Coraline won't be released until February 2009, but director Henry Selick hosted a preview of two finished sequences from the film on Oct. 24 in Beverly Hills, Calif., and SCI FI Wire was there.
Based on Neil Gaiman's novel, the movie focuses on young Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning), who finds a portal into another world where her friends and family are everything she dreamed of. But the fantasy turns dark and sinister. Selick shot parts of the movie in stereoscopic 3-D so that the stop-motion-animated figures pop out at the audience.
Selick introduced the early footage. "I was always looking for the equivalent of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, going from a black-and-white world to color," Selick told a group of reporters. "[3-D] would be perfect for Coraline, a girl who in her own life feels confined, there's not room to breathe, it's a little more two-dimensional. When she goes through the magic passageway, she finds a place where she can breathe. It's not a gimmicky thing. It's part of our story."
The first glimpse of Coraline's home gives the viewer the impression he could leave his seat and wander into the screen. The world beyond the portal also offers surreal visions, such as a garden in Coraline's own likeness, grown by her "Other Father," with pumpkin geysers spraying water amid multicolored flowers. Two other characters, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, perform a three-dimensional opera in a theater dozens of rows deep: They shed their zaftig skins to reveal gorgeous waifs beneath. But Coraline ultimately sees the sinister side of her "Other Mother" when her body stretches to nearly twice its original size, contorting into frightening, angular features.
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On the set of Coraline, assistant cameraman Mike Gerzevitz sets up a shot. (Galvin Collins for Focus Features)
Following a screening of the Coraline footage, reporters got to examine a display of plasticine figures used to make the film. The "stars," which ranged in height from 12 inches to 2 feet, stood in glass cases and included Spink's fish costume and Other Father's preying-mantis tractor. Dominating the center of the display was the model of the garden. Selick also spoke with reporters; following are edited excerpts of SCI FI Wire's exclusive conversation with Selick.
How did you balance the darkness of the material with the need to appeal to a family friendly audience?
Selick: Coraline is a very spooky, scary tale. It's not for little, little kids. I say for very brave children from 8 to 80. That's what we think is a so-called target audience.
All the best kids movies are scary anyway, right?
Selick: It's in the book. It's in Neil [Gaiman]'s book, and it's in the classic Disney films. When you go back to Snow White, to Bambi, there is great darkness balanced with beauty and with humor. It's not just lightly touched. It's really there like a classic fairy tale, and this movie is a modern fairy tale. We figured it's a little girl who faces great odds and dangers and wins. She doesn't have superpowers. She's just tenacious. She loves her parents, [whom] she has to ultimately rescue, who've come looking for her. It was just always on the razor's edge, the balancing act, of how dark to light a family film, but I feel very happy with the end result.
What did you have to cut or change from the novel?
Selick: Movies aren't books. I always felt obligated, because I loved the book so much, to the fans of the book that those fans would come and see this and say, "Yes, it's very true to the book." What we changed, there's a big sequence at the end after Coraline safely gets back. In the book, it's a very, very long sequence, where basically there's danger that's come into her world. In the film, it worked better that that be squeezed way down. It still makes all the points.
Where did Wybie, her neighbor, come from?
Selick: I introduced another character, this weird neighbor kid named Wybie, just because there's an interior dialogue [in the book]. She needed someone to talk to [in the movie.] Those are the two biggest changes, but it really honors the book.
The art of Gaiman's novel is so integral to it, how did you find places to add the Henry Selick touch?
Selick: Well, it's originally just a novel with a few illustrations, and then much more recently there was a graphic novel made. I'd like to think it's a variation. There are lots and lots of little adjustments. The size of things grows and shrinks. There wasn't a garden in the book, but I added that. It was something for the Other Father to have as a domain.
-Fred Topel
