Welcome back to Toonzone’s “Two Strings Tuesdays,” the day dedicated to special content posted a week in conjunction with the upcoming release of LAIKA Animation Studio’s latest feature film Kubo and the Two Strings (coming to theaters on August 19, 2016). For our earlier installments, check out:
- Roundtable interview with director Travis Knight and producer Arianne Sutner
- On the set of Kubo and the Two Strings at LAIKA
- Interview with Art Parkinson, the voice of Kubo
Credit: Steve Wong Jr LAIKA Studios/Universal Pictures
Travis Knight is LAIKA’s President and CEO, and has led or been involved in all key creative and business decisions at LAIKA since the studio’s founding in 2005. He was Lead Animator on Coraline (2009) and Lead Animator and Producer on ParaNorman (2012) and The Boxtrolls (2014). Knight was honored with the Annie Award for his character animation work on ParaNorman and an Academy Award® nomination for The Boxtrolls. Knight makes his directorial debut on Kubo and the Two Strings, which he also produced.
TOONZONE NEWS: In the press roundtable session earlier this year, you spoke of drawing on mythology like Star Wars, Tolkien, etc and it made me think of Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. Kubo actually goes into the belly of a whale.
TRAVIS KNIGHT: Yes he does. One of the things I love about that sequence is that we start to talk about where they take refuge in this barren wasteland, and I think it’s a testament to the incredible artists at LAIKA that we take this thing, which is this disgusting frozen whale, and when you see it on screen, it looks like a beautiful cathedral of bone and frozen viscera. The artists at LAIKA are able to make something that gross look that beautiful. I think it is really a stunning thing. I love that set, I think that’s exquisite.
TOONZONE NEWS: There are so many things in the setting of this world. Did you create an entire backstory?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: We have little offshoots, little stories. It’s a big fantasy world, something that we’ve never really tried before, and in order to tell a big epic fantasy, it has to feel like it’s a world that’s lived in. It can’t feel like it’s something that just came out of a fabrication shop. So there are a number of different things that we did to try to make it feel like it was a world that has been around forever and that we just happen to be capturing it in this moment. You do end up coming up with a bunch of elaborate stories that never actually make it into the movie, but you hope that it informs the actual making of the film.
TOONZONE NEWS: Like how the Heavens worked?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: Yeah. The gods in our movie, it’s a mythology of our own making. It’s inspired by a number of different things, but it’s the Moon God and the Star Goddesses and all that kind of stuff. There are plenty of world mythologies that reference those sorts of things. This is something that was important for us, but really it was about what it represented for the movie and how in some ways the Grandfather is sort of like Noah Cross from Chinatown on some level. He’s just this patriarch who demands obedience, and that has an effect on his family. One of the things you learn as a director is to look at your characters without judgment. If you’re trying to evoke a real performance that doesn’t feel like it’s a caricature…working with actors, working with animators, you want to be able to talk about what motivates these people. It’s the cliché that every villain is the hero of their own story, but it’s true. Even these characters that are incredibly awful, like the Grandfather figure or the assassin Sisters, they have pain, and we wanted to make sure that came through. For these horrible choices that they are making, we wanted to make sure that the audience understood that they think they are doing the right thing because they’ve gone through this horrible, painful experience where they’ve lost someone as well. So has everyone in the film has, to a degree. These are just different ways that people can deal with loss, some of them better than others.
TOONZONE NEWS: You guys are great with villains. Snatcher from The Boxtrolls is definitely the hero of his own story.
TRAVIS KNIGHT: I love Snatcher because in a lot of ways I can empathize. Now, the things that he does are terrible. He engages in genocide, or what he thinks is genocide, but I think we all experience what he goes through, to a degree. We’ve all been excluded from something that we want to be a part of, and how do we respond to that? What does that do when people are told that they are not good enough? Even though he’s a vile creature, there was something that’s sympathetic about that. I like that we paint in these muted colors and that we show that people are shaded, that they’re not any one thing. There are good qualities to people that are awful, and nobody’s perfect either, so that is something that we try to showcase in our characters.
TOONZONE NEWS: On that note, what would you say Kubo’s flaw is?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: He’s a great kid. He’s a better human being than I am, I’ll tell you that. I think that with Kubo, he is a sweet kid and he has this hole in his heart. He’s missed growing up with a fully functional family. His mother is diminished, and even though he loves her dearly, she can’t really be the mother she wants to be. He’s never had a meaningful connection with his father, it’s something that he longs for desperately. As he goes through this experience, I don’t know that I would say it’s a flaw, but I will say that he has a natural reaction to losing things that matter to him to lash out in anger and in rage and, in fact, to try to kill, which is a shocking thing in the movie when you hear him say something to that effect that he wants to murder somebody. I think what it showcases, though, is that he has a natural human response to pain, but if we follow that through to its natural conclusion, the film ends one way. If he learns something along the way and understands the lessons of his parents and everyone else, the film goes in a different direction.
