Coraline in 3D: magic and artistry come to life

Leave it to visionary writer-director Henry Selick to blow our minds in three dimensions.

The man behind The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach brings author Neil Gaiman’s Coraline to life and then some, as the first stop-motion animated movie to be filmed entirely in stereoscopic 3D. Revolutionizing the art form by infusing it with an artistry and inventive spirit, Selick draws you into Coraline’s haunting, playfully creepy world.

Taking Gaiman’s tale of a feisty, curious 11-year-old (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who discovers an alternate universe in her family’s new home, he ingeniously marries Alice in Wonderland's topsy-turvy aesthetic with the gloominess of Edward Scissorhands. Selick, whose experience with 3D dates back 20 years, decided to incorporate the technology because, as he put it, “the story itself called for something magical.”

“When we did The Nightmare Before Christmas, there were people who shot 3D still frames as a hobby and you’d look at the viewer and you’d have this ache, like, people aren’t really seeing the movie we’ve got here, we just can’t get this to them,” he explained while talking to Cineplex.com about the film in Los Angeles. “[I had] an exposure [to 3D] early-on and there was a desire to share the experience more. And in all the time it took to get this movie together, 3D was finally getting out into the theatres.”

In one of the film’s most eye-catching scenes, Coraline hangs from her bed, looking for her missing doll, her blue hair falling with a believability that almost doesn’t seem possible outside of live-action. But Selick’s desire for his characters to have a realness and tangibility meant personal touches throughout.

“I was really pushing for us to be able to go into close-ups on our characters and still believe that they’re real. So every strand of [Coraline’s] hair is hand-placed and there’s these almost invisible wires mixed in so that it can be animated and moved around. That particular shot just happens to have been animated by one of our lead animators, Eric Leighton, who’s a genius.”

“But it’s a combination of things…we had a woman who knit miniature sweaters and Coraline’s gloves – all hand-knit. We wanted to go in there and have you feel like, if you rubbed your finger across it, you’d feel the texture of it.”

Working at the LAIKA Studios in Oregon for over 18 months, following two years of pre-production and countless years in development, Selick’s passion for the final product is obvious as he gestures enthusiastically while explaining the lengthy process from script to screen.

“The biggest challenge was to get people to believe in making the film. Once we’re in production, nothing’s easy – but it’s what we love to do. We thought there was always a way to solve any problem. [Stop-motion is] very hard but it’s like going to art school and film school all the time. People come to visit our sets when we’re making these movies and they’re amazed and they want to come and work for us.”

Teri Hatcher (“Desperate Housewives”), who voices Coraline’s mother and her vicious alter ego Other Mother, had a similarly jaw-dropping experience when she visited the studio.

“The forest that [Coraline] runs through was as big as this room,” gestures Hatcher in a conference hall at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills while promoting the film. “If you can imagine these little trees everywhere – it’s just unbelievable. And what I wouldn’t know about this kind of animation, the same kind of big giant crane shots we do on Wisteria Lane, they do here. [The camera] comes down into a box of a set of the living room, with Coraline crawling on the floor to the door. They move that doll, little by little, and each time that motorized crane comes down. It’s mind-blowing, is what it is,” she says with a laugh. “And full of every kind of artist you can imagine.”

Though filming in a digital format allows for constant reviewing and immediate visual feedback, stop-motion animation has remained a painstaking craft that requires a meticulous eye for detail and plenty of patience. How much? It took an entire week of production, with a crew of 300 people working on 52 stages to produce just over a minute of footage.

“Things go wrong everyday, all the time,” admits Selick. “Over the night, things contract and expand and it’s almost subliminal but things are all kind of shifting around. A certain amount of that I actually like – it shows off the handmade process.”

“But at the heart, at the centre, [the technology], it’s exactly the same that’s existed for over 80 years. It’s an animator who’s a really fine sculptor, they re-sculpt and reshape the character every frame. Things are easier because in the old days, you were shooting film, there was no digital capture and nobody got any sleep,” he laughs. “Now that you capture digitally, you’re watching the shot as it grows and if you make a terrible mistake you can address it.”

Selick talks a fair bit about engaging the audience and finding innovative ways to bring them into the mysterious and spooky on-screen world he’s created for the mischievous heroine at centre of it all. Sidestepping much of the inherent showiness that comes with 3D, Selick was purposely sparing in his use of traditional tactics.

“If I was ever lost about how much 3D to use, I would just look to the story. Very much of what is coming off the screen – once you start to go there, it really makes it difficult to edit and it hurts your eyes if you don’t do it right. Where it served the story, to just have a couple of moments, like a needle in your eye, the trapeze, a few things…but mainly I used it to try and get people to come into the world with Coraline.”

Coraline and Coraline 3D open in select Cineplex Entertainment Theatres February 6, 2009.