“Wendell & Wild’s Henry Selick and How His Stop-Motion Career Got a Spark from Ray Harryhausen’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts: The Movie That Lit My Fuse.”

The Film That Lit My Fuse is a deadline video series that aims to counter industry uncertainty headlines by returning the conversation to the creative endeavors, formative influences and inspirations of some of today’s greatest filmmakers.

Today’s subject is Henry Selick, the animator, director, producer and screenwriter who began his film career with the 1993 film opposite Tim Burton The nightmare before Christmas. Since then, he has become a leading figure in his field, but has only made five films. That’s because his aptitude lies in stop-motion animation, the painstaking process of making subjects move a frame or two at a time.

Selick followed with Roald Dahl’s adaptation James and the Big Peachand then Monkey Bone, Coraline and Wendel & Wild. The latter film was made in collaboration with Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key based on a story by Selick. The film was released by Netflix in October. A New Jersey native, Selick was headed for a career in science until he attended CalArts to study animation and received Academy Award nominations for his two student films. phases and tube stories. Here he explains his turning point,