Welcome To Staffa Corner

Greg Staffa 0:00

You're listening to the Staffa Corner Podcast, a Staffatarian look at entertainment and life with your host, Greg Staffa. My guest this episode is stop motion animator Ian Boone, whose work includes Tumblebeaf, Ask the Story Bots, and the upcoming film Wildwood. Ian, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here. So this is a pure pleasure. I I have to admit, I have never been much of a stop motion person as far as like getting excited for this film. But Wildwood is such a breathtaking film that you're gonna convert a lot of people, and it is something that you know there's been some great animation before of stop motion, but this is something special. So I'm looking very much looking forward to talking to you about it. But first,

Growing Up Artistic In Kentucky

Greg Staffa 1:14

let's talk a little bit about yourself, where you're from, and a little bit about your upbringing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and I was really lucky. I grew up in a very artistic household. My mom is a painter and a graphic designer, and my dad was a musician. So it always felt very normal to have a arts job, or you know, or at least feel like, okay, that is something that is possible because not everyone has that. So I felt very lucky in that. And as I got to be maybe about 12 years old, 11 or 12, I started getting very interested in film and animation. And I got a camera for Christmas when I was 11, I believe, and started making little films when on, you know, my kitchen floor and just, you know, little, you know, bits of clay moving around. And and I got hooked just immediately. I just started making it everything. It was, it was kind of became my whole life. And it was right around the time that the the Wallace and Gromit movie, Curse of the Ware Rabbit, came out, and that was hugely instrumental for me. Like just I watched it on repeat. The DVD had a great behind-the-scenes special features that just you know highlighted the whole process. And it was that was my first little window into that world. I was able to just watch that over and over again and really see, like, oh, there are people that do this for a living. And I think as a you know, a 12-year-old, I was like, I think that might be what I want to do. And I pretty much decided right then and there that that was that was something I was interested in.

Breaking Into Laika Through Internships

Greg Staffa 3:09

And you went on, you had two internships at Leica, which is the studio that created a lot of this, including Wildwood. What was it about Leica that maybe the second time, you know, the first time you're all excited, you're doing the internship, but then you came back for a second internship. Was there something during the second internship that you understood or learned more about that you were too excited the first time or overwhelmed to at the first?

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Um the Leica internships are intense. So I was I I ended up going to CalArts for animation. So I was studying animation there, and one of my teachers, Stephen Kyoto, put me in touch with one of the recruiters from Leica and and said, Hey, you know, you should look at this kid's animation. I was 19 at the time. I was my first year in Cal Arts, and I normally they didn't take anyone under junior year of college. It was like, I guess, sort of an unofficial rule. Maybe it was an official rule, I don't remember. But I got a call a couple weeks later from Leica being like, hey, we're we know we don't usually take people who are in their freshman year, but your stuff's really good and we're interested. And I was just kind of blown away. I was shocked. I couldn't uh imagine that. And this was, you know, I had watched Coraline a million times. Paranorman came out when I was maybe my junior year of high school. So I like I was deep in it. So this was this was the top. Like Leica was was that was the dream at that point. And to get a call from them was just like unbelievable. So they asked me if I wanted to do a a summer internship, and I had really no idea what to expect. You know, I I had the sense that this wasn't like a you know, go get coffee sort of internship, but the way that it is structured is a three-month animation boot camp, basically. It is an animation intensive. You are doing it was the first time I'd ever been able to animate for you know eight or nine hours a day for five days a week. Like, you know, I had been in I had been in school, and and just doing it like that is a big change. But then also the rigor and the expectations of that studio are so high. The animation quality has to be so good. Um, and they have these animation tests that are designed to get you doing it. So, you know, you're doing acting exercises, you're doing um just weight shifts where the character's standing on one side of their body basically, and shifts to the other side. We did months of walks, like a month and a half probably of that internship was just characters walking from one side of the screen to the next, just to really drill in the physics, the mechanics, how a character moves. Um, and it was difficult. It was really hard. Like I said, I was young and I I think was doing good work. I look back on it now and and I can see that okay, my work was was pretty good then. Like I I can look at that and and say, okay, like there was a lot to learn, but my animation was decent, I think. Um and my uh the animation director there, Brad Schiff, really sort of took me under his wing in that and you know, realized, okay, I think this kid has some potential. Let's bring him back. So I did a second internship two years later. I just, you know, I've been 19 in the first one, a lot to learn. And they've done that with a few other people where they've done, yeah, two, two internships. And the second one, it was a very different experience. Similar exercises, but there is a different sort of confidence when you go into that situation where, okay, I kind of know what exercises I'm gonna be working on. I know what I need to expect of myself, right? There are just getting into that like intensive animation mindset. You have to get very meditative, you have to have this hyper level of focus on the craft, right? And that just takes time, time to build that up. And that second internship really built those skills for me of okay, knowing how to slow down and really put care into each frame, really thinking about each decision. That actually became almost a little bit of a problem in the next step of my career, where like I didn't I got hired on TV shows and I struggled to animate fast. I was so meticulous. But it really those those two Leica internships really instilled just a level of detail that I don't think I would have gotten anywhere else.