TOONZONE NEWS: Kubo considers himself a storyteller. Was the idea of him doing the narration something that was in there all along or you discovered later?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: Well I think it’s funny because it gets a little bit meta in the sense that’s what we are. We’re storytellers. We tell stories in an unusual way, but that is what we are. In fact, it wasn’t until relatively deep into the process that I started seeing that connection between Kubo and who he is and who I am as a person. Kubo is an artist, he’s a storyteller, he’s a musician. He’s an animator, really. He takes these lifeless pieces of paper and through his creativity and his imagination and his will, he brings them to life just like we do as animators. So what we do effectively is tell stories. We come from a long tradition of that sort of thing, and we wanted to do it in the most powerful and most evocative way possible. That’s Kubo’s great gift, that he can tell stories that connect people, and that’s what he tries to do. When he goes into the village every day, he tries to tell stories to A) keep the memory of his father alive and B) well, he’s also taking care of his mother, and to connect with people. Even though he’s disconnected from humanity, he still has the deep part of himself that wants to connect with people.
That was true in large measure to my own existence when I was a kid. I was a lonely kid, and I made friends slowly when I made them at all, but one of the things that made me feel like I wasn’t alone was connecting to the world of stories and knowing that somebody out there wrote something that spoke to me. That somebody made a film that touched a part of my own experience and made me know that I was connected, that I wasn’t alone. I think that’s the best part of what stories can give us. They can remind us that we’re connected, that there are people out there like us. That we have a shared humanity that can cross time and space and culture and everything else, and I think that’s a meaningful thing. In this world that’s so chaotic, to know that the human family is so powerful and we can connect across so many different things. Those are the kind of stories that we want to tell. We want to tell stories that connect people, that remind us of the shared connection that we all have. That kindle people’s imagination and that inspire people to dream. That’s what stories and that’s what movies meant for me as a kid, and that’s the kind of stories that we want to make.
TOONZONE NEWS: Since you want to connect with your audience, do you go back to previous movies and try to incorporate more of what people liked before?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: No. I think there’s 100% an aspect of our industry where that is the case. Where you look at comparables, you look at what’s similar, you try to replicate that, you try to divine what people liked about something and you try to apply that to something else. I think unfortunately, that’s lead us to a place where we are as an industry where it feels like we’re telling the same stories over and over and over again with the same kinds of characters over and over and over again. I think that kind of storytelling can be good for bottom line, but I don’t think it is particularly great for showcasing the diversity of human experience, for telling different aspects of the human story.
Every film we learn something. We learn something about filmmaking, we learn something about ourselves, and we always strive to be better storytellers and better filmmakers, and so you hope you learn something about that, but I think every story we tell, hopefully we treat as its own, unique, original thing, and we don’t try to apply some kind of market tested approach. In fact, we never even test screen our films. We don’t focus test our films at all. It’s interesting when I hear people talk about that, and it’s just such a foreign idea to me. I recognize its value, but there is a purity to everything we do. For all their strengths and for all their faults, there is a purity to the vision that comes out of all the films that we make. It was made by the filmmakers because this was something that they believed in, not because some focus test in Cleveland told them that this something that they would do.
TOONZONE NEWS: And I don’t imagine you have much extra footage, do you?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: None. There is a little bit. Every now and then, for pacing, you’ll get too far along and you’ll realize that something doesn’t quite work and it slows the movie down so you’ll cut some bits out. There’s a little bit of that in Kubo, but basically, we can’t shoot any coverage. Animation is slow and tedious and expensive, so we have to be very disciplined about how we put these things together. We spent the first couple of years just figuring out the story and the characters and the world and the big themes that we’re trying to explore and our own personal stories that we’re trying to tell within it. The teams that are involved in crafting that part of it are really small. There’s only a handful of us that are doing that, and then you start to bring in some of your artists and your designers, and then ultimately, your animators and your set builders and everything else. By that point, production is very expensive, so you want to make sure that you know the film that you’re making by that point. So there’s very little fat in what we do. We want to make sure every dollar goes up on screen, and for the most part, it does.
