Case Study · Creative Operations · 2012–2019
The Operational Architecture Behind
Six Award Seasons.
Stop-motion produces four seconds of footage per week. The filmmakers are often no longer on stage while the awards machine is running. The Building Block System was the answer — pre-planned modular components built alongside production, not salvaged from it.
90%
Reduction in content turnaround
48→6h
Delivery cycle improvement
6
Consecutive Oscar-nominated productions
2
Simultaneous distribution campaigns served
The Problem
In high-fidelity production, marketing is traditionally treated as an extraction process — something that happens after the making is finished. At LAIKA, the marketing conversation often started when we were already over a year into an 18-month production shoot, which meant constantly trying to retrieve assets from a production environment that had already moved on. Sets were struck. Artists had moved to the next sequence. The moment had passed.
This created two distinct problems. The first was the turnaround time for high-resolution content delivery: once editorial had match cut a piece of footage and we needed to conform it with the correct high-res material, export it in the right format, and get it into a distributor's hands — that process, with creative approval built in, took up to 48 hours. In an awards campaign, that lag costs real opportunities. The second problem was broader: truly unique content requests — staged behind-the-scenes footage, new developed graphics, custom creative — could take months, not hours. Both problems needed different solutions.
The System: Distil. Plan. Construct.
01
Distil — Finding the Core 20%
The first step was identifying the assets that drive 80% of global marketing impact. EPKs, BTS footage, style guides, character materials, key production imagery. Rather than trying to capture everything and react to requests, the system started by mapping exactly what was essential. Every asset type was assigned a semantic tag based on its likely downstream use at the point of capture — not at the point of retrieval.
02
Plan — Engineering the Wish List Into the Shoot
The hardest part wasn't the technology. It was the cultural shift inside the production. For marketing to succeed, our "Wish List" couldn't be an afterthought—it had to be a respected part of the production schedule. We weren't asking for every moment, but for the essential moments that would resonate with an audience.
On The Boxtrolls, our Wish List focused on the tactile complexity of building the world—like the precise rigging required for a cart of apples to spill "just right" across the cobblestones. By working directly with Dave Pugh and the rigging department, we didn't just document a scene; we planned and staged content specifically designed to showcase the film’s craftsmanship.
Under this collaborative framework, these "marketing modules" were baked into the daily call sheet. When it came time to build the promotional campaign, we didn't have to recreate the magic—it was already captured.
Image — Plan in Action
Dave Pugh installing the rigging needed to help animate falling apples. ©LAIKA LLC
03
Construct — From Stage to Licensee in Hours
The pipeline used ShotGrid and custom schemas to move assets from the stage to global licensees and distributors in near-real time. The 48-hour delivery cycle dropped to 6 hours.
"We didn't search for content. We unlocked it."
Across six consecutive Oscar-nominated productions, the system served two distribution studio campaigns simultaneously per film — LAIKA's own campaign and the studio distributor's campaign. The same modular assets, pre-tagged for multiple downstream uses, served both without duplication of effort. Each production made the next one faster. The compounding effect was the system's most underappreciated quality.
References
ShotGrid (Autodesk) — Formerly Shotgun Software, acquired by Autodesk 2021. Production tracking and asset management platform used as the foundation of the Building Block pipeline.
Dragonframe — Stop-motion animation capture software adopted by LAIKA from ParaNorman (2012) and developed in close partnership with its developers into the global industry standard. Used on Isle of Dogs, Pinocchio (del Toro), Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) — The "Core 20%" framework draws on Vilfredo Pareto (1896), formalised as a management tool by Joseph M. Juran. For the management application: Juran, J.M. (1951). Quality Control Handbook. McGraw-Hill. See also:
Infrastructure that compounds: each production made the next one faster
Scaleable architecture that transferred across mediums and production contexts
Cross-functional influence — sustained production buy-in across six films and multiple studio relationships
Systems design within a creative organisation resistant to process
Production and marketing integration at an operational level, not just a strategic one