Greg Staffa 8:23

There has to be a big ego boost to be brought back. Was there any concern of I mean, there's almost a desire to feel like you're meeting the expectations that they expecting you? Because I'd be like, oh wow, they they see something in me. I need to show them that they were right.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah, absolutely. And I think most animators are like this. It is it is hard to see that in your own work, in yourself. Like everyone, whenever you look at your own animation, all you see are the mistakes, all you see are the the bad choices you made and the things you wish you did differently. And you know, it was no different for me then, but I knew that okay, this was a place that, you know, I am I am able to do it to a certain degree. Like I I can underst I understand the animation style, and they seemed to like me, which was nice. Like I had amazing mentors there, and it was really a place at that point where I felt, okay, this is they they are actively putting time into teaching me and wanting the best work out of me. So I think that took a little bit of that pressure off in the sense of like, okay, I know that they see something in me that maybe I didn't necessarily see in myself, or maybe still don't even see in myself. But I always knew that that was a goal for me. Like I really wanted to work in animated feature film. So it felt like, okay, I'm doing this. I don't know how I'm doing it, but it felt like it's it's somehow working.

Greg Staffa 10:12

How forgiving

Mistakes, Cutbacks, And Starting Over

Greg Staffa 10:13

is the medium as far as you know, you might take hours to have a character walk a foot or two, you know, on screen, uh, maybe blink or something like that. If you miss kind of that, you know, in I mean, we've all done flipbooks as kids where you have you know you draw and you move the page, and if you take too much of a leap, does the speed of film kind of is it forgiving or is that very noticeable? How do you go back and correct errors like that, or are you able to, or is it just start over?

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Great question. It is at at the the high level like stop motion feature, like the the very naturalistic stop motion feature style that Leica does, and then especially we did on on the new movie Wildwood, it is maybe the most unforgiving style of animation on the planet. There is so little room to make a mistake. So, what are your options? Because it is an imperfect medium, right? We are dealing with physical puppets in physical light, in a real place. Like there's gonna be things that that go wrong. They're just they're it's bound to happen. And there's a couple of ways to do it. Sometimes you can work your way out of out of a mistake. You know, say you have a character walking, and oh, this last step was just a little too fast, but okay, if I kind of slow it down a little bit going forward, I think it'll work. It might not be exactly what I wanted, but you know, nobody else might maybe nobody else will be able to tell. That's a possibility. You can kind of work your way through it. Another possibility is oh shoot, I really messed this one up. I'm gonna delete some frames and try to get the puppet back in an earlier position. We call it a cutback. It's never fun. It does happen. I don't want to say often, but more than you would think, maybe. Where, yeah, you basically just have to move the puppet back into the position. And we're using digital capture software so you can see where everything was, but still, it's a like I said, we're dealing with physical space. So, you know, you're never gonna get it perfectly back into the exact position. You know, maybe you're cutting back 20 frames. That could have moved a lot, and there's hair, there's all sorts of fabric moving around. So that can be really tricky. And then there are times where you have to start a shot over. There's just no no option. You know, maybe I've messed up, maybe I got notes from the director in the middle of the shot. There have been times where things just break, you know. This is these are made of metal and silicone and fabric, and sometimes things just snap or tear, and there's sometimes you can fix it, but sometimes you really can't.

