Wildwood is the most ambitious film ever made by Laika, the stop-motion studio best known for films like Coraline And ParaNormand. It is a vast fantastic adventure that lasted five years. The process involved more than 230 puppets – including 36 of the main character Prue alone – which were brought to life by a team of 49 animators. In total, more than 1,000 artists worked on the film in one way or another. The painstaking process required to make a Laika film offers a distinct counterpoint to the instant progress promised by generative AI tools.
Recently Wildwood Director and Laika CEO Travis Knight has joined a chorus of filmmaker influencers in speaking out against the technology. So when I had the opportunity to speak to Knight before WildwoodAt the film’s premiere on October 23, I asked him what it felt like to release a film like this at a time when AI tools seem inescapable.
“In many ways, generative AI is antithetical to everything we are about at this studio,” Knight told me. “It’s not that we don’t believe in technology. We do. We use technology, we use computers. We don’t just make films entirely with tools that we inherited from a watchmaker’s widow. A pencil is technology, a paintbrush is technology, a 3D printer is technology, a computer workstation is technology. But all of these things have meaning and value when put in the hands of an artist.”
“There is no humanity in what comes out the other side”
Actually, Wildwood is full of technical advancements for Laika, many of which build on the studio’s previous work. Many puppets now come equipped with diaphragms, for example, which animators can use to make characters appear to be breathing. Puppet limbs have more advanced musculature, as well as sturdier and more flexible materials for clothing, hair, and fur. All of these elements combined create a film that is decidedly more realistic than its predecessors. (For a more detailed look at how Laika works, check out this great overview of Tested.) For Knight, these tools and their continued advancements are an important part of the filmmaking process, but generative AI is something very different.
“When technology does the artist’s work, it’s a different proposition,” he explains. “And that’s something that I strongly oppose, because there’s no humanity in what comes out on the other side of that. When you’ve ingested the material that an artist actually created, and then you regurgitate it in a different way, there’s no soul, there’s no spirit, there’s no humanity behind it. It’s theft. I truly believe that when you tell a human story, when you tell a story of loss and heartbreak and something that means something to someone, it has to come from a person A computer has never fallen in love. They have never made a terrible choice and never had their heart broken. And so only a person can talk about what that experience is and what it feels like.
“I think AI is an amazing technology,” he says. “On the one hand, you have to marvel at the progress that’s been made. And I think it’s going to be disruptive to our society and our world. I think there are many benefits that can come from this when you look at medicine and science. There’s a world where these things can benefit humanity enormously. And then there’s a world where they can be devastating. I fear for the latter, I hope for the former, but it requires people to be good stewards of this technology. As a group of humans, we have generally not shown that we are good at it. But I am still optimistic, and I hope that collectively we can see the value of technology and use it responsibly, and see the danger it presents and fight against it. he.”
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