animators could incorporate those mannerisms into the movie.<\/p>\n
Angela Bassett, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali and Awkwafina are all part of the cast.<\/p>\n
For its technical team, Wildwood marks a milestone in terms of the expressions created, and the menagerie of animals featured.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery film we\u2019ve done has been R and D [research and development] for the next one,\u201d said animation supervisor Brad Schiff, who explained that the subtleties in facial movement achieved were impossible just a few years ago.<\/p>\n
The film, inspired by Colin Meloy\u2019s book of the same name, is an ode to Portland, where Laika is based.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a very specific place,\u201d said Knight, who lives in the Pacific Northwest city.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more specific, the more intimate you make something, ultimately the more universal it becomes.\u201d<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travis Knight, CEO of Laika. Photo \/ Getty Images In the age of artificial intelligence, Knight extols the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74,7127,365,50,315136,31468,10408,315134,24571,253389,156,49776,17150,38115,3247,6868,16420,78,296,315135,6093,47148,195600,4275,111,139,69,193,57723,151045,11230,14301,540,142595,1533,102,4741],"class_list":["post-642591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-after","tag-age","tag-ai","tag-animals","tag-beings","tag-brother","tag-creativity","tag-crows","tag-decide","tag-enchanted","tag-entertainment","tag-everyones","tag-fate","tag-filled","tag-forest","tag-girl","tag-human","tag-in","tag-into","tag-kidnaps","tag-little","tag-looming","tag-magical","tag-murder","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-other","tag-showcases","tag-stopmotion","tag-talking","tag-ventures","tag-where","tag-wildwood","tag-will","tag-with","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}