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‘Missing Link’ Interview + Blu-ray Giveaway

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Missing Link is the fifth film from American animation machine Laika Studios in Portland, Oregon. Directed by Chris Butler (Paranorman), the film follows debonair adventurer Sir Lionel Frost as he treks across the globe to discover and capture the Missing Link. Upon meeting the kindly creature the two strike a bargain to reunite the red-haired sasquatch with his long-lost cousins the mighty Yeti at their snowy fortress in the Himalayas. From this brief description, I’m sure you can already imagine the scale of the film – crossing countries and continents required dozens of sets, characters, props and costumes to be created for this miniature-scaled – but nonetheless grand – adventure film.

As we have come to expect from Laika, the film doesn’t fall short in regards to the visuals or its impressive technical feats; Missing Link is joyously colourful and unique in its re-envisioning of yet another world populated by characterfully-designed people and beasts.

Skwigly were able to get a little time with the film’s writer, director and lead designer Chris Butler, whose work with Laika began with his directorial debute Paranorman back in 2012. 

How do you go about developing multiple characters in what must seem like a short time, from a scripting and directing point of view?

When I’m writing I know what I’m trying to say, thematically. I think I might start with the idea, like “I want to do an adventure movie and I want it to be victorian” but then I think “What’s it about?”
In this case it’s about friendship and identity, and I think when you’ve got those themes and you’ve got your setting then it’s kind of easy for things to fall into place. A big part of it also is I start with what’s on the page and have a certain idea of the character but then when you enlist the actor and they get into the recording booth they bring a whole other side. That’s wonderful to me, when an actor reads a script they are creating the character for themselves and it doesn’t necessarily meet with my idea; it will do in some instances but not always. That’s the most interesting thing, when they’ll read a line in a completely different way from what I expected but it gives a different perspective on a character.

Missing Link (Laika/Lionsgate)

Coming from a visual background, working in storyboarding, is it ever a struggle to build a narrative when you have this very specific visual idea in mind?

I think for me I’ve got a little movie playing in my head when I’m writing. I don’t know if other writers have that. I think that comes from being a story artist probably, it definitely helps me. When you’re in development on a film like this you often work with a handful of artists. In this case it was maybe two concept artists – I’ll do some drawings and they’ll paint them up and become this handful of iconic images that sum up the movie. There was one I did with Lionel in the study and that was almost the “eureka” moment for the look of the movie for me. Another one was Lionel riding in front of this wall of giant fallen logs, which is in the movie. There was something about that shot that summed up what I was trying to do in the movie, the sense of scale, bold graphics and colour – even though we did it in the first few weeks that sensibility survived.

You were also the lead designer on this, weren’t you?

I was, I mean officially I’m character designer – it was a difficult one to call to be honest. On Paranorman it was easy, I saw Heidi Smith’s work and was like “That’s what the characters look like on this one”.
I looked around for a long time and I didn’t have that same moment but I did have some initial sketches from years and years ago that people were responding to favourably, especially one of Link – everyone seems to love it. I was like “I’m not going to fight this”, I was just waiting for someone to change my mind. I did get the opportunity to work with Warwick Johnson Cadwell.

Ah his stuff is really lovely, that  would also explain why the characters have this very long ‘squishiness’… 

It’s just incredibly idiosyncratic – there’s a lot of asymmetry to his work which I didn’t want on this one because we had it on Paranorman but what I did have from him was this wild, observational cartoonishness that I wanted to incorporate, so working with him really helped. It inspired me and I had somewhere to go with my initial sketch.

Missing Link (Laika/Lionsgate)

On that point, what technical things did you have to come up with to get that style?

