Behind the Scenes of The Movie Boxtrolls

Going behind the scenes of any movie is so fun. Just being on the set and watching what the actors have to do. I’ve been on the set of many different movies, I’ve been in the sound booth watching actors and even participating in a voice over, and yet nothing compares to being on the set of a movie the scale of Boxtrolls.

The Boxtrolls, a community of quirky, mischievous creatures who have lovingly raised an orphaned human boy named Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead-Wright) in the amazing cavernous home they’ve built beneath the streets of Cheesebridge. When the town’s villain, Archibald Snatcher (Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley), comes up with a plot to get rid of the Boxtrolls, Eggs decides to venture above ground, “into the light,” where he meets and teams up with fabulously feisty Winnie (Elle Fanning). Together, they devise a daring plan to save Eggs’ family.

The BoxTrolls is a stop-motion movie that took quite a bit of man hours to film as each scene has so much detail in it. From the gigantic sets to the tiny characters you’ll find a lot of creativity. Many of the items were hand made while some of them were made on a 3D printer. It seemed to me that the imagination is limitless at Laika.

Part of the behind the scenes we got to see how the printing was done. I’ll get more into that when I write more about the art behind the Boxtrolls in a few weeks so be on the look out for that. For now I just want to try to describe to you how large the sets were. Here is a photo with our contributor Beeb. She also attended the behind the scenes tour at Laika studios in Oregon.

One thing they do is they create sets that can be taken apart, because someone has to get into the set to move the characters for each picture. Many of the team members had worked together before on previous projects. They know each other well and have learned to tap into each other’s creative talents and technical abilities. Despite the intense and detail oriented work, the studio has a good atmosphere and it was obvious that the people there loved what they were doing.