An Orchestrated Antique

Paddington’s Pop-Up Book Adventure Through Paper, Pixels, and Plastic

Abstract

This article exposes how a minute-and-a-half-long animated pop-up book sequence in StudioCanal’s blockbuster Paddington 2 (2017) was used as a commercial, and creative, springboard by the film franchise to reinstate the figure of Paddington as an enduring icon – not only of British children’s literature, but British culture, identity and heritage more broadly. Utilised as a movie prop and animated dreamscape within the film, and as a sculpture trail and movable merchandise beyond the film, I investigate how the format of the scenic pop-up book has been reimagined by creatives collaborating across artistic fields, both before and after the film’s release. This web of pop-up book experiences works to reintroduce Michael Bond’s young bear to new generation of transliterate young consumers who are accustomed to exploring storyworlds via multiple media channels. I address how the ‘user’ is repositioned as a flaneur of a fantastical ‘bookscape’ of London across three different media formats –  by watching a computer-generated, NUKE-projection animation sequence accompanied by a clairaudient musical score, by navigating a site-specific, interactive sculpture trail, and by playing with a collectable, paper-engineered replica of a movie prop. Ultimately, this case study exposes how the transportive, sensory and self-reflexive qualities of the pop-up book, when remediated within high-budget transmedia children’s franchises such as Paddington, can be exploited to create a bridge between fictional storyworlds and real-world environments in order to reanimate the cultural resonance of an established character in an age of media convergence.