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00:04So as I mentioned in my intro, Wildwood is adapted from a novel by Colin Melroy, the front line of
00:13the Decembrists.
00:14So what was it that drew you to this novel and made you think that it would be the right
00:19thing for Leica to adapt to the big screen?
00:21Yeah, so I was fortunate enough to get an early view at the manuscript for Wildwood when Colin was still
00:28writing it.
00:28I was a huge fan of the Decembrists before I ever started working with Colin and his wife, Carson Ellis,
00:33who's an extraordinary illustrator.
00:35And one of the things that's interesting about Colin is that even in his music, he's an exceptional storyteller.
00:41And so this was the first novel he'd ever written. He was partway through it. I read it. I fell
00:45in love with it immediately.
00:46And I knew I wanted to make it, but I had no idea how to make it.
00:50One of the things that I loved about it, growing up in Portland, you live in a city that's kind
00:55of surrounded and pressed in by forests all the time.
00:58And so, you know, I spent a lot of my imaginative life going into the forest, going into the, you
01:03know, walking the trees.
01:04And the interesting thing about what Colin and Carson did was they created a world that it felt like it
01:11breathed the same air of all these kind of great classic fantasies.
01:14You know, things like Tolkien, bomb and C.S. Lewis, but the story had its own unique kind of contemporary
01:20vibe and sensibility, particularly because of them.
01:23So it was this incredible, big, fantastic world, a great adventure.
01:27You know, this girl, you know, goes into this world and discovers she's got more courage than she knew.
01:33It's really it's a it's a wonderful adventure.
01:35But the thing that really drew me drew drew me to it more than anything else was the heart of
01:39the story.
01:40It's kind of fundamentally about this this girl who is desperate to do anything she can to save the person
01:47that she loves and about a mother who will do anything she can to reclaim the person that she loves.
01:52And so it allowed us to explore in the in this space of fantasy, these really interesting kind of primal
01:57feelings with a kind of a scrim of fantasy and fairy tale over the top of it.
02:03And I think it's one of the most ambitious stop motion films.
02:07The most that you don't need to qualify it. It is. It's humongous. Yes, I have to attest to this.
02:12And why do you think that stop motion was, you know, the right way to tell this story?
02:17I mean, we have some of the puppets here.
02:19Yeah, I don't know that it is the right way to tell the story.
02:23For those who don't know, the way stop motion works is that we build thousands and thousands of tiny little
02:28things.
02:28We put them under set lights. We move them a microscopic distance.
02:32You take a picture, move them another microscopic distance, take another picture, and you repeat that process over and over
02:39and over again until either a movie emerges or society collapses, whichever comes first.
02:44And with this one, it actually could have gone either way because it took us 16 years to make this
02:49movie.
02:4916 years. That's correct.
02:51To put that in perspective, Barack Obama was a fresh faced president in his first term at the time.
02:57Someone who was born when we started working on this movie could have driven me here today.
03:01So it just gives you some sense of how long it took us to make this movie.
03:04So stop motion, I think it's very painful. It's the absolute worst way there is to make a movie.
03:11But I think that it has its own unique beauty, and that comes from the fact that it's hand-hewn.
03:16It's made by hand. It's crafted by these incredible artists and craftsmen who build the world with their hands.
03:22And it's really, it's an extraordinary way to make a movie. It's very challenging, but it has a unique feeling.
03:29And I think that's, it felt like that was kind of in the DNA of what this story wanted to
03:34be.
03:34It felt like it was hand-crafted.
03:36And I am a firm believer of this notion that the process of creating art leaves fingerprints on the art
03:44itself.
03:45And so the fact that we had this whole incredible group of artists and craftsmen who poured years of their
03:50lives and devotion into carrying this thing into existence,
03:52I think you feel it in the movie itself. And so that's why stop motion was the way to do
03:57it.
03:57And we have here Prue.
03:59That's Prue. And there's Curtis.
04:02Curtis.
04:03And then there's Alexandra.
04:05Who is this very complex Dowager-Governess figure who is voiced by Carey Mulligan.
04:10So, moving on to you, Caleb.
04:13You've been Oscar-nominated six times for live action for things like The Right Stuff, The Passion of Christ, Never
04:19Look Away.
04:21And I was just, other credits include Jack Reacher and The Lion King.
04:25And I was just wondering, this is your first stop-motion film.
04:28And I was wondering, what were the challenges for you?
04:30How was it different for you to make this film?
04:33Oh, it was very different.
04:35I mean, I was obviously attracted to it because of the story and then because of all the films that
04:40Laika had done and then, you know, Travis.
04:43And we met and I was really impressed with his vision of the thing.
04:47And, you know, my big worry was that I didn't really know anything about this kind of filmmaking.
04:52And fortunately, you know, there is a huge number of great artists, you know, who welcomed me into this process.
05:01And it was, they became my teachers.
05:04I mean, honestly, this was a learning experience for me.
