Laika has spent 20 years building up to Wildwood
Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and director Travis Knight discuss the extensive production process behind the stop-motion film Wildwood. The project, which took over a decade to develop, is the largest production ever undertaken by the studio Laika.
Why it matters
It highlights the evolving technical challenges and artistic dedication required in modern stop-motion animation production.
Across several decades in Hollywood, Caleb Deschanel has seen a lot. He served as cinematographer on films like The Passion of the Christ and The Patriot, worked on sequences in The Godfather and Titanic, and directed a few episodes of Twin Peaks. Even still, nothing could quite prepare him for his first stop-motion project: working as the cinematographer on Wildwood, the latest release from Coraline studio Laika. While he knew that stop-motion was a long and involved process, he was still surprised by just how much work went into these movies. “When I started I thought it was one thing, and then I quickly found out that it was another thing,” Deschanel says. “It was much more complicated than I expected.”
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