‘The Legend of Ochi’ is a miracle of puppeteering

From the moment I laid eyes on the baby Ochi in The Legend of Ochi‘s first trailer, I knew I had a new fantasy film creature to obsess over.

The baby Ochi love didn’t just start with his physical appearance, although he is unfathomably adorable: golden fur, small blue face, elongated ears, and precious eyes you could just get lost in. Instead, I was also struck by the filmmaking techniques used to make the Ochi a reality. The adult Ochi were portrayed by performers in suits, while the baby Ochi came to life through a combination of animatronics and puppetry. The result is both tactile and otherworldly, like a real creature caught just out of time.

The Legend of Ochi draws inspiration from real animals.

For director Isaiah Saxon, who makes his feature debut with The Legend of Ochi, that realism was key to developing the Ochi’s look. “The intention behind the design of the Ochi was that a kid or even an adult could believe or maybe misunderstand these animals as being a real species that they just hadn’t seen the BBC nature documentary on yet,” Saxon told Mashable over Zoom

Saxon turned to real-life animals as opposed to other film creatures for inspiration. Chief among them was the Chinese golden snub-nosed monkey, as well as lemurs and tarsiers.

“The hope was that [the Ochi] felt like a real, undiscovered primate,” Saxon said.

To capture that primate feel, The Legend of Ochi creative supervisor John Nolan, who has worked on animatronics for the Harry Potter and Jurassic World franchises, suggested Saxon bring in primate expert performer Peter Elliott to consult on the Ochi’s movement. Elliott, who has played apes in films including Gorillas in the Mist and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, started by leading a half-day “ape out” for puppeteers to understand how to move like primates. His work proved especially vital for the shaping of the adult Ochi’s movement, as they have a similar heft and strength to gorillas.

Baby Ochi carries some of that type of ape-like movement, but there’s more baby-like wriggling and uncertainty to him, too. “Baby Ochi is still figuring out his body,” Saxon said. “He’s a lanky little guy.”

Baby Ochi is a result of masterful puppetry.

The mastermind behind Baby Ochi’s movement is lead puppeteer Robert Tygner, who helmed the team of puppeteers controlling the baby Ochi puppet (four controlling the body and two controlling the animatronic face), and whom Saxon describes as the “quarterback and choreographer” of Baby Ochi.

During filming, Tygner would call out emotions and reactions for the baby Ochi puppet. Three were used during shooting: a principal puppet, a stunt puppet, and a backpack puppet for the scenes the Ochi spends riding on Yuri’s (Helena Zengel) back.

“It felt almost like you [were] the internal monologue of the baby Ochi,” Saxon told Tygner on a joint Zoom call.

Tygner’s credits include 1986’s Labyrinth, 1990’s The Witches, and 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all of which fit into a tradition of puppetry and animatronics that The Legend of Ochi carries on. (Tygner isn’t the only Labyrinth alum on the film: Labyrinth hair and fur specialist Vicky Stockwell also worked on the Ochi’s fur.)

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“A lot of the legends are around,” Saxon said.

“We’re still here!” Tygner added.

That these legendary craftspeople who worked on projects that inspired The Legend of Ochi ended up working on the film itself was a gift to Saxon.

“The greatest privilege of the whole project is when you get the best people in the world at their craft, just give them a spotlight and let them cook,” Saxon said. “I feel the same way about Robert as I do about Willem Dafoe [who plays Maxim in The Legend of Ochi].”

For Tygner, The Legend of Ochi is both a continuation of great practical filmmaking, as well as proof of how technology has shifted on-screen puppeteering.

“When we were doing Labyrinth, there weren’t any computers around,” Tygner told Mashable over Zoom. “Nothing could be digitally removed. Everything had to be done in camera, so a puppeteer is always at the end of that puppet, and they had to be out of shot. Now with the advent of digital technology, the puppeteer can be in shot and then be digitally removed.”

Other changes in puppeteering in the decades between The Legend of Ochi and Labyrinth include new materials — older puppets used latex foam, whereas silicon is more common now — and improved animatronics. Look no further than Baby Ochi for proof.

“Baby Ochi is a marvel of miniaturization because the actual animatronics that are inside that head are the size of a grapefruit,” Saxon said. “It you peel back that skin, it’s so dense with gears and servos and little wires that it makes your head spin looking at it.”

The Legend of Ochi celebrates the magic of practical effects.

To perfect Baby Ochi’s movement, Tygner and his puppeteers underwent an extensive rehearsal period, breaking down every scene beat by beat to figure out the creature’s emotion. Before heading to Romania for the actual film shoot, The Legend of Ochi team also recreated cardboard and duct tape replicas of every set so that the puppeteers could practice operating the puppets within the exact dimensions needed.

“That’s a benchmark for me now,” Tygner told Saxon.

The Legend of Ochi budget was $10 million, with a $1 million creature budget, and after years of development — Baby Ochi prototype development began in 2018 — the results are spectacular. Like the movie as a whole, Baby Ochi’s existence is a celebration of puppetry and practical effects.

“It’s fun to build stuff and do real things,” Saxon said of The Legend of Ochi‘s reliance on practical effects. “But it also has this benefit: When you see something and you know it’s practical because there are imperfections, but you can’t fathom how it exists, you ask, ‘How could it be real? How did they do this?'”

He continued: “There’s so many techniques happening. We’re shooting on location with matte paintings, with a puppet, with suit performers, mixing it with real actors. Hopefully the brain can just surrender and say, ‘I don’t know how they’re doing this. This is magical.'”

The Legend of Ochi is now in theaters.