Blocking, Rehearsals, And Frame Rate Choices

Greg Staffa 13:20

When you're doing this, I mean one of the things that amazed me about Wildwood is that fluidity of of characters, and you know, is that something that because we live in a world where immediate gratification is so common for a lot of us. We want to see the reaction. We tell a joke, we want to hear people laugh. With this kind of animation, you know, how far do you have to go before you're really able to see that character come to life? Because you could use several frames, and it's just a body movement that in the frames that you're doing it, you're not seeing anything. You're you're working with these objects that are just objects until you put it all together. Like, how there almost has to be like a different mindset for you to be able to see the past and the future of what you're doing with this character to get them moving. What is that like? And it is, I mean, you love your job, so it can't be frustrating, but how hard is that visualize that when you don't get that immediate gratification of like I've spent an hour and when I hit playback, I get two seconds of of movement.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Yeah, it is very difficult, and there are often those moments where you just have to kind of almost hold your breath and hope it works. The good thing is like the more you do this, and I've done this for many years now, and you just get a sense of okay, I think this one's gonna work. You never know for sure until you're done, or you never really know for sure until the director approves the shot and it's in the movie. So there's always a little bit of that, like, oh, I hope this is gonna work. But there's ways to work your way into that, right? So at Leica, what we do is a lot of prep um for every single shot. So the process broadly is a lot of testing and a lot of of rehearsals, basically. So you get briefed on your shot, the director tells you, okay, in this shot, the character is walking across the screen. She sits down in this chair, she's feeling anxious. Okay, so you have that brief. And then what happens next is you go out on stage and we do what's called a block where you're posing the puppet on a low frame rate. So maybe you're doing, you know, four or six poses a second instead of 24, right? So we're just blocking in the motion, getting your poses, getting your action, kind of rough timing to see, okay, does this work? How many steps is this? Does the pose convey the right attitude? All of that gets shown to the director, and he might like it, he might not like it. So you take whatever notes you have, and then we shoot a rehearsal. And the rehearsal is usually on twos or threes. And for non-animation people, what that means is we're shooting it at 12 frames a second, sometimes a little lower, but for for most purposes, 12 frames per second instead of 24. So it looks animated. It is essentially a fully animated performance. It's just a little bit choppier, and you are animating the whole shot. You're going through it, you're figuring out how does this move from here to here? How does the hair wiggle when she sits down? You're figuring out all of those little things that you're going to need to really put a lot of detail into. The best way that I think about a rehearsal is like, what do I want to include that I'm not going to hate myself later when I'm animating the shot for not including? Right. So I want to make sure I'm, you know, you're not going to include every little detail, but you want to make sure you're figuring everything out that is going to cause you trouble later down the line. So then you submit your rehearsal, the director sees it. Ideally, it's pretty close to what the shot is going to look like. There's probably going to be some notes that you're going to have to figure out in the actual shot, but from that, we animate the shot. So by the time we're animating the actual shot that's going to go in the movie, we've essentially animated this action two or three times, just on a lower frame rate. So you really have a good sense of it. Ideally. Sometimes there's times where you get notes or things change and you have to go into it a little bit cold. But the general process, you pretty much know where you're going. But animation is always hard, and and stop motion, especially, is always hard. So those first few frames of a shot, no matter how much prep you have, is always gonna be a little scary. It's always gonna be a little bit of a mystery, which can be exciting, but there's always that like little bit of anxiety that I'm just like, I hope this works.

Greg Staffa 18:34

Now,

Keeping One Character Consistent

Greg Staffa 18:35

with something like the Muppets, there's usually one actor, or not one actor, but one person that handles like the main characters. You know, this is always the the puppeteer for Kermit. This is always the puppeteer for whatever. With stop motion, is it similar, or could you have because all these all these characters have multiple versions and they have faces that can swap out and stuff like that? Do you have two or three sets running at the same time where you're you're doing one scene on this set, one scene on another set, and someone's animating the same character, and then the other person's animating the same character in a later scene, or is it you know you have your character that you're focused on?

SPEAKER_00 19:19

So it is a little bit of both. In my in my case, I was very much on one character on this movie, but to kind of zoom out, for a movie like Wildwood, it is a almost two and a half hour long movie. It has so many locations, a lot of characters, and you know, when your main character is in all these locations at once, and you're shooting a two and a half hour movie, you have to have many, many different versions of them. So the main character in Wildwood, her name's Prue, and I think we had close to 30, if not 30 different Prue puppets. So the same character, 30 different versions of her, that can be animated on 30 different sets at once. We had, I think, maybe about 40 animators total on Wildwood. And I would say almost everyone at some point animated Prue, the main character. She's in most of the movie. So everyone is is is getting a little chunk of her. Some people doing are doing more. You have lead animators who are doing the the more like important scenes, maybe the ones with more emotional weight or things that really have to like, you know, build the character in a specific way. But across a movie like this, it would be impossible to have the main character just be animated by one person. So there's a lot of reference that gets shot, a lot of conversations about style. We have meetings about, okay, how does her hair move? How would she act in this certain situation to try and create a cohesive style for her, for other characters in the movie that are in multiple scenes, right? You know, sometimes if it's a character that is in a little bit of the movie, but not a lot of the movie, maybe, you know, is in like 10 different scenes, right? Not everyone is going to animate that character, but maybe seven different people are going to animate that character. So, you know, again, everyone has to kind of get on board. My situation on Wildwood was kind of unique and very different. Um, I had a character that I was on for the whole movie. So almost I was on the movie for almost four years. And the whole time I was on that movie, I was with this one character and the the sequences surrounding it. So I got to animate the main character, Prue, and some other characters along the line. But pretty much everything was surrounding this character of Owl Rex. Um, he's this sort of regal pomp. This owl character and that ends up, you know, helping Prue. But he uh was basically my character, which is fairly rare. I I felt really, really lucky that I got to work so closely with this character and uh basically create this performance. Um, you know, you're working with amazing puppet teams, you're being directed. So you know, it's not like every decision you see on the screen is is mine, but uh I got to do almost every single shot with this character, which is uh just a real treat. I I felt really lucky that I got to do that.

