Creating “Wildwood”: How LAIKA Brought Portland’s Spirit, Forests, and Landmarks to Life in an Epic Stop-Motion Fantasy
Seven years in the making, LAIKA’s highly anticipated stop-motion dark fantasy, Wildwood, is the Portland-based studio’s most ambitious film to date. Beyond its groundbreaking production techniques, it’s extra special because it’s proudly set where the movie magic was created, and the Oregon city and its people are in its DNA.
“LAIKA is an incredibly unique place with incredibly unique artists, and we are very lucky to have them,” enthuses Tim Williams, the Executive Director of Oregon Film, the Governor’s Office of Film and Video. “A bunch of stuff happens in Mexico City, and London and Bristol in the UK, but LAIKA defines Portland in animation, and not just stop motion. That means we can anecdotally claim to be the stop-motion capital of the world.”
He continues, “We have become a place where the artists who do this very beautiful and specialized work want to be and live in. I’m very proud of that, and have been very proud of that since I started this job more than a decade ago.”
Wildwood tells the story of headstrong teenager Prue McKeel, voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, whose baby brother is abducted by a murder of crows. Joined by her hapless but loyal classmate Curtis Mehlberg, voiced by Jacob Tremblay, she heads off on a desperate rescue mission into the Impassable Wilderness, an enchanted forest hidden just beyond Portland. What they find is a world of talking animals, bandits, and mysterious, powerful figures, and they are quickly drawn into a battle that threatens the balance of the forest itself. Directed by Kubo and the Two Strings filmmaker and LAIKA CEO Travis Knight, Wildwood‘s voice cast also includes Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, and Charlie Day.
Costume designer Deborah Cook, who has worked on all of LAIKA’s films, kept real-world Portland and fantastical Portland front of mind. Describing the style she embraced for Wildwood as “fantasy vintage,” she scoured local thrift stores and boutiques for inspiration.
“I go everywhere,” she tells The Credits during a behind-the-scenes tour of the studio about 20 miles outside downtown. “The places change, but sometimes I’ll take two weekends in a row and visit all of them to see what’s out there and what the fabrics are. There are a lot of things in the vintage stores here that are fabrics we don’t make anymore.” The costuming team used that local research to create a range of one-of-a-kind fabrics that would work for the puppets, with enough flexibility for the animators to move the character as needed in a scene.
Cook continues, “With Portland being where it is in the world, it has a lot of people who have made their own clothes, and those end up in there as well. I love turning them inside out to see what people did. You get into the minds of the people that made the clothes and where the materials may have come from. The vintage stores are quite eclectic in era, and they’re like little storytelling places. They tell you a lot about all the people that live here.”
Wildwood is based on the fantasy novel by Portlander Colin Meloy, lead singer of The Decemberists, and illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis. The synergy between the pages and the place started there, but it’s far from over. What Wildwood offers is something the studio’s creatives have never had the chance to harness this way.
“We make these movies, and we have insanely talented people, but in doing something that comes from our backyard, there’s an authenticity to what we’re doing,” Brad Schiff, LAIKA’s Head of Animation, shares during a tour of the studio’s sets. “We all live here, explore here, and we all love it here. We hike in the forests, go to the coast or Mount Hood, and we pick up little nuances and little things we can use. I people-watch all the time, so all of the way people act, the way they look, it’s research without having to do it in a way we typically have to do.”
During the studio tour, writer Chris Butler told select journalists that he was also inspired by Portland’s unofficial motto, “Keep Portland Weird.”
“I love the idea that there’s this magical forest in the middle of this real place,” Butler says. “Maybe some of that magic has leaked out of it over the years, and it’s a fantastic part of the project’s DNA,” he shares. “Certainly when I was writing this and places like Forest Park or Pittock Mansion, to be able actually to go to those places and see them, was inspiring and you can bring so much to the project from that.”
Wildwood showcases several iconic Portland landmarks, including Powell’s Books, along with more nuanced local elements like the famous Benson Bubbler water fountains. Even LAIKA’s own studio lot coffee shop, Dripsters, gets a relocated nod as a location.
233 handcrafted puppets populate Wildwood. More than 1,000 artists, craftspeople, technicians, and filmmakers brought the story to life, including 49 animators. The finished film includes 2,804 shots, and it took 231 weeks—more than 1,155 days—from the start of production to completion. As a studio, LAIKA continues to attract talent from across the US and around the world, boosting both the industry and the local economy.
“As an economic development engine, it’s huge,” Oregon Film’s Williams explains. “We’re getting a constant flow of jobs into the state for films and TV shows that stay for a year and ebb and flow in terms of who comes in and comes out. However, the production cycle of a stop-motion project is different than any other. They’re running 30 to 50 sets, and each one of those has its own mini crew, and each department has to be feeding that, so you have what is effectively a studio system being built in Hillsboro that is creating world-class, award-winning stuff.”
“We have a multifaceted industry here, and LAIKA is one part of it, but they are a unique and very powerful part. They create hundreds of jobs and bring millions of dollars in spending on each project, and they’ve done six of them now, so that’s a big deal.”
As a state, Oregon remains a flourishing production location for classic movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Stand by Me, Leave No Trace, and The Goonies, as well as TV shows such as Portlandia, Shrill, and Grimm. However, once again, LAIKA is a unique production proposition.
“There is no outside in. You don’t see lights on the street, trucks on the corner, or actors in your doorway. It’s all going on in a very large warehouse outside of town, so most people don’t know it’s there unless we tell them,” Oregon Film’s Williams muses.
“With Wildwood, we’re very lucky that LAIKA is now showing everyone that it’s there, that it is now on screen. It is like they are announcing themselves over 20 years after they formed, and that’s really exciting.”
In a typical high-volume fiscal year, Oregon’s core film incentives attract over $208 million in direct, in-state production spending. According to Oregon Film, about $140 million of that direct spending goes straight into the payroll of Oregon residents, crews, and actors, and the state government generates a 177% return on investment for every dollar spent on film incentives through personal and business income taxes generated by the productions. LAIKA plays a constant part in that. The studio is a strong environmental partner and has, among other accolades, been named a Certified B Corporation. B Corporations are certified by the nonprofit organization B Lab, having met rigorous standards for social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
Williams continues, “That’s very Portland. Also, with our House and Senate members locally in that district, LAIKA has been kind enough to let us come in, tour with them, and show them what’s going on. Even with live-action film sets, you don’t know the power of it until you stand on a set and see 500 people. With Wildwood, LAIKA is saying, ‘We are in Portland, and we are celebrating Portland,’ and Portland’s like, ‘Oh, that’s very cool.'”
“People really dig interesting and weird work, and LAIKA will go do it and dig their teeth into it. They have made a large cottage industry out of that, and their stories are eclectic, and they are beautiful.”
Wildwood is in theaters now.
Featured image: Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) in Wildwood (Courtesy of LAIKA)
