Source: Focus Features
A visit to the Coraline shoot at LAIKA's Hillsboro studios -- soon to be supplanted by an even larger campus facility in nearby Tualatin, as the company's production schedule and employee roster expand - is a trip to a movie set like no other. Imagination is in front of you, in unexpectedly tangible form, at every turn.
The 52 different stages and the nearby offices, workshops, and storage areas span 2.5 acres within building space. Everyone working on Coraline is just steps away from each other, albeit sometimes traversing the length of a football field indoors.
Workshops are dominated not by posters or artwork but by tools of the trade; what someone is preparing at a given moment could be needed on a stage a few feet away a few minutes later.
Whether for Coraline or Townsperson #5, replacement parts and/or costumes are everywhere. Swatches for costumes are kept handy as well.
To a child, the workshops would seem to be the largest arts-and-crafts class imaginable. What looks like a tool kit instead holds an array of rapid-prototyping printer-generated replacement faces for Coraline that have been painted and finished by hand, with each upper or lower portion nestled in its own compartment. "Frown kits" or "smile kits" can be brought over to the stages as needed for a close-up.
One might be put in mind of a science lab, though assemblage is the priority rather than dissection. Great care is taken with what is being painted and crafted; powder-free latex gloves and hand sanitizer are always within easy reach.
A few yards away, through a doorway across a corridor, boxes of "Gobo Heads" signal that the sets are nearby. These are not more character face/head replacement parts, but rather grip/lighting tools that can be picked up en route to a stage.
Heavy curtains discreetly close off the dozens of sets, sometimes with a "Hot Set" sign signaling for extra caution when entering. While the nature of the movie means that "Quiet on the set!" does not really need to be said, a red light outside a stage indicates that it is currently in active use.
Some of the "Hot Sets" are in fact just that, needing to be cooled with portable air conditioners. This is so the characters and/or sets will not melt under the hot lights - and so the animators themselves won't get overheated while working - during an August heat wave, for example.
There is a constant hum of activity as workers are on the move from one set to another. Once through the curtains, they move among artwork and standing props that are of museum-display quality, so detailed are the characters and creations. Instantly, anyone entering is part of the Coraline landscape; the fantastical is made even more so by being human-scaled on the LAIKA stages.
The Pink Palace, the house where Coraline and her family have moved to, stands life-sized relative to the puppets, as if it is a very large dollhouse. Like many a standing movie set, though, the interior is minimal and the structure has wooden supports; the Palace's apartments and home interiors reside on other stages.
The Other World version of the Pink Palace looks even more enticing, like a model home; however, a peek behind its facade - while less dangerous than the one that Coraline takes in the movie -reveals supports, braces, and even clothespins shoring up the beautifully crafted prop.
Lunch hour for the entire unit begins @1:00 PM, during which there is indeed "quiet on the set" as the characters and props remain frozen in the middle of their last takes.
Night falls on some sets even during daylight hours, such as a night sky of star fields standing as a backdrop with the stars hand-threaded in. As per usual on Coraline, a computer has not generated the visual; handicraft has.
All told, the shooting areas span 183,000 square feet. The 52 different stages are the most ever deployed for a stop-motion animated feature.
Offering audiences what Henry Selick calls "a fully immersive three-dimensional moviegoing experience," Coraline is the first stop-motion animated feature to be shot entirely in stereoscopic 3-D during production.
The first 3-D stop-motion movie is acknowledged to be John Norling's short film In Tune with Tomorrow, which was initially produced for an exhibit at the 1939 New York World Fair. The two processes continued on their separate tracks through the decades, each enduring as an ongoing part of motion picture history and movie magic. A few years ago, Walt Disney Pictures converted Selick's 1993 stop-motion feature The Nightmare Before Christmas into the 3-D format.
After being consulted on the remastering process and seeing the results, the director and his longtime cinematographer Pete Kozachik approved of the conversion. The 2006 nationwide re-release in the new digital 3-D version was so successful that the picture has returned to theaters every fall since.
Selick reveals, "When I was making Nightmare and James and the Giant Peach, we did do a few experiments with 3-D. I'm friends with Lenny Lipton, who is at the forefront of the technology and now works at the leading 3-D company, RealD.
"Around 2004, I saw Lenny's latest advances of stereoscopic imagery and Bill Mechanic and I realized that the 3-D experience would truly bring Coraline's story and her two worlds to life. Since then, digital projection, the RealD process and its new stereoscopic glasses system have become more and more impressive - and the glasses are more comfortable!"
Neil Gaiman was also impressed. He notes, "The first time I saw a 3-D footage test on Coraline, my jaw just dropped. I had never seen 3-D look so good - and the sense of reality from the stop-motion animation made it closer to a live-action movie."