TOONZONE NEWS: This was the first film you directed. How did your role on this differ from your role on past films?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: It was definitely different, although there were shades of things that I have done in the past. I’ve been working in animation for nearly 20 years, and I’ve done a lot of different things during that time. I’ve worked as a production assistant, I’ve been a coordinator and a scheduler, I was a stop motion animator, I’ve been a CG animator. I’ve been a producer guiding something from conception all the way through completion, and I’ve run a company where I’m looking after all the business and creative operations of an entire studio. So there have been a lot of different things and a lot of different experiences I can draw on for this role. This role was really an extension of the creative side of me to be able to creatively tell a story, but I think the fact that I’ve worked to a degree in management for a good long while helped as well because in terms of time and resources and everything else, you only have so much time in the day. You only have so many resources you can expend on any given thing, but I don’t know that I was fully prepared for the demands of the job. It’s incredibly demanding, and this was the most ambitious film that we’ve ever done, so there were a lot of technical challenges that we had to figure out that definitely taxed me. But I think, above all, the thing that I draw from it was it was exhausting but it was exhilarating more than anything else. It was the most creatively satisfying thing I’ve ever done in my entire career. I think the main thing that happens is that you’re at the nexus of all the different activities that are happening at the studio. You’re interacting with these amazing artists in ways that I’ve never interacted with them before, even though most of these people I’ve known for a decade or even more. You’re working with them in a different way, and that’s incredibly exciting. It’s exciting to try to inspire other people, and then, of course, they’re inspiring you more than you ever can inspire them. That’s an amazing thing to be a part of, and it was just an incredible experience. I’m very, very grateful for it. It’s just this beautiful thing that wreaked havoc on my life to a degree, but I loved every minute of it.
TOONZONE NEWS: You put a lot of yourself into this, huh?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: You have to. And that’s the thing too. As artists, there is a little bit of a hesitancy to reveal too much about yourself because you take a risk, and there are parts of ourselves that we typically try to keep shrouded, protected, because to show that to the world makes you vulnerable. But one of the things that I’ve learned over the years working with a bunch of incredible storytellers is that you can’t be afraid to go to those places where you’re opening yourself up or revealing parts of yourself, your own life story, or your experiences or how you’re feeling about things. Your ideas. You have to be willing to throw that out there for the good of the story or for the story to have any meaning. Otherwise, if you’re doing things at an arm length, things are always going to be kind of surface, on some level. To go deep, to make a story of meaning, you’ve got to be willing to dive in and say, “This is me, this is what I believe in, this is something that I have faith in.” That’s what you do when you make these films, and hopefully we’ve developed the kind of culture at the studio where people feel like it’s safe enough where you can do that. You can share yourself, you can open yourself up, and I think that with this film, it is what was necessary, in order to make a film that had meaning and resonance. You had to put yourself out there. And our artists did that, and I think it comes through in the movie.
TOONZONE NEWS: I liked your dedication to your family in the end credits. That was touching.
TRAVIS KNIGHT: Thank you, yeah. When I think about the influence that my family has had…I’ve been influenced by a number of incredible artists, and I’ve worked with a number of incredible artists and storytellers who have had a massive impact on my life and my inspiration for how I’ve evolved as an artist and as a man, but there’s been nothing that has been more influential on me than my family. Going back when I was a kid with my mother and my father, and then when I was a parent. When you become a parent for the first time, everybody knows this, it changes everything for you. It changes how you look at the world, and that was certainly true for me. And in fact LAIKA would not exist but for the fact that I have kids because when my kids were born, I started thinking about the world in a different way. I started thinking about what I do for a living, and it really did change the trajectory of my career when I saw the kinds of things that my children were exposed to and reflected on the kinds of things that I loved when I was a kid, and saw how few and far between those things were in existence now. How so much of the stuff that is geared towards our children is vapid and it’s just a sensory assault. I didn’t want to be a part of doing that for a living. I didn’t want to devote my life to making that kind of stuff. And so that was really, at the core of it, that was really what the impetus for even forming LAIKA. We really want to tell films that have something meaningful to say. We want to tell stories that have beauty and resonance, that speak to our shared humanity and celebrate it that look at the world with an uncynical, hopeful view. And all that stuff is inspired by my family. I would not be here doing this if it weren’t for them, and I definitely would not have made this movie if it weren’t for them, so they’ve given a lot to me. And they put up with a lot with a dad who does this for a living, who has to give so much of himself to his work, but they are incredible human beings, and they make my life worth living, so they deserved, at least, a little bit of a tip of the hat for that.
TOONZONE NEWS: Let’s talk about the music of the film. What’s the name of Kubo’s instrument?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: A shamisen. It’s effectively an instrument that originated in China and then was introduced in Japan and has become kind of a folk instrument in Japan. It’s a lot like a banjo in the Appalachians, it’s a tinny, folk instrument.
