Angela Bassett and the “Wildwood” team discuss that high-flying chase sequence (exclusive) – USFTB

Key Points

• Wildwood features a high-speed chase, this one in the air via birds rather than on the ground via cars.

• Angela Bassett voices the General, an eagle who’s protecting the young protagonist, Prue, as she searches for her kidnapped brother.

• The sequence was filmed with an eagle puppet featuring 3,000 feathers.

One of the liveliest scenes in Wildwood — the latest fantasy adventure from stop-motion animation studio Laika — arrives around the halfway mark, when young protagonist Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) takes flight atop the General, a mighty eagle, as they’re pursued by coyotes and crows.

The eagle puppet, which boasts a five-foot wingspan and 3,000 hand-laid polysatin feathers, is “the most advanced we’ve ever produced in the studio,” Ollie Jones, Laika’s head of character and practical effects, tells Entertainment Weekly for our Makers Issue cover story. “We hadn’t built much more than chickens, in terms of feathered animals, so an eagle was a huge feat.”

“The General has presence and authority!” adds Angela Bassett, who voices the character. “My voice is just one piece of the performance. There are all of these artists contributing movement, expression, and physicality. It’s a remarkable collaboration.” 

The complex interplay between the camera and the General puppet required 12 feet of physical track for the camera, 30 feet of track for the puppet gimbal, and at least a year of planning. “We have shots where the camera’s spinning, the bird’s spinning the other way, and it’s swooping down to a valley, and the sun’s direction has to be consistent,” production designer Nelson Lowry says.

Most of the scene was filmed against a bluescreen, but almost all of the visual elements were built by hand and then scanned into the digital environment. “Anything in the foreground, we can capture practically and shoot on the stages,” art director Cassie Lopez explains. “They scanned our practical trees and every landscape asset and added them to the VFX library. Nelson worked really closely with them to populate as much artwork as possible to inform that entire sequence.”

Bassett recorded her vocal track in 2021, five years before the film hit theaters. “When you’re in the recording studio, you have the script, the direction, your imagination and whatever visual references are available to you,” she explains. “Then, years later, you see this entire world that has been built around the performance. That was pretty extraordinary.”

The What’s Love Got to Do With It actress viewed the chase scene as a particular challenge in the recording studio. “What I remember most was thinking about how much of that sequence I would have to create vocally,” she says. “When you’re recording animation, you don’t have your physical performance to rely upon in the same way you do on camera. You have to communicate the character’s intention and energy through your voice and trust the filmmakers and animators to build the world around you.”

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Basset says she has “an even greater appreciation” for her collaboration with Laika’s artists now that she’s seen the finished film. “What began with a script and a performance behind a microphone ultimately becomes something extraordinarily detailed and alive in the hands of these artists,” she says.

Wildwood hits theaters on October 23.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly