'The Legend of Ochi' cast and director break down the film's glorious puppets

I love that you mentioned, you know, building these bonds with the creatures because obviously there is such a bond with the Ochi in this movie

Can you speak to, you know, both of you building a rapport with these creatures that are, you know, fake and portrayed by puppeteers or people in masks

Can you speak to that in this film? Yeah, it's a totally different work than from working with actors, like real actors, obviously, because like for the whole movie, my co-star was not alive, you know

with Isaiah it's just a lot of talking about ideas about what he wanted it to

look like about what I thought it should look like as an actress and then just

like combining also a lot of movies I was kind of like connecting all of these

dots together and then creating this kind of like other world you know really

And then the taller OCHs, there were humans inside. So it was actually quite funny to shoot that

Because they would get in and get the helmet on and move around, but you knew who was inside

The first time I saw it was actually the puppet team was just like, do you want to see it

And I remember it blinked It looked up at me and it was like It was so crazy It was so real and so detailed And it was like having a real thing It really was a living thing

It really was. Yeah, it was. The first time I saw it was in London, actually, just to rehearse

And it didn't have fur on it yet. So it looked kind of ugly. It looked like a weird little thing

And I was like, how's that supposed to be cute in the end? you know um but when i had for um it was scary because it was so lifelike you know it blinked

um their mouth would move in the mouth yeah when the mouth would open right and then you would hear

the sounds from from the sound guy and then the puppeteers i think it was like six people around

him or something would move him around and they would be covered in like blue coats so you wouldn't

really honestly i didn't even realize they were there sometimes because you were so focused on

the puppet i was born in a small island in the black sea people say it's a dangerous place

there are bears and walls and something else something people fear was much worse i came to the ocean stages so um you know years before it was greenlit we had a little money to start building prototypes So that was the first time I saw baby Ochi

It was furless, this kind of naked being without any facial movement, but just seeing the five

puppeteers moving the creature was immediately, it felt alive and realistic, like my brain

couldn't convince me that it wasn't alive. I knew I was onto something then, and then a couple years later after being greenlit

I saw the face move for the first time, and it was just, you know, on a tabletop stand without a body

But there was the face moving, and it also made me, you know, scream

And then the adult Ochi, I never saw anything until we were a day before shooting

They arrived in the wilderness of Romania. John Nolan, our creature designer, and his whole studio and team

landed with all the suit performers. And I met them out in the woods where we were going to be shooting the next day

and there was Mother Ochi. Just there's no, there's no difference between what you see in the movie

and what I just saw right there in front of me. There's just like an animal. And I just, yeah

I knew we had it So that was exciting It really amazing to meet that team and to meet John He himself is a kind of otherworldly creature person isn he Oh yeah And all those actors inside the suits there

the sort of level of emotional and physical commitment is beautiful. And the animatronic as well is you have to be a really good actor

to understand what's needed in that very delicate, subtle expressiveness. Yeah, the performances that are being delivered here are like these synergies of seven people for Baby Ochi

You have two people remote controlling the face, someone's just on the ears and eyes, someone's on the mouth

and then you have five people on the body, and Rob Tigner, the head puppeteer, is kind of coordinating everyone

and calling out all the thoughts of Baby Ochi and what they will say and doing the vocalizations to synchronize the team

So it's kind of a miracle. It adds up to the feeling of something alive that can share a scene with Willem Dafoe and hold its own

Yeah, it's really cool. Just trust me