Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro says he is teaming up with a Paris film school and Netflix to launch a training studio to help old-fashioned stop-motion animation techniques survive.
Stop motion is the oldest form of animation, involving manipulating real-life models to create films frame-by-frame.
It dates back to the late 19th century and is best-known nowadays through the Wallace and Gromit or Chicken Run films by British studio Aardman.
"The names that are important in stop-motion are all over 50 years old," del Toro told reporters on Friday in Paris at the Gobelins film school in southeast Paris.
"Stop-motion is perpetually on the brink of extinction. And it is perpetually preserved by slightly crazy people. It's a tiny cult with very devoted individuals," joked the filmmaker, who directed the 2022 animated film Pinocchio using the technique.
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Del Toro, whose latest film Frankenstein won second prize at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, said he valued stop-motion as a craft beyond the reach of artificial intelligence.
Starring Oscar Isaac, Frankenstein is set to release on Netflix next month.
"In an era in which you can have AI intruding in any other form of animation, this is AI-proof. So that is really good," he added in the presence of Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos.
The project's details, such as investment and equipment, are set to be finalised in the coming months.
"We envision this future studio not only as a training space, but also as a creative laboratory, a place where we can experiment," school director Valerie Moatti told French news agency AFP.
The launch date for the studio will be announced at a later date.
(with AFP)
