Guillermo Del Toro used '60 stages, 60 cameras' at the same time to bring 'Pinocchio' to life
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Guillermo Del Toro is set to take viewers on an enthralling journey in his unique version of ‘Pinocchio’, which is scheduled to hit Netflix in the next few days. Titled ‘Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio’, the movie is based on the 2002 edition of the 1883 Italian novel ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ and shows a wooden puppet who comes to life and dreams of becoming a real boy. The movie takes place in 1930s fascist Italy and touches on some really dark themes which are really peculiar for a children’s story, but Del Toro was pretty clear in his vision and wanted to give a really good spin to the classic tale of the wooden boy.
This is the first time that a movie based on ‘Pinocchio’ is being made with stop-motion technology and it’s one of the biggest reasons why fans are so excited about the movie. It’s a known fact that making movies with stop-motion technology is not easy and it takes more than the usual time to make the animated feature. A lot of extra hard work goes into making a stop-motion animation feature and that’s why it took Del Toro 14 years to come out with the movie with all the delays. But now that the movie is out in selected theatres, fans can’t stop raving about the movie, especially the stop-motion animation. However, making a movie like this was extremely difficult and Del Toro did everything to make the movie a reality.
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Talking in an interview with CBS, the filmmaker revealed that animators would have to move the puppets 24 times for “every second” of the movie to show the world how these puppets have such smooth and human-like movements. Del Toro joked that making a ‘stop-motion animation movie’ is similar to ‘milking a mummified cow’.
“Stop motion is like milking a mummified cow. You get, like, one drop after two hours of work. You know, you get a couple of seconds [of footage] a day if you're lucky,” Del Toro said,
Getting a couple of seconds of footage would have made things really difficult for everyone and that’s why "60 stages" were built to shoot various scenes of the movie and "60 cameras" were used at the same time. This was undoubtedly one of the most painful aspects of the movie apart from getting rejected by several big production houses.
“When you have the whole world designed, and you've storyboarded, and you have a great screenplay, and you know what it could be, and people keep saying 'no,' that's really hard. And then it gets harder when they say 'yes.' 'Cause now you have to deliver the whole thing!” Del Toro said.
Even though the filmmaker and his crew had a hard time in making the movie, the results are phenomenal. The movie had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival and MEAWW was fortunate enough to watch it at the prestigious festival. It’s undoubtedly one of the best movies of 2022 and a frontrunner to be the Best Animated Feature at the next year’s Academy Awards.
The movie currently holds a rating of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.
‘Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio’ will be premiering exclusively on Netflix on December 9, 2022.