Having joined the company seven years ago, Dave sits in a unique position at Laika, straddling both its creative and business sides, overseeing how films connect with their audiences. For Laika’s 20th anniversary, Dave has the treat of releasing its first feature-length film since he joined – after all, Laika’s films often take five to seven years to make from start to finish. The film in question is Wildwood, directed by Travis Knight, who’s animated on every Laika film since Coraline, and also directed Kubo and the Two Strings. It marks, as costume designer Deb Cook puts it, “a tectonic shift” for the studio. “Wildwood is an ever-widening view from the ambitious eye it’s always had,” Deb says. “It’s the coming of age and celebration of the studio’s loyal and committed artisans.”
With this in mind, even before the film’s release, it already carries a lot of sentimental weight for those involved. “Laika’s handmade approach to filmmaking has always been at the heart of my passion for working here,” Tim Garbutt, Laika’s creative director of marketing, says, “and Wildwood presents that craft at a level never seen before.” This film sees the studio going far beyond what it has attempted before practically, or in-camera. “It’s a story and ambition that feels perfectly of the moment for Laika,” Tim adds, celebrating 20 “well spent” years of making movies.
The very nature of Laika’s films – being stop-motion – is certainly important to the industry too, as production designer Nelson Lowry says, “Only one per cent of motion pictures are made with stop-motion, so we are definitely bucking the system by simply existing.” Discussing his work with Travis, Nelson says, “[His] message to the company is to embrace all technical advances to elevate this nearly 130-year-old art form, and we have.” In adopting new techniques, Laika has furthered the stop-motion industry – and the film industry as a whole, too – without losing the material qualities that make its films so engrossing. One major result of that innovation was the Scientific and Technology Oscar® that Laika was awarded for its advances in rapid prototyping, an innovation that has been utilised across the studio. Costume designer Deb Cook says: “We’ve always embraced a collaborative philosophy across all departments. The techniques we use in making the textiles to promote animatability in our costumes have been embraced in other departments.”