Four Years With Owl Rex

Greg Staffa 22:43

Was there I mean, you talk about, you know, this has uh been four years in the making. You had done stop motion before, but when they when someone comes to you and says, We have this idea, we're gonna call it Wildwood, and here's what we're gonna do. Was there any ever a moment where you're like, what the hell? I mean, because this is this is nothing like we've ever seen before. I mean, we've seen stop motion before, but usually it's like one or two characters, you know, against uh uh set, and they're you know doing something, and there's an element of that kind of click, click, click, click, click that we're used to in stop motion. Uh, but this is a performance. I mean, this is almost like Lord of the Rings meets puppetry, and it's so smooth and flawless, it seems, and all the trailer. I mean, this is like I said, I've I've never been a huge stop motion person, but this is just gorgeous, and you know, you're not gonna toot your own horn, so I will. Um, I've seen, you know, on YouTube and TikTok uh some clips of what goes into bringing the bird to life. You know, yeah, you add direction and stuff like that, but the work that you've done on that that bird is simply it looks real. I mean, it looks like it's come to life, and so I have just been fascinated. I haven't been a fan before, but I've watched several behind the scenes just and how they've done it, and it's simply amazing. One of the things that really kind of blew me away, and I don't know if it was on any of your sites or or what, but it's uh a clip on somewhere, and it features uh a group of people walking kind of down a hill with a large tree behind them, and while they're walking, there's this little kid or some little character that's running twice as fast down, you know, like a kid would down the hill. So you have them going at two different speeds, and you have to realize that when they're animating that, you have to be conscious of I'm going this speed, he's going that speed, they're going. I mean, it's just it's such a collaboration that is simply just beautiful. And I I can't wait to see it, and I hope a lot of people do, you know, we might as well give you guys the Oscars already, because it's just I don't know. I have to wonder, I mean, almost have to wonder, and this is you know, probably above your pay grade, but do you ever see a point that a stop motion character could get an Oscar for best? Because we're beyond that click, click, click, you know, motion. She's alive. She is a living, breathing, you know, the main character is a living, breathing character with a personality. You see, you know, the expressions on her face, you see all this stuff. Do you ever see a moment where like a stop animated character could get a nomination, not necessarily win, but for like a best leading actress?

SPEAKER_00 25:49

That is a

Is Animation A Lead Performance

SPEAKER_00 25:50

great question. I have never thought about that before or been asked that before. I don't know. I I don't I would I would be incredibly surprised to just because of the way that you know, usually animation is is you know widely regarded as like, oh, this is a beautiful art form, but it's never sort of seen in that way of like, oh, this is you know, the you know, this is the same as a performance by, you know, uh Tom Hanks or something. Like I I feel like some of the most emotional performances in films that have ever been done. Some of them are animated, you know. I think about the first you know, 15 minutes of Up, or you know, like, you know, when when Bambi's mother gets killed, like, you know, going way back, you know, these are deeply emotional moments. I think the thing that's tricky about that is that it it does, it is so collaborative in a way that, you know, okay, I like I am the one doing the physical animation, right? I'm I'm maneuvering this puppet to move and feel and think, but there's so many other people involved. I think it's it's hard to see it as like this is uh one performance that is singular to a specific person um because it is so collaborative. I don't know. It's a great question though, that I don't know, like I don't know if even like the Oscars like have rules about that. I know animated movies have been nominated for Best Picture, which no no animated movie has ever won Best Picture at the Oscars. I think UP was nominated. I think Beauty and the Beast was nominated. Those might be the only two. Maybe there's one more, but it's pretty rare that that even happens. That would be like, I think that would be the first step is is let's get uh uh an animated feature-winning best picture. That would be, I would love to see that at some point. I think that would really, you know, bring the art form to a point where we can say, like, okay, this is just a filmmaking technique, which like everyone in animation always says, like, this isn't a you know, animation's not a uh genre, it's a medium, it's a it's a technique. And I feel that, but you know, most people, most average people don't necessarily think that way. So I don't know. It's a good, it's a good uh good thing to think about though, for sure.