TOONZONE NEWS: Did you specifically seek out a folk instrument for a folk-type movie?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: Well yeah, it’s part of the mythology that you come up with, but the idea that we came up with was that the Moon King gave all of his daughters weapons. You have the one sister who has got the pipe and the swords, you have the one sister who has the kusarigama (the sickle and the chain), and you have the one sister that has this instrument, this shamisen. It’s the only thing that can both destroy and create, and I think that’s notable. I think part of that was also because we set the film in ancient Japan, so we wanted to have an instrument that would fit right in in that era. If we had set the film in Spain, Kubo would have had a lute. If we set the film in the Appalachians, he would have had a banjo. But because of the setting and the inspirations for the movie, that’s where the instrument comes from. It’s a challenging instrument because it’s thin and it doesn’t have a lot of range, but played properly, with the proper kinds of compositions, it can be incredibly rich and evocative. And I think it was in this movie.
TOONZONE NEWS: Did you use a musical consultant?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: We work with two key players in the shamisen, and they were both extraordinary. Our composer, Dario Marianelli. We found a guy in the UK and we found a guy in Japan who played most of it throughout the film. For the more rocking stuff, the stuff that sounds more like contemporary music, we work with Kevin Kmetz, who lives in Japan. He’s part of a group that’s called the Monsters of Shamisen, and he gave an extraordinary performance and in particularly in our song at the end, he’s challenging Eric Clapton for the most amazing solo you’ve ever heard. And then we have a more traditional shamisen who plays some of the more traditional pieces in the film.
TOONZONE NEWS: What other musical pieces went into making the soundtrack?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: It’s interesting because we drew from a lot of traditional Japanese instruments, including the shakuhachi, which is a flute that samurai would carry with them, so that’s a thread you’d hear often in the film. We have a koto, which is this beautiful multi-string instrument that has a very distinctive sound. Dario, who is our composer, studied classic Japanese scales and they’re very, very different than Western scoring, so we tried to make sure that we infused the film with a little bit of that language as well. But we also wanted it to feel like a big, epic fantasy, and I think audiences tend to associate romantic instruments with that sort of thing. So cellos, violas, violins, basses, that sort of thing. It was a really beautiful combination of east and west in terms of the score and we have these things melding together. The prime instrument that drives it is Kubo’s shamisen, and like most artists, Kubo’sart is an extension of what he’s feeling and what he’s thinking, his emotions. If he’s angry, his music comes out as kind of rageful music. If he’s feeling joy, the music takes a big uplift. If he’s feeling sadness, that comes out as well. Just like all artists, his art is an extension of what he’s feeling. He’s kind of an Orpheus figure, this mythical figure who has the gift of divine music and can coax the rocks and the trees to dance. When we started working with Dario, who we had previously worked with on The Boxtrolls, that was something that we had talked about. “Okay, Kubo is gifted with divine music, so go ahead and write something that evokes that. No pressure, Dario.” But he is such an amazing composer, I think from my perspective, the music that he did in this movie is the best thing that he has ever done. I think it’s absolutely exquisite. We’re feeling exactly what we need to be feeling, we’re hearing exactly what we’re feeling. And it really is an expression of understanding and emotion through music, I think it’s just a beautiful piece of work.
TOONZONE NEWS: You want to specifically listen to the music while watching this.
TRAVIS KNIGHT: It’s stunning. Just an amazing piece of work.
TOONZONE NEWS: Last question, what do you with a 16-foot-tall skeleton puppet when you’re done with it?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: You want it in your living room? Most of the stuff that we make ends up getting destroyed while we’re making it because you build these beautiful sets and then the animator, you know, you shoot your wide shots and as you’re moving for your close-ups and your reverses and everything else, you have to carve away chunks of the set so the animator can get in there and animate. An animator is as big as a building in our world, so a lot of the stuff you end up destroying while you’re making it, even though they’re beautiful works of art. We hold on to those things that are still basically in pretty good shape and we archive a lot of that stuff. That skeleton, I don’t know what we’re going to do with it, but we’re definitely not throwing it away. That thing is amazing.
TOONZONE NEWS: So there’s still parts of him left?
TRAVIS KNIGHT: Yes. It’s still in its same spot that we shot it for the whole movie. It’s still in that same set. And I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do with it, but we’re holding onto it because it is an amazing piece of engineering and artistry.
Toonzone News would like to thank Travis Knight for taking the time to talk with us, and the PR team at LAIKA for arranging the interview. Kubo and the Two Strings opens this Friday, August 19, 2016.
