Portland State Magazine Winter 2013

12 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE WINTER 2013 LAIKA was formed in 2003, and Travis became president and CEO in 2009. But before he took the helm, he was the lead animator for the company’s first major film, Coraline . Filmed in 3-D, it’s the eerie story of a young girl who moves cross country with her parents to a strange town. She’s lonely, and her parents are too busy to give her much attention. She finds a hidden corridor in her new home, follows it, and discovers an alternate world inhabited by her “other” parents—ones who are nicer and more attentive. As attractive as this other world is at first, she finds that things are not quite right. The other mother turns out to be a witch bent on keeping Coraline captive. Based on the 2002 book by Neil Gaiman, the story had all the elements of some of the best children’s literature: discovery, gaining power in a world of flawed adults, dealing with emotional issues such as isolation, fear, and loneliness. Viewers expecting to see a typical kids’ movie might have been disappointed. Or shocked: it’s pretty scary. That suits Knight just fine. “I don’t want to put out little pop culture confections to the world. I want to tell stories that have some meaning. That’s a big part of what this company is about,” he says. New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott, who called Coraline’s 3-D effects “unusually subtle,” admired the film’s novel approach. “…Rather than race through ever noisier set pieces toward a hectic climax in the manner of so much animation aimed at kids, Coraline lingers in an atmosphere that is creepy, wonderfully strange and full of feeling,” he wrote. ParaNorman has some of the same themes as Coraline . So does Laika’s next feature film, scheduled for release in fall 2014. But Knight isn’t talking much about it. Not yet, anyway—not until the company formally announces it this winter. “It’s definitely a Laika film, which is to say it’s not your standard Hollywood family fare,” he says. BEING DIFFERENT is a kind of personal mission for Knight, who said his artistic goals changed the instant he had children. He said the entertainment industry just wasn’t mak- ing ’em like they used to, and he wanted to resist the tempta- tion of going with the flow just to make money. “We’re awash in a world of sequels and reboots and remakes, where old presents are rewrapped and offered up as new gifts. At Laika, we want to do things that make our kids proud and have a positive effect on how they see the world,” he says. His children are now 9 and 11 years old, just the right age to critique their dad’s work. “They’re the perfect focus group,” he says. “I run ideas by them all the time. They’re very honest—they’ll tell me if something sucks or if they like it.” Knight’s goal for the company is to overlap projects so that it’s putting out a movie a year. No stop-motion company has ever been able to do it, he says. The genre is known for ramping up employment while a project is going on, then letting most of the animators and craftspeople go when it’s completed. Because of this, the artists who make stop-motion films tend to live kind of rootless lives. Knight wants his artists to come to Oregon and stay. Making that happen is where the business side of Laika comes in: acquiring story rights, figuring out the funding and the scheduling. But all of that is in service to the art of making movies one painstaking frame at a time.  John Kirkland is a staff member in the PSU Office of University Communications. WINTER 2013 Travis Knight is also a lead animator at Laika and can be seen here manipulating the puppets in ParaNorman . Photo by Reed Harkness.