It’s hard to imagine the amount of time and work that goes into producing a major motion picture. For the crew at Laika, a stop motion animation studio that produces full-length and short films, the process is beyond complex. The creatives there are the masterminds behind the popular recent release “The Boxtrolls,” which features hand-crafted characters and delicate, elaborate miniature sets. According to a American Film Institute Q&A with Travis Knight, CEO/President at Laika, the film took just under 10 years to develop and almost two years to be handcrafted and shot, frame-by-frame, by a large staff of creatives. Los Angeles-based portrait, advertising, and travel photographer José Mandojana was commissioned by Wired to take a trip to Portland and get a behind-the-scenes look at the crew that made it all happen.
The images, which not-only feature the crew members behind the product but also the movie’s characters, fit right in with José’s style:
The project was primarily focused on portraiture. Whether it be the characters/figures from the movie, or the actual people involved in the making of each component, it was very much a portrait shoot. That suits me because making portraits is the backbone of my work. I’ve worked with Wired in the past, so the PE must have thought me to be a good fit for this assignment … I love working with them as the stories always have great interest for me personally.
As with most shoots, time was a big factor:
Time was the biggest challenge. The space was huge and lighting each portrait involved a lot of moving and set up time. My assistant and I put in a solid 12-hour day, and I still felt I wasn’t able to tell the full story of the amazing crew behind “The Boxtrolls.” There was no easy way to overcome the issue of lack of time. It really came down to fast problem solving and relying on the years of experience I’ve gained working quickly on environmental editorial shoots.
The images can be seen in Wired’s iPad issue and on their website. José has received good feedback from the people at Laika, creatives who enjoyed looking at the shots and even fans of the film.
I wrote Julia [the Photo Editor at Wired] the day after the shoot telling her how amazing the experience was for me. I get to meet amazing people on a daily basis, but for some reason seeing the work that goes behind making a stop motion film of this calibre really opened my eyes up to how amazing a great team can be. I just got the sense that whatever they dreamed up or imagined, they would find a way to make it possible on camera. I came away invigorated to be even more precise with my work after seeing how detail oriented the Laika crew is.