Greg Staffa 28:31

It's just I mean, just watching the trailers and stuff like that, the all the characters are you know the term brought to life is so easily used, but you know, you see personalities in her. And I mean, they they've shown the clip of the box that holds all the different magnetic faces, and you know, it's not just a smile or a frown, it's there is a personality in there, and so you guys bring it out. I have to wonder, you know, we live in a day and age where we want everything to be real, you know. We have things in film like the volume, which is digital sets that look real. We, you know, Jurassic Park, we wouldn't tolerate uh a stop motion dinosaur, we want it to be real. Everything has to look real. Our our CGI characters want we want them to look real. We keep on pushing that envelope for realistic, realistic. And yet something like Wildwood goes the complete opposite direction. And yeah, it there's real elements that feel, you know, like I said, the characters feel real, but it's a a real different approach. Why is it do you think that in a world where we we focus on looking real and real that we're able to go back and equally love something as so simple as stop motion for like a film like Wildwood?

SPEAKER_00 29:56

I think

Why Stop Motion Still Hits Hard

SPEAKER_00 29:57

people do respond to something that feels different, feels unique. And and it's interesting because I feel like you know, the the animation style on Wildwood is very naturalistic. It is very lifelike. Like we are we are sort of intensely studying real life, right? Like we're constantly looking out, people move, all the subtle little movements. You know, you might be sitting in a chair relatively still, but you know, your shoulders might be doing just a little action or you know, those little moments of like someone just taking a small breath. We're looking at those kind of things all the time. Yet, you know, we're still creating an animated world. So there's always going to be that little bit of interpretation. And I think that is where I find the most appeal about stop motion, but really animation in general, where you realize you are witnessing something that is coming through someone's head into, in this case, a puppet, and there is a conscious decision behind that. And that's what I love. It's it's that someone has made a creative decision, an artistic decision, and you are seeing that presented on screen, whether or not it's trying to look real or not. And and you know, obviously that is the same thing that's happening, you know, in in a realistic Jurassic Park dinosaur, right? But I think people have a different sense of it when there is a little bit more of a stylistic decision that's being made. That they feel like, oh, there's some curation here, right? We are being presented a viewpoint, we are being being presented a artistic taste or an artistic take on the world. And that's what I want to see right now. Like that that's the thing that you know I I really am wanting when I see a movie or an animated short or anything, is just like how is someone taking how they feel, how they see the world, and presenting it through this medium. And I think that's kind of amazing that we get to do that.

Greg Staffa 32:14

Now,

The First Sign Wildwood Was Special

Greg Staffa 32:15

stop motion is nothing new. You know, you have the film like Caroline, which is a you know, a very popular stop motion film, the Walt Grommet film that you mentioned. Uh, but Wildwood almost makes those look like little kid plays. No offense to those, you know, coming before you, but this is, in my opinion, a real leap. I mean, this this jumps, you know, a huge gap between Caroline and doing this. Was there a point doing this? Because I mean, stop motion is not like making a Marvel movie where you know you're gonna get the big you know success and the huge you know box office. But I again this is just my excitement from someone that wasn't huge into stop motion now is like give them all the awards, give them I mean, this is just beautiful. So some of this just might be my my over-eagerness of appreciation of what went into this, but was there a point where you realize that, and again, no offense to the people behind Caroline. I mean, this isn't a slight at them, but was there a point where you just realized that we're on to something special here? Like this goes beyond, I mean, this is beyond anything any of us have ever seen before.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Yeah, I had one very specific moment on the movie, and it it actually wasn't right at the beginning. I mean, I think obviously coming onto the movie, I was aware. I it's based on a Wildwood is based on a book. Um, I read the book before starting on the movie. So I was aware that, you know, okay, this is a really big story. This is a 500-page book, it's sort of like Narnia, sort of like Lord of the Rings in Scale of Fantasy. How are we gonna do this? So I was aware, okay, this is a big world. It's like uh the animation style is gonna be beautiful and intense. But I remember having this very specific moment. I was walking, I can't remember how long I had been on the movie, a little bit, and I was walking through the stages. And for anyone that has never been in a stop motion studio before, you know, when you peek into the stages, they're beautiful and amazing. But most of the time when you're walking through the studio, it's like just a sea of black curtains, right? Because every all the stages are are separated by by curtains so they can be individually lit and worked on by individual animators and and and uh set crews. But I had this moment where I was walking through the the studio and there was an open curtain, and I walked by it, and I literally did like almost like a cartoon double take. And it was it was a set that was that was being lit. It was it was it nobody had animated it yet. And I think there are I there's some images of this out, and you know, it's in it's in the movie for anyone that sees it. There's this this moment where um uh Brendan, the the bandit king, is on his horse and he's on the top of this hill, and he's backlit by this just gorgeous sun. There was this sort of practical screen, uh like a almost like tool or or some you know, some sort of very fine fabric to create like a layer of atmosphere in the back. And it was just, you know, it wasn't a huge set. It wasn't a uh, you know, like one of these giant battle sequences, it wasn't anything uh like that probably couldn't have happened on another stop-motion movie. But I remember walking by that set in particular, doing this double take, and just being stunned by how gorgeous the light was and how incredible the the forest looked and and just the level of care that had been put into that one image of this this character on horseback on the hill. It was just it looked as beautiful in person as it did on screen, right? Because that's not always the case. Sometimes you look at these things and you're like, is this gonna work on screen? I really hope so. This was just stunning, and that was the moment for me where I was like, oh, we're doing something really different here. That and it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a shot that I animated, it wasn't um any even a set that I worked on, but it just was so gorgeous. It literally stopped me in my tracks.

