Product Description

Maurice Sendak's classic book "Where the Wild Things Are" follows the adventures of Max, a headstrong young boy who leaves home after having a fight with his mother, only to find himself in a mysterious forest bordering a vast sea. Misunderstood and rebellious, Max sets sail to the land of the Wild Things, where mischief reigns. But how do you turn one of the world's favorite children's books into a movie? This film incorporates the most dynamic elements of voice performance, live-action puppetry, and computer animation into a live-action adventure story that captures the magic of the book - and takes it to a new dimension. In order to preserve the realistic nature of the film, the Wild Things are not created digitally. Instead, Spike Jonze brings these characters to life in the form of physical suits built by the Jim Henson Company. These creatures, operated by a suit performer, interact with the live actor playing Max on set in front of the camera. After principal photography is finished, CGI is being used to make the creatures completely lifelike and convincing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2860 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

About the Author
Spike Jonze has directed music videos, commercials, and short films, and is an accomplished photographer. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his feature debut, Being John Malkovich, and he reunited with its screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, to produce Human Nature, which Michel Gondry directed. Jonze went on to direct Adaptation, co-written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. He cowrote and is currently directing Where the Wild Things Are, which is in postproduction and scheduled to release in October 2008. Dave Eggers recently co-wrote, with Spike Jonze, the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. Eggers is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), You Shall Know Our Velocity!, How We Are Hungry, and What Is the What (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award). In 1998, he founded McSweeney's, an independent publishing house. In 2002, Eggers opened 826 Valencia, a writing and tutoring lab for young people in San Francisco.

Customer Reviews

A Wild Ride Through A Wild Production!
A beautiful and honest account of 5 wild yet painfully tough years of labor of love for Spike Jonez and the hundreds of unbelievably talented people involved in the production of this masterpiece!

Unique, creative and beautiful book
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1SOU3SN01LI4V I was pleasantly surprised with this book because it has a unique binding. If you open the book slightly looking at it from the front and top, it's bound like the letter M, with the pages fitting in the openings, on the front and back sides. It's first of its kind.

This is the movie production book is split into three sections or "books" as it's referred to on the contents page. It looks at the preproduction, production, and postproduction. Everything about the production is in, including sound mixing and the animation part. Because of the binding, you have to turn the book over to get to the third "book". Very cool.

The commentary is in conversational style, with stories and insights from the director, actors, production crew and author Maurice Sendak himself. The production process is seen from so many perspective and it's really interesting to read about all the incidents that happen behind the scene. There are horror stories like how one camera man almost drowned in the sea during the storm and logistic nightmares when Wild Things suits have to be redone because they were too heavy. There's a good deal of stories on how the crew interacted with one another, with all the crazy things they do to relieve stress.

The high resolution set photos included are beautiful and filled amazing details. There's one with a costume designer working on a foot almost the size of her body and you can see foot's skin texture, the thick veins and the slightly yellow toe nails which have some bits chipped off. It's interesting how filming is done and the location shots with crew doing their stuff.

This movie companion is very well done, extremely creative and beautifully laid out.

(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)