Vincent Landay: Spike always wanted it to be like a nature film, as if we were filming the creatures in the wild and stalking them, rather than setting them up directly in front of us. To us, having the feel of a real environment-both for the actors as well as through the camera-was an important element. Most movies like this are shot in a sound stage to avoid the challenges of a real location. Why bother?īarrett: Being in these remote locations was like camping out-but with giant creatures and a film crew. So each location needed to represent that.Ĭertainly shooting in forests, on sand dunes, and in choppy open water is harder than in a studio. He’s constantly taken aback by them and then accepts them and makes them his own. Max’s imagination drives the story as he's changing and inventing new worlds. Australia seemed to have the greatest diversity in a tight distance: Most of the locations were about 45 minutes to an hour and a half from Melbourne, and they were all so extreme. And a world that Max could invent on his own and that the audience could absorb as new. Barrett: We wanted to create a world that would be relevant to the story and a child’s imagination. You considered many destinations-Argentina, Hawaii, New Zealand. Barrett and producer Vincent Landay, both longtime Jonze collaborators, to learn more about where the action happened, close calls, and how nature called the shots. We caught up with production designer K.K. Here they found the rain, hail, whipping winds, and even rogue waves to be welcome, if daunting, challenges (particularly for the actors in the Wild Things costumes, which weighed up to a hundred pounds each). But where? To capture a stunning mix of extreme landscapes, Jonze’s team spent five months on location along the southernmost edge of Australia in Victoria. Director Spike Jonze’s new live action movie, Where the Wild Things Are takes on the ambitious task of bringing a boy’s boundless adventure fantasy to life in the real world.

Wild rumpus park