05:07And I, you know, there was, you know, Mark Stewart was, you know, sort of the head lighting cameraman there.
05:14And, you know, John Ashley and they took me under their wing and taught me the process of it.
05:21What I didn't understand and that existed in every movie I did, including The Lion King, is that you do
05:26a scene, you know, one at a time.
05:29And you complete that scene and you start to feel the movie coming together.
05:35But when you're doing a stop motion movie because of the logistics of it, you sometimes, you know, you'll have
05:41like 70, 80, 90, 100 sets at the same time.
05:45And you're doing little bits and pieces.
05:47So you're, it's kind of like trying to expand the DNA of the movie into the whole movie as you're
05:54going along.
05:55So you keep the whole movie in your head at the same time.
05:58Because in the course of a day, I might wander on to a set that was the first shot of
06:03the movie to a shot in the middle of a battle sequence to a shot where crew gets taken into
06:09a room in the big castle.
06:12And then, you know, the other side of it is that, you know, you would go in and shoot some
06:16shots in a set.
06:18And then the next day, it would be torn apart.
06:21And part of it would go into another stage.
06:23And another piece of it would go in another stage.
06:26And you're trying to keep everything in your head at the same time and piece it together.
06:30And really, it was probably two years before it began to have enough form to get an idea of what
06:36you were doing.
06:37But Travis and I sat down and came up with, you know, an incredible visual Bible of thousands and thousands
06:46of images that were photographs,
06:48scenes from movies, paintings, everything else that was a guide throughout the movie.
06:54So as the movie was going along, you would sort of see it fit into that.
06:58And when you would set up a shot, the stop motion would be set and everything.
07:03And then the animators would lock themselves away.
07:06And you had no idea what it was going to be when they were done.
07:10And either weeks later or days later, whatever happened to be, you sit in dailies and you go, oh, my
07:15God.
07:16And there it is in life. And it's no longer these little puppets.
07:20It becomes real. And you start to feel it.
07:23And that was sort of our guide for finishing the movie.
07:27And so, Dario, you've been Oscar nominated twice and won an Oscar for Atonement.
07:34I wanted to understand what were the challenges for you when you did the score.
07:38We didn't hear any of it there, but it's epic.
07:41And I was wondering what were the challenges for you when you were writing the music?
07:47Yeah, it's the same thing.
07:48You go in and you know you've got to create a world from scratch.
07:52Everything has to be put there.
07:54And it's a wonderful feeling at the very beginning to go into this open space.
08:00And it's an open space that is so rich.
08:02You know, there is battles and talking animals and family bonds.
08:12It's a potential world that you have to make into a real world as much as you can.
08:19And it's, for me, the great beauty.
08:22And you don't see any of that.
08:24But from the very beginning, when I'm exposed for the first time to the film,
08:27there is this animated storyboard made of drawings.
08:31And that has so much life already.
08:33That's the first handmade thing that you see before the puppets, before anything else.
08:39That's full of life already.
08:41And I can start writing music straight away, you know,
08:45based on the emotion that comes from these drawings.
08:53I guess the challenge with Leica is that they go to a level of detail in what they do.
09:02You know you have to match all the way.
09:06And it's, if I may, it's insane, Travis.
09:11The level of precision and detail that goes into the thinking of every strand of hair,
09:19every button that looks like it's at an angle by chance is not by chance.
09:25I mean, everything has to be thought.
09:27And so for me, you know, you put a shop there, a flat there, a 16 note there,
09:32and then you end up with two hours of music that need to move you in some way.
09:38That, you know, that's always the challenge.
09:41One of the funny things about working with Dario in this particular movie,
09:44this is my fourth time working with Dario,
09:46is that at some point, maybe like five years in, Dario said,
09:50can you hurry up and finish this movie?
09:52Because I can't update my software until it's done.
09:55Otherwise, I'll lose my work.
09:57And he was dealing with this creaky old software because he couldn't update it.
10:01No, but I mean, I think what we didn't see in that clip is like the range
10:04because there are obviously the family scenes
10:06and there is like battle scenes which are kind of on a par with the Odyssey,
10:09quite frankly, at the end.
10:10I mean, it's kind of really, really exciting.
10:14So, Deb, you've worked with Leica on each of its films.
10:19And I just wanted to know what was the biggest challenge creating the costumes?
10:23Because again, we haven't seen all the worlds.
10:25We've got the avian world.
10:26We've got the animal world.
10:29And then obviously the humans.
10:31So how did you go about that?
10:33Yeah, I guess for this one, it was the, you know, the amount of research at the outset for the,
10:37you know,
10:38it's quite eclectic to populate those different worlds.
10:41It was pretty fun to be able to go into contemporary Portland and find our lead characters.
10:47And, you know, there's a lot of people watching that happens and wandering around Portland.
10:51And doing this at the time as well, it was during COVID lockdown for me.
10:59So it was around 20, 20, 21.