Well, I’m probably not the most popular director for stop-motion people because stylistically I create characters that are not easy to make as puppets in terms of proportions. For animators it becomes difficult as well – highly stylised puppets that move like real people are not easy, so what this means is that we have to really innovate with the construction of these puppets. Link, as an example, is the most complicated puppet we’ve ever made because I wanted him to do all this very realistic, active stuff and that’s not very easy when he’s this avocado shaped lump of silicone, so they had to come up with all kinds of innovations to make that. I think just in terms of engineering I was asking a lot.

Did you develop a special squash-and-stretch armature inside?

Yeah, we had squash-and-stretch – we also used a lot of jet packs, which is a rig that goes on the back of the puppet and allows for tiny increments of movement. Link himself doesn’t have a neck, he has a cowl and they came up with this hugely elaborate and complex understructure so all those tiles of fur could move against each other and not bunch up or crease – I mean it’s crazy stuff and if any of them read this I’m sorry for ruining their life!

Working on Link

The other thing you’re mainly known for  is the introduction of 3D printing into faces and the development of colour pigmentation. How do you feel that ability to create such subtle colours and movement affects the medium as a whole?

Just talking about the faces, I think part of the ambition behind it is not to create something where you see the different technologies at work; as cool as it is, you don’t want the general audience to go in and be looking at how cool that puppet is or how cool the printed faces are, you want them to be compelled by the story and the characters and forget about how it’s done. So I think it’s not just how much we can innovate each process but how we can fit them together really well. I also think part of it is because of a lot of it is the same crew, we’ve just been honing our skills over the last four movies and I think we’ve come to a place where we’re just these people are good at it.
There’s also always a bunch of innovations on these movies we haven’t tried before I think on this one it’s harder to say – there are no sixteen-foot skeletons in this, but there is a giant elephant. For me it’s the little things – or not so little when you think about it – as the facial animation in previous movies was a library system, so you come up with these subtle variations of mouth movement or eyebrow movement, create a kit and build sentence dialogue out of those kits. That’s worked great for us but I wanted greater subtlety of performance to match the subtlety of performance that we’ve obtained with the puppets. So every shot in this movie is bespoke facial animation, there’s no kit system, every shot was animated specific to that shot so every face is specific to a certain line of dialogue, it’s never re-used (or very few are re-used). That allowed for a level of nuance and sophistication that we’ve always wanted but never had before. There’s a shot where Lionel is listening to Link where his lips part and his lips stick together slightly – that level of subtlety. Weirdly enough when the CG guys got that shot they cleaned it all off because they thought it was mistake! I was like “Put it back, it’s suppose to be there!” 

So what was the biggest challenge for you on this film?

Getting it made! The size and scale. There always lots of challenges to these things but this one was so big, bigger than anything we had done before, bigger than any stop-motion movie before. It’s a travelogue so everywhere we go is somewhere new, we’re never repeating ourselves, we’re never going back – not often – so that’s a lot of sets. We wanted to approach it with a live-action sensibility so there’s a lot of epic shots and, though we lean very heavily on our digital effects department, everything they do is informed by physical assets.

So many sets and scenes…

Yeah, and background characters – because if you’re traveling around the world and you’re going to New York and London and the Himalayas, all these places have to be populated, otherwise it’s a very different kind of movie. You have to have CG extras but you want them to fit into the same look as the practical, live sets, so it’s a lot to juggle and a lot to ask of people. The action sequences were hugely challenging, again I wanted to approach them with a live-action sensibility which means a lot of quick cuts, which all take the same amount of set up as a long cut, so logistically it was a lot to ask for.

Missing Link (Laika/Lionsgate)

And what was the best part?

I love lots of different things. I loved the writing part, personally. I love recording actors and seeing these characters becoming something else, I love seeing shots come in daily – when you first see the puppet that was character in your head moving and speaking for the first time it’s magical. Y’know, I love this process overall! I’ve watched this movie every week for the last five years, I’ve watched it evolve and I still like it, so there’s something to be said about that. I love telling stories, every part of it is challenging. Every part of it is worth it.