Greg Staffa 36:44

It is a gorgeous shot, it's been one that's featured on on several things. Yeah. I when you're doing something for four years, I think you're kind of hard to, you know, you're so deep in it, you're so involved in it, you know, you've made that bird, every little movement of that bird you've done a million times. There has to be a part of you that won't admit it, but you almost have to be sick of that bird at some point. Are you able to go back now and watch the trailer and watch the film and separate Ian the the puppet animator to Ian the the child that grew up loving things like stop animation and be able to watch it? Or do you go, God, I remember that day when I moved that leg a hundred times and there it is, done in two seconds.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Yeah. Um, it's a little bit of both. You can never separate it. You know, it it's it's a slow medium, right? So you're you're spending a lot of time doing these things, and you know, a lot of a lot of life happens in between frames sometimes, you know. Like I I have very specific memories of okay, like that shot, I messed something up and I don't like that, or like, or sometimes good things, like, oh, like I remember like that's around the time like I was animating that shot, and like my my one and a half year old at the time was like learning his first words. Like it's really like it brings back those kind of memories. Everything is all entwined, like you can't really watch it and not feel that sort of like, oh, this was my life in this. But at the same time, I can definitely take a step back and look at this and say, wow, like this was such an undertaking. Like, no one has ever made a stop-motion film like this. And I I have I've had many moments on the film. Um, I also was was a a total like bird kid. Like I just loved birds as a kid, especially birds of prey, hawks and owls and eagles and vultures and things like that. So I had a lot of moments on the film with that where I was animating this bird and I was just like, oh, I really wish I could tell myself when I was seven years old that I'm doing this because it's really neat. And I I think that I would have thought it was really, really cool. And I do still think it's really cool. You know, when you're in it, it does feel you you do feel that sense of of weight with it, where you're like, ooh, this is hard. This is the hardest thing I think any of us had ever done working on that film. But you take a step back, and what the way that I can see it the most is by seeing my friends' work, right? We were all on this thing for so many years, and I know the hard work that every single person put into it. And, you know, no one, like I said, no one loves looking at their own shots, but I love looking at my friends' shots who did beautiful work, and I can see that in their work, and I think they see that in mine. So that that's the that's the way I can get into that is by seeing thinking like, all right, I know I'm feeling this about them. They might be feeling the same thing about me. And I can have some objectivity about it, but it's, you know, you're never gonna be able to separate that feeling of like, oh, I wish I had made that different choice. Even on shots you really like, you know, there's a handful of shots in this movie where I can look at and be like, oh, I think I did a really good job on that shot. I really like the choices I made. I really like the way that wing did that this, or, or that performance choice. There's there's plenty of those. Um, so it's not like, you know, I'm looking at my work, being like, ugh, gross, that's terrible. But it's just wrapped up in a lot of uh complicated emotions because it is a performance. You are you are performing very slowly. We get about, you know, a second or two a day, or maybe on a really good day, per animator. So you're you're performing very slowly, but it is still a performance. So you're putting a lot of emotion into it. You're putting kind of everything you have into it. And hopefully that shows when people see it, but also, you know, it it does take a lot out of us as animators, as performers. Yeah, it's it's it's a lot of decisions and a lot of yeah, pouring of yourself into this thing.