Lipton has worked on exploring and refining stereoscopic 3-D since 1972. RealD Cinema is a high-resolution digital projection technology that does not require two projectors, unlike the older 3-D projection processes. RealD uses a single projector that alternately projects the right-eye frame and then the left-eye frame. Each frame is projected three times at a very high frame-rate, which reduces flicker and makes the image appear to be continuous. When viewed through the circularly polarized glasses, which allow each eye to see only its "own" image, the result is a seamless 3-D picture that appears to extend to all dimensions of the projection screen - and even beyond.
Kozachik notes, "3-D finally works with hardly any compromise, thanks largely to the digital projection - one lens, one projector."
At Selick's invitation, Lipton visited LAIKA to give a series of seminars about the newest stereoscopic technology, and the director admits that the production was learning as it went along. One of the most crucial elements to getting the 3-D right, he notes, is that "we would capture the essence of these miniature worlds and sets by shooting two pictures for each frame - a left-eye frame and a right-eye frame. Two pictures, but not two cameras."
However, seven individual 3-D cameras were in use on a regular basis among the 52 different stages at LAIKA. Kozachik muses, "It's the most complicated stop-motion shoot I've ever been on; there are twice the number of shots - about 1,500 - in Coraline that there were in Nightmare. You could say that there were seven second units and no first unit - or that there were seven first units. I would be there at the beginnings of a sequence and give notes on lighting and set adjustments - and then the unit would take ownership of what they were shooting. The monitors on the stages give everyone a good idea of what is going to end up on a movie theater screen.
"My priorities would be the stages which were just gearing up, or were 'hot spots' with issues. I learned to delegate a long time ago, and to ride a Razor scooter."
Using a rig comprised of a single 3-D industrial camera, the same frame is shot twice on a stage before the crew moves on to the next frame. The camera is programmed to shift left and right, shooting separate frames for each eye and its frame. The choice of a "machine vision" camera, typically used by industrial robots and for inspecting factory parts, provided the moviemakers with greater flexibility with the camera moves and the freedom to move three-dimensionally around their subjects in close-up.
Another realization, notes Selick, was that "for 3-D, one would normally set the distance between the lens and its subjects in a given frame at what human eye-level distance is. But because we were shooting miniature puppets, we sensed that we should make the distance very slight."
"We wanted to bring the viewer's eyes closer together - more in line with how close together the puppets' eyes are, so you can increase your sightline and be there in their world," adds Kozachik. "We are able to present the audience with the same visual cues - eye conditioning -- that they get in everyday life, stopping just short of anything that would make viewers cross-eyed."
Selick says, "The technology of today's 3-D really can now be called 'stereoscopic,' because audiences can now look at things with both eyes as we're designed to do as human beings anyway.
Watching these movies now, we have depth perception. RealD captures the complete stop-motion world that we, the moviemakers, want to share with our audiences. With Coraline, we are using 3-D to bring audiences inside the worlds that we create, and convey the energy that our miniature sets exude for real. It's about that, rather than having gimmicks like things flying off the screen all the time. We do have some of those, but sparingly."
Kozachik adds, "Such moments support the story and were carefully scripted; short bursts, rather than lengthy set pieces. We were advised, 'It's more about opening up space, rather than bringing stuff up in your face.'"
To that end, the cinematographer also invokes mantras from two of his mentors, Academy Award-winning visual effects artists Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett; respectively, "one shot, one thought" and "what's the shot about?"
Happily, Kozachik found that "once you master the basics of stereo[scopic], it can be one more cameraman's tool for you - so long as it's not the only one. On Coraline, we also saw it as a storytelling tool.
"We have done some things with stereo - involving focus and depth of field - that we were told not to do, and to my mind they've worked out just fine. We didn't want to drop the baton, but Henry and I have pushed things pretty far on this one."
The two worlds in Coraline are both seen in 3-D; expectations might have been for the moviemakers to start the story in 2-D and then have audiences don their glasses once Coraline visits the Other World. But Selick felt that it would be most consistent to convey the differences in the moviemaking and storytelling. He notes, "In the world that Coraline lives in, we made the sets more claustrophobic. The color is more drained out, since her life should feel flat.
"When she gets into the Other World, the sets may look similar but we built them deep and more dimensionally. We also tone up the color a bit, and move the camera more; in her real life, the camera's locked and it's like a series of drab tableaus. Her real life feels like a stage play. So the Other World feels more 'real' to her - and to the audience."
Grooves were built into floors, and some walls were detachable- all so the camera could be moved, albeit only millimeters at a time. To better identify viewers with Coraline's vantage points, the camera was usually situated below adult eye-level.
The painstaking detail and beautiful lushness of the moviemakers' work is maximized in 3-D, although the movie can be converted to 2-D film or digital prints (like regular movies) as well. But, while Coraline can and will be shown in 2-D at some theaters, Dakota Fanning enthuses, "It looks so much better with the glasses!"
The actress speaks from experience; at one screening of finished footage, she briefly raised her glasses to peek at the screen and confirm her hunch that she would best experience the movie with them on.
Further, she adds, "It's rare to see a movie that you can watch over and over again and find new details each time.
"I'm proud to be a part of it, and I will have this movie forever to show to my children."
Written By: Ken Hulsey
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