Recently, accomplished animator, Justin Kohn (Coraline, Nightmare Before Christmas), along with professional cameraman Peter Williams (Coraline and others), brought their current project, a stop motion film adapted from H. G. Wells War of the Worlds novel, to Ex’pression College to begin production on a trailer for the film.

A group of students from our visual programs at Ex’pression assisted with the production, of which, most was shot on the green screen at the school. Peter has been on hand to coach the students on the physical FX methodologies. The students are involved in all aspects of production, set up, camera, lighting, rigging, and compositing.

Justin was kind enough to answer a few questions about the project:

Please explain how this idea came to be.

Justin: After Coraline wrapped, and we all went our separate ways, I returned to the Bay Area and resumed teaching animation classes. Around a year ago, I re-read the H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds. A few pages into it, I noticed that it was practically a screenplay already– all told first person, lots of visual descriptions with all dialog written out (plus, it’s public domain). I read it really slowly–taking several weeks for a book that could have been read in an evening, taking notes the whole time. I realized that none of the 2 previous productions (George Pal/ Spielberg) had, in my opinion, captured the flavor and message of the original 1897 book.

I’ve always been a fan of director Karel Zeman’s work. He was a Czech film maker from the 1950s, who’s feature: The Fabulous World of Jules Verne can be seen on Youtube. His style of work combining live action, miniatures, Stop-motion and physical FX seems the perfect media for a period piece with a Victorian/steampunk style of art direction/design. I built the Martian models in my garage shop from descriptions in the novel. I’m presently working on the Martian spaceship, and plan to film it for the first trailer when its completed.

My initial notes tell me that a feature could be done in around 2 1/2 years, With 8-10 shooting stages for the FX.

A couple years back, I met a local live action director, Eric Jacobus (thestuntpeople.com) who produces features with good acting and production quality on reasonable or non-existent budgets. Eric was the missing piece of our production plans. With a good crew, producing impressive visuals is a given. Most FX laden films that fail, fail for lack of good live action.

In an ideal world a budget of around 40 million would be great– but it could probably be doable for as low as 15 mil. Right now the plan is to produce a couple of trailers, some behind-the-scenes documentaries, and some posted shots in progress. We also need to nail down our production methodologies and practice animation style, as we work toward assembling a good crew. The scenes and shots that we hone our crew’s skills with should be usable in the final film.

We also want to show the world at large what we are capable of doing.

Is this production only for a trailer or will the entire film be stop-motion?

JK: The plan for now is to do two trailers for the potential feature. These will be done to practice animating the stop-motion elements, shooting live action and compositing. Once we get our quality up to the standards we’re looking for, we’ll begin soliciting whatever it will take to produce a full length feature. The plan for the finished film is for it to be a live action film with stop-motion FX, much like the films done by the masters Ray Harryhausen, and Karel Zeman. We plan to use hand made FX as much as possible. The plan for now is to assemble a competent crew, so that when (if) we get funding, we can go right into production (locally).

In what disciplines are visual students from Ex’pression assisting with the production/shoot?

JK: The students have been awesome and Camera pro Peter Williams has been on hand to coach the students on the physical FX methodologies. One of the students, John Zapata, is working on compositing one of the shots right now. Some of these initial tests can be seen on Youtube. (Retrovision / War of the Worlds)

What convinced you to do the shoot at Ex’pression College? Have you used our facilities for other projects?

JK: I met one of your teachers Jesse Brodkey, at one of our networking get togethers that we have every few months in the city. He had finished an amazing stop-motion film with animator Chuck Duke a while back. I had brought one of the Martian machines to the party for people to play with. I had planned to do my shooting in L.A. at my friends, the Chiodo Bros. studio in Burbank (Team America, Critters). Jesse mentioned that they had a green screen setup where he worked that I may be able to use. He got me in touch with Yael Braha and Scott Hess. It seemed like the perfect opportunity coming together. Not only do you have a great setup for doing this sort of filming, but many talented students who seem interested in learning what, a while back, I thought was becoming a lost art.

Can you tell us a little about your background and how you became involved in stop-motion animation?

JK: I began teaching myself stop-motion in the late 70s. I landed my first paying gig, animating on the claymation feature I Go Pogo in Washington DC. in 1979. In 1984, I moved to L.A., and worked pretty much non-stop on commercials, TV shows, and features. My first job with Henry Selick was Nightmare in 1992, and I’ve worked on every stop-mo job he’s done since then.

Work began drying up around 2000, After Toy Story and Jurassic Park, CGI began to take over the industry.

Lately, there seems to be a bit of a revival in hand made animation (Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox in one year, as well as some commercials) I would love to have a small hand-made FX studio up and running in the Bay Area before too long. There’s no shortage of talent in the area, with lots of veteran FX people and dedicated students around. I feel that with some good projects and a bit of capital, we could have much more happening here locally than only CG work.

Of the recent projects you’ve worked on, which one were you most pleased with? And why that film or project?

JK: On recent films I’d have to say that Coraline really pushed the quality of my animation to a new level. Then again, every job with Henry Selick is a challenge. Nightmare Before Christmas was a dream job– fun, great crew and it paid well, too! I if you want to see some really low-budget work, check out Disaster! (the Movie)– Directed by Roy Wood. That was great fun to work on.

Do you often learn new tricks and techniques on a film? If so, could you explain an example of one?

JK: I learn new things on every job I do. That’s what’s so fun about it. On Coraline, I learned the fine mechanics of animating a girl’s walk. Also, animating Bobinski gave me the chance to study and animate gymnastics. At Ex’pression College I’m learning a bit about the capabilities of your computer systems in compositing and enhancing traditional FX techniques.

You are using the Dragon Stop Motion software, correct? Is this the first time using it for a shoot? How does it effect your process?

JK: Yes. We used Dragon at the Academy of Arts university, where I teach. Its very well designed, and Jamie Caliri, its developer, is constantly improving its capabilities. The first “Frame grabber” technology I’ve used was on the Nightmare shoot. It could only show us 3 frames at a time, but was a great improvement over animating “blind”–(making tons of notes and using measuring tricks to make the animation happen.) I’m still amazed that anything we did before frame grabbers actually looked any good.