Greg Staffa 41:31

What

Finishing The Film Then Letting Go

Greg Staffa 41:32

is your world like right now? I mean, when this gets released, the the film would just have come out, uh, but right now we're we're leading up to it. The trailers have been out, the reaction has been surprisingly positive. Well, not surprisingly, but it's been positive. Yeah, um, I love going on YouTube and watching other people's reactions to things, uh, including trailers, and there's a lot of reaction to trailers. I don't know if you've looked them up, but I I would suggest them for a nice ego boost. Uh check out reaction to trail the they do the trailer reactions, yeah. Fans do, and it's all been very positive. You've put four years into this, you're now at the low where it's just about to premiere. The buzz is out there. What kind of emotions are you going through of not only seeing the final projects be you know released, but you're you're at the end now of a four-year journey. You know, there has to be kind of a a mixed emotion of, you know, my kids going off to college, but now I'm I'm left here, you know, alone. How how are you doing with all that?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Yeah, it it is a it is a strange thing. And I think, you know, a lot of it, I think it would be different if we like finished and it came out right. I've had a lot of time to process. So I I wrapped in December of last year. So December 2025. Um, I took my last frame like the day before Christmas break and walked out of the building, and that was it. I was done. And that was a strange moment where it's like, okay, I finished this four-year, almost four-year thing. A lot of like like decompression, right? You know, it was it was tiring. I was ready to like take a step back and say, okay, I am very glad I did this. I'm ready for a break from it for sure. But having, you know, what nine or ten months in between is is great, right? To to be able to look at it with fresh eyes. And like, you know, when I was there, obviously I was aware that like, wow, we're doing we are doing something pretty incredible. But when you take a step back from it, and it does look different, you know, when you're seeing stuff fresh off the stage. Uh it it looks different. There's a lot of VFX in this movie. This you know, you know, it is a stop-motion movie at its core, but you know, it would be remiss to not say like there is hundreds and hundreds of people on the CG teams that are bringing those big battles to life, all the background characters, they're doing you know, color correction, they're they're doing added CG elements, you know, all sorts of stuff that that bring that world. Oh, set extensions, right? You know, a lot of the sets, you know, they'll they sort of end at a certain point because we can't build as giant as you know, we would still be working on it 10 years from now to build that world. So it when I saw the first trailer, I almost didn't recognize it. I mean, I of course I did, but like it felt like, oh, this is a movie, like this is a very different movie than I had last seen it. You know, I guess the first trailer came out a few months ago. So it'd been, you know, maybe six months since I had really seen anything. And it was a wild experience to see that and and think, like, oh wow, like this really looks cinematic. This really has this feel of this big, big film. Because when you're in it, you know, you're so hyper-focused on these little tiny details. It's really hard to step back and see the whole picture. And I also, some, you know, one of the things about working in film and animation, I do miss a little bit sometimes of being able to just sort of enjoy, watch a movie and enjoy it without like feeling like I'm at work, you know, analyzing it. So I made this conscious decision the last like year of production where I didn't want to watch anything other than the stuff I was working on, like in full, right? I would see shots that people were doing on a you know individual basis, but I wasn't, I was like intentionally trying to not watch like full sequences or full chunks of the movie, just to like see if I could see it fresh when it came out. And I think that was a good decision. I see even just seeing the trailer, uh, I I had this experience of like, oh, like this feels new to me. Like I feel like I'm watching something that I don't fully recognize in a really lovely way, where it was like, oh, it feels a lot bigger, it feels a lot um more realized, which is very exciting because you never know how those things are gonna turn out when you step back from them.

Greg Staffa 46:43

Forgive me for this next question. And if you don't want to answer it, uh feel free to say so. But you have a young child, correct?

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Yep, uh-huh. And one on the way.

Greg Staffa 46:53

Have they seen the trailer yet? And are they old enough to appreciate it? And what was that like for you to watch them watching the trailer?

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Yeah, so my son Wally is almost six. Here's the crazy thing I realized, right? I was he was one and a half when I started working on the movie, and he will be almost six by the time it comes out. So that puts things in perspective of how long this thing took. But he is a little film nerd, probably my doing. Uh my general like parent like screen time philosophy is I just don't want to show him junk, right? Like, I don't want to show him, you know, just the like typical shows that you know most parents are just putting on for their preschoolers without really actually knowing what they're putting on. So I have tried to sort of curate for him, maybe even just like slightly older than his pay grade. I mean, we're not watching The Exorcist or anything, but you know, like I he's he has generally seen probably some more movies, more shows that are like, you know, just like the next age bracket up from him. And he's pretty comfortable with it. So he has a good tolerance for, you know, seeing some kind of scary things, some like more intense things. And I showed him the I showed him the most recent the the last trailer, what they're calling like the final trailer that has a lot of the battle stuff in it, right? It it shows, you know, some pretty intense images, and he was excited by it. So he's he's gonna come to the crew screening with me. We'll see how it goes. It hasn't happened yet, but it's uh he he really I I'm very lucky. He is a kid that appreciates film and um and old film too. I I'm a huge nerd and just find like endless inspiration in Buster Keaton films, Harold Lloyd, Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and he loves that stuff. He eats it up. Like we watch that's what we watch together. And I just get the biggest kick out of being able to like share that kind of stuff with him because it's so good. And honestly, most five-year-olds aren't seeing those films, and they are some of the best films ever made. And per and perfect for five-year-olds, honestly. Like they're visual, they're funny, and he loves that kind of stuff. So, and that's where I find a lot of my inspiration too. You know, I when I when I think about the things that make me want to make things, it's a lot, a lot of times it's you know, I try to look outside of animation. I try to look to to old film, to books, to you know, places, and those are the kind of things that get me like really excited to create.

