Friday, September 26, 2014

The Boxtrolls: A Seven-Year Journey Comes To The Screen

A boy named Eggs. A Boxtroll named Fish. And a whimsical town that holds a dark secret. Thus begins LAIKA’s third feature film, The Boxtrolls, arriving in wide release Friday September 27th. It’s a tale that both children and adults will enjoy, capturing the humor, oddness, charm and peril that LAIKA films are known for while also showcasing the latest advancements in the world of stopmotion filmmaking. The venerable cast includes such stalwarts as Ben Kingsley, Dee Bradley Baker, Steve Blum, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Tracy Morgan, Elle Fanning, Fred Tatasciore, Maurice LaMarche and Game of Thrones' Issac Hempstead Wright.

ASIFA-Hollywood, in conjunction with Focus Features and the San Francisco Film Society, held a screening at San Francisco’s Metreon Theater on Tuesday September 23rd to highlight the upcoming release. Watching the smoothness of the animation, the flow of the story and the marvelous detail, viewers may forget the thousands of hours, dozens of story drafts and herculean efforts required to create something so amazing, so lost will they be in the film itself.

Fortunately, CEO, Executive Producer and Lead Animator Travis Knight, Directors Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi, Producer David Ichioka and Editor Edie Ichioka were on hand after the screening to reveal the secrets of the magic that went in to making the film the public will come to love.

Crafting the Story 

“It’s a coming of age story,” said CEO Travis Knight to the film crowd on Tuesday evening.

“At it’s core it’s like all LAIKA films, there’s something deeper at its’ heart.” It all started seven years ago.

Coraline was in production and the LAIKA team had purchased the rights to Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow, slated to be the studio’s second feature film. This proved to be a task of epic proportions, as the book spans 544 pages and includes a cavalcade of wildly imaginative characters like Cabbage people, Rabbit women, and of course, Boxtrolls. Whittling down the ideas created by author Alan Snow proved to be a feat in itself.

Director Anthony Stacchi’s mantra became “throw everything out but the title and see what comes back. After six drafts there were still Cabbage heads and a giant rabbit destroying the city.”

Director Graham Annable, a board artist on Coraline and Paranorman, helped the team craft what would become the beginnings of the tale after boarding a scene between the boy protagonist Eggs (voiced by Issac Hempstead Wright) and his surrogate Boxtroll family Fish (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker) and Shoes (voiced by Steve Blum). “Within three months we got rid of everything before and after [that scene.]”

The scene became the bedrock of the film, and although it did not make it into the finished film, it provided a blueprint for everyone on the team to rally behind.

Stopmotion Animation and Rapid Prototyping – Past Meets Future 

One of LAIKA’s best known traits is its ability to bring lifelike performances using both traditional stop motion techniques while also embracing advanced technology.

“The movie really happens through the conversation with the animators,” said Graham. “We would visit the animators on the set everyday or every two days.” At LAIKA all animation is done on 1s (as opposed to 2s and 4s, which is more common for 2D and CG animation).

 “You get one rehearsal on 2s and 4s. Rehearsals are best described as Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs,” said Stacchi. Ideas are mapped out, then the animators animate by moving the character by hand, recording it, then moving again, a painstaking process resulting in 30 to 45 frames a day.

One of the ways that LAIKA has emerged as a powerhouse player in the industry is by embracing a technique known as rapid prototyping. This process allows an individual to instruct a computer to create a 3D printing of an object, for example, Eggs’ head, and also allows artists to design and texture the object using the computer.

“They’re meant to do one-offs,” said Knight. “We’re using it as a mass production device.” For example, there were hundreds faces created just for the character Eggs alone, and hundreds more created for the other titular characters of The Boxtrolls, enabling the animators to switch out expressions of the characters, creating more variety for them to showcase in the film. Often faces were printed in two halves so that the artists could mix and match, creating a wider variety of facial features.

 After years of developing, modifying and experimenting with this technology, the LAIKA team has found a myriad of ways to bend it to suit the company’s needs.

 “Our painter figured out how to get the printer to get certain kinds of colors it didn’t want to print,” said Knight as an example.

“The company is full of MacGyvers,” added Stacchi. “It’s like something out of Star Trek, it shouldn’t exist,” remarked Knight. “When the machines rise against us this is what they’ll be using…until then we’ll use it to make cartoons.”

Putting It All Together – Editorial and Stereo 3D

Editorial’s job is to take the story reel created by the storyboard artists and essentially put together a film. Once the story reel is approved, they take footage from the animators and begin to craft the movie. It is a painstaking process, and one that is not done until it is done.

“It is a tsunami of amaterial at all times. You’re not just a tube the material pass thorugh. You are required to make it beter than when it first came thorugh,” said Editor Edie Ichioka.

“Everyone who touches it plusses it – it si always changing, it’s a dynamic process.”

“Dailies last all day – material comes through editorial all day,” said Producer Daivd Ichioka. And unlike many films created in the past few years, The Boxtrolls was shot in stereo, in order to give it an authentic 3D look.

“We don’t do 3D in post,” remarked Ichioka. “When you shoot it with stereo you see the whole world as it was built,” said Knight.

And Finally…The Dance Sequence 

In the film Eggs and his new friend Winnie (voiced by Elle Fanning) attend a party where dozens of individuals perform a complicated waltz. It’s a spectacular sequence that proved to be an amazing feat to animate.

 “We presumed the most difficult scene would be the robot smashing the whole town, but was the dance sequence,” said Graham. “It took all 18 months of the shooting schedule for 2 minutes of dancing.”

The LAIKA team used two choreographers form the Portland Ballet and brought in dancers, and filmed their entire dance from every convieable angle in order to study the realistic and beautiful moments of dance. All of the effort and detail, from the artistry to the technology, was in service to the characters within the film.

 “[We] Try to bring more naturalism to the movements. We have to push the performance of the puppets, to show they have emotions, aspirations and hopes and dreams,” said Knight. LAIKA’s continual push to create engaging stories, coupled with their technical logical advancements, is showcased in vivid color in their third feature film.

“The artists at LAIKA can do anything, they’re brilliant,” said Knight.

Special thanks to the LAIKA, Focus Features, San Francisco Film Society and ASIFA for arranging the screening for animation professionals and fans alike. 

The Boxtrolls opens today, September 26th, at a theater near you. 

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