Hear more from our interview with director Chris Butler in episode 90 of the Skwigly Animation Podcast (stream below or direct download):

To celebrate the release of the hilarious Missing Link on DVD and Blu-Ray ™ we’re giving 4 lucky readers a chance to win the film on Blu-Ray ™!
Missing Link follows the brave adventurer Sir Lionel Frost and the slightly silly yet surprisingly smart Mr Link across the globe on a daring quest to seek Link’s distant relatives in the fabled valley of Shangri-La. Along the way, our fearless explorers encounter more than their fair share of peril, stalked at every turn by dastardly villains seeking to thwart their mission. Starring Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana and Zach Galifianakis, Missing Link is the perfect fun-filled family movie.

Missing Link is now available to download/keep and is out on DVD and Blu-Ray™ 5th August from Lionsgate Home Entertainment. Enter now for a chance to win Missing Link on Blu-Ray™!

PRIZE DRAW TERMS AND CONDITIONS
  1. The prize draw is open to all UK residents aged 18 years or over, except employees of the Promoter, their families, agents or any third party directly associated with administration of the prize draw.
  2. The prize draw is free to enter and no purchase is necessary.
  3. All entries must be submitted via Skwigly and only one entry per person is permitted.
  4. The opening date for entries is 12:00 on 31/07/2019. The closing date of the prize draw is 23:59 on 07/08/2019. Entries received after this time will not be valid.
  5. If for any reason a technical interruption, fault or site failure occurs when purchasing online, the Promoter does not take any responsibility for incomplete purchases and any incomplete purchases will not be considered valid for entry into the prize draw. The Promoter accepts no responsibility for any purchases which are not completed for any reason.
  6. A winner will be chosen by random draw supervised by an independent person on 08/09/2019.
  7. The winner will receive one of four Missing Link Blu-Rays.
  8. The winner will be notified by email or telephone using details provided at entry before 06/09/2019 and must provide a postal address to claim their prize. If a winner does not respond to the Promoter within 7 days of being notified by the Promoter, then the winner’s prize will be forfeited and the Promoter will be entitled to select another winner in accordance with the process described above.
  9. The prize will be sent to the winner by post within 28 days of being notified of their win.
  10. The prize for the winner is non-exchangeable, non-transferable and no cash alternative is offered.
  11. The prize is supplied by Feref. The Promoter reserves the right to replace the prize with an alternative prize of equal or higher value if circumstances beyond the Promoter’s control makes it necessary to do so.
  12. The decision of the Promoter regarding any aspect of the prize draw is final and binding and no correspondence will be entered into about it.
  13. The winner’s name and county can be obtained by sending an email to info@feref.com within 7 of days after the date of the closing date of the prize draw.
  14. Participants are deemed to have accepted and agreed to be bound by these terms and conditions upon entry. The Promoter reserves the right to refuse entry, or refuse to award the prize to anyone in breach of these terms and conditions.
  15. The Promoter reserves the right to hold void, cancel, suspend, or amend the promotion where it becomes necessary to do so.
  16. Insofar as is permitted by law, the Promoter, its agents or distributors will not in any circumstances be responsible or liable to compensate the winner or accept any liability for any loss, damage, personal injury or death occurring as a result of taking up the prize except where it is caused by the negligence of the Promoter, its agents or distributors or that of their employees. Your statutory rights are not affected.
  17. Winners may be required to participate in publicity related to the prize draw which may include the publication of their name and photograph in any media.
  18. Personal data supplied during the course of this promotion may be passed on to third party suppliers only insofar as required for fulfilment/delivery/arrangement of the prize.
  19. The prize draw will be governed by English law and entrants to the prize draw submit to the jurisdiction of the English courts.
  20. The Promoter of this prize draw is Feref of 17-18 Great Pulteney Street, London W1F 9NE

In this article:

Chris ButlerHeidi SmithLAIKAMissing LinkPARANORMANWarwick Johnson Cadwell

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