New Shorts, Teaching, And Nowhere Special

Greg Staffa 49:45

Now, what does the future have in store for you? What are you working on? I knew you do some uh coaching or teaching of stop motion. If people want to sign up, they can reach out to you. But is there any other projects that you're working on that we can look forward to in a couple years? Or yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

So I'm working on I'm working on a couple projects of my own right now, which is really nice. So I I started many, many years ago working on a short film called Nowhere Special, and when I was um at CalArts with my really good friend Matt Chappelle, and he is an amazing set builder and miniaturist, and just makes the most beautiful, you know, uh, scenery. And he's one of those people that can just take like a pen cap and a piece of trash and like turn it into the most gorgeous like miniature you've ever seen. Um, so we started working on a film together in college about the scarecrow in the dust bowl left on an abandoned farm. And we started it, we got some progress made on it, and it just became too big of a project for both of us. We we were young, we had never really worked in the industry yet. We we were trying to make a film probably above our pay grade, and uh time we didn't just didn't have the time or space to do it. And we but we both really still loved the film, loved the idea of it, loved the look of it. And last year I sort of just had this realization of like, oh, we could we could do this now, we could make it. And I've been sort of redeveloping it. You know, honestly, like taking a 10-year break from a project. I don't necessarily like recommend that to anyone that wants to make something, it's not the best way to do it. No, more than 10-year break, thir 13 years, oof, 13-year break from a project, but it was immensely clarifying. It sort of had a new resonance about what the film was really about. My animation is is better than it it was then. You know, I think Matt has always been incredible, but you know, he works at at Disney now and at Disney World and is an incredible scenic painter and you know still makes amazing miniatures. So uh we we have all these new skills that we're trying to bring to it. Um so I've been sort of in the early stages of redeveloping it. I sort of took a new draft of the script and am trying to figure out the best way to make it, right? Do I just start chipping away at it? Do I try to get some funding? Those are all that's sort of where I'm in the decision-making spot of now. But um I'm very excited about it because it's been a long time in the making. And the clips that I do have from it from the years from years ago, people have always really responded to. Uh it it honestly, there's a few clips from it in my reel that like honest that have seemed to have gotten me every job I've ever gotten. So there's something about it that resonates, and I want to bring that into reality. And I think it's gonna happen finally. Another friend of mine has some some space to make some films, so I this the space issue seems to be um resolved, and I just need to find the time and money to do it. But stop motion always takes a long time, so I'm very excited. It'll probably be a little while before it is finished because of how long this stuff takes. But hopefully I'll be I'll be sharing some stuff out publicly very soon. I have a couple other little projects. I'm making just like a little mini short film in, you know, just this little workroom I'm in. Just a little two-minute short film. After I finished at Leica, I just wanted to make something of my own where I was like, I want to just decide stylistically what I want to do. I want to animate something a little cartoonier, um, something that is in clay, because I really like animating clay. Um, and I it has taken a lot longer than I had intended it to. It's been a few months now of this little two-minute project, but it's almost done, and that'll be out there in the world pretty soon. So I'm just like I'm someone that always has to be making things. I I am there I am restless if I am not making something, whether it's film or a model railroad or you know, any anything. I that's that's my my purpose in the world, seemingly. So, and I'm I'm glad for it. I'm I'm really it's it's a I think a beautiful thing to be able to take something that you're feeling and turn it into something that other people can see and appreciate. Nice.

Greg Staffa 54:40

And back to the scarecrow thing, I uh do encourage people to check out, even though it's an older clip and you're you're improving it, and I'll include a link to your your stuff, but it is an amazing little clip. It features a a scarecrow, if I remember correctly, kind of stumbling, climbing up on a windmill, was it? Yeah, exactly. And he's having a little bit of a hard time doing it, and there's just there's so much personality in life in that just brief little clip that uh it made me wanting more. And again, I am coming from a background that just was never big on on stop motion and uh Wildwood and just learning about it and wanting to learn about it and wanting to understand it and seeing you know your clips uh has really done a 180 for me and appreciate it. But uh,

Final Thoughts On A Tiny Medium

Greg Staffa 55:32

Ian Boone, I can't thank you enough. This has been a real treat. Like I said, this has been a real eye-opening experience just learning about Wildwood and being able to talk to you and give you a little bit of voice to to talk about the film that I can't wait. Uh by the time this airs, it'll be out there. But I am looking forward to checking it out and can't thank you enough.

SPEAKER_00 55:55

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I love I love getting to talk about this stuff. It's it's always just the most exciting thing for me to to get to share. Like it's it's a medium that that is small. You know, there's not a lot of people that do it, and it's growing. You know, there's more people that want to do it now more now than ever, which is great. But, you know, it's still a a relatively tiny subset of people that, you know, want to spend 10 hours a day in the dark getting a second of of film for for that amount of work. And I just love talking about it. I love talking with people that are interested in it. Yeah, it's just a just a real delight.