11:01So there was a lot of walking around and it was kind of ideal to be able to absorb that
11:05and see just how people were wearing their clothes and why they were wearing them.
11:09And a lot of forest walking in Wildwood as well.
11:12It's at the end of my road.
11:14So it was kind of ideal.
11:15And I could live and breathe those characters and walk around the forest and in similar clothing.
11:23I don't know if I'd go as far as Curtis's coat, but just to see, you know, what people were
11:30wearing, how it played out for people of their age group as well.
11:34But then also we have the impassable wilderness, which is a completely different civilization structure, different citizen groups, different activities
11:44and how that played out, how they interacted with each other, but also retained a kind of living identity and
11:51authenticity to their role in the movie.
11:54So also building that in comparison that didn't rely on one era of history.
12:02So finding eclectic pieces that went together that really told those characters stories and kind of informed their character arc
12:10as well, like where they came from and where they were going, but keeping, you know, staying loyal to that.
12:16And also, you know, having read the book and seeing the illustrations, Carson Ellis' illustrations are very sophisticatedly edited.
12:26So it's finding that sophistication and edit to the costumes as well, where it tells the story, but it's also
12:32got a very kind of mystical fairytale quality to it as well.
12:38The other thing was, you know, we've spent years gathering all kinds of technical information and being able to inform
12:47the costume builds and you can see the scale of these costumes here.
12:51And, you know, there's a physics to fabric that it's difficult to explain, but in our world, you know, the
13:00fabrics fall gracefully around us and elegantly into curves and folds and follow our movements.
13:06But in our scale, in our puppets, they don't do that. We have to engineer all of that. So we've
13:13come from, you know, in the earlier days in the formation of the studio, we're very much into fabrics, you
13:19know, in service to fabrics that we could just buy locally.
13:22And they don't really work for animation. It was quite a struggle to make them work for animation.
13:27But now we've, you know, we've grown as a studio and are able to build really sophisticated fabrics and textiles
13:35specifically for our own purposes.
13:38And we can build the language of the movie and artistry into that as well.
13:43So, for the example, you know, here we've got Alexandra's dress and she's in a particular point in the movie
13:49where she's really had quite a tragic loss in suffering grief and grief.
13:55Sorry. And the dress kind of exemplifies that and supports her emotional state.
14:01It's very deconstructed. And we're able to build all of that into the surface, plus all the understructure.
14:07There's a lot of chain mail underneath this dress and engineering and armature that anchors into the actual puppet armature.
14:14So it's building that kind of believability into the costumes so that it doesn't take you out of the story
14:20in any way.
14:20There aren't any big creases or folds. It's quite an elegant drape to them.
14:24I could have a whole panel with you listening to this because it's fascinating, but we're running.
14:29We've run out of time. I've got one more question to squeeze to you.
14:33This is Leica's first PG-13 film, and having seen the film, it is not a film for small children.
14:38And I was wondering, well, it depends on how you bring your small children up, I guess.
14:43I saw The Exorcist when I was five.
14:45No, I know. As I was thinking that, I was thinking of the things my kids saw.
14:48But anyway, it has got some dark themes.
14:51And I was wondering, did you ever think about maybe sweetening it a bit to make it?
14:56It's plenty sweet.
14:58It's sweet, I know.
14:59Well, look, I think that there wasn't really any hesitation in terms of where we were going with the movie.
15:05But I think we wanted to make sure that we were treating it with great care.
15:07Because we are exploring sophisticated themes, important themes, things like loss and grief.
15:13And we wanted to make sure that we were treating that sensitively and with care.
15:18And I think that one of the things about animation and fantasy is that it provides us a couple of
15:22steps removed from the real world.
15:24So it allows us to give difficult feelings a shape.
15:27And so, you know, you go into this fantastic world and hopefully you're discovering things about your own life.
15:31And it's being reflected at you through a different prism.
15:33And I don't think we should forget that young audiences, they have complex inner lives as well.
15:39Young people know what it is to feel alone, to feel afraid, to feel powerless.
15:45And I think stories have an obligation to treat that sensitively and responsibly.
15:49And we've tried to do that with this movie.
15:51And so, you know, in the end, you know, we have this fantastic story.
15:55But what it comes down to are these two people who are desperate to save the people that they love.
16:00And it allows us to look at that through a couple of different prisms.
16:03And, you know, we ask difficult things like how far would you go for love?
16:08When should you let go? What is the cost of holding on?
16:11And how do you keep your heart open when we know how much it costs us?
16:15And I think the film ultimately arrives at a really light and joyful place.
16:19But we earn the light, honestly.
16:22Short yes or no, there are two more books in this series.
16:26Are we going to see sequels?
16:27Oh, dear God.
16:29Sixteen years to do this one.
16:31I can't think about that at the moment.
16:34It was a joy. It was an absolute joy bringing this world to life.
16:37And, like, hopefully people demand more. We'll see what happens.
16:41It's an amazing movie. Anyway, thank you very much.
16:44Thanks.