The Twisted Reality of Coraline Jones

Coraline Book Cover

“How can you walk away from something and then come towards it?” When Coraline Jones’ reality is suddenly twisted, this little 11 year old, played by Dakota Fanning, must separate reality from acceptable fiction and truth from sinister lies in this fantasy thriller children’s movie. Coraline’s parents, played by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman, help her figure out which reality best suits her. The 2009 film Coraline was shot in stereoscopic 3D stop-motion animation and directed by Henry Selick, also the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Coraline travels to the "other" world.

          Similarly based on Neil Gaiman’s book, Coraline is about a girl with bright blue hair and sparkling eyes. Although she was forced to leave her friends and move from Pontiac, Michigan to the Pink Palace of Ashland, Oregon, Coraline tried to make the best of her new life. In search of something to do on a cold and rainy day, Coraline explores the woods outside her home, making friends with the neighbor boy Wybie, played by Robert Bailey Jr.. When he gets called inside by his grandmother, owner of the Pink Palace, Coraline decides to explore this new home and finds a door which had been locked and covered in wallpaper. Although she finds the other side of the door to be a brick wall, later that night she finds the bricks replaced by a magical gateway to a parallel universe. Coraline enjoys what this new world has to offer, but she is skeptical of its appearing consequences. Her very talkative friend, Wybie, is fixed by her “other” Mother in order to make the new world more appealing to Coraline.  In this so called “other” life, Coraline’s “other” Mother and “other” Father are the complete opposite of her real mom and dad. Her “other” Mother is a fabulous cook and her “other” Father writes music for her. Although she loves the new perks of this parallel universe, Coraline is soon faced with the decision of her life. She can either live in this world made for her with the consequences of having her eyes removed and replaced with little black buttons, or she can try to leave with the consequence of having to save the people already trapped in the other world. Coraline’s journey through a hardship in a delicate time of her life proves her perseverance and dedication to find who she is and the life she wants. 

Coraline Puppet

Unlike most movies, Coraline was filmed in stop-motion using creatively designed, handmade puppets. Each puppet has everything a human actor would have: the luxurious wardrobe and thousands of facial expressions. The wardrobe for a puppet has to consist of duplicates of each item in order to film a scene that involves dirt or any added effect. Coraline had 6,300 facial replacement pieces and 207,000 total facial expression combinations. Similarly, 28 Coraline dolls were created by 10 people in 4 months. The extent of work that went into these puppets shows the dedication of the design crew in creating this film.

Filming of Coraline

The technique behind the 3D stop-motion animations makes the movie exceptional to watch. Stop-motion is the combining of many still pictures to create motion. For every one second of film in Coraline, 30+ still pictures were taken. Every time the animator takes a picture, they move objects in the scene a fraction of a millimeter in order to create a moving effect. This movie was also shot in 3D. To give the illusion of 3D, every time a picture was taken the camera moved left to take another picture. The distance between the pictures is the width between Coraline’s eyes. They used that as a measuring tool because the puppets are so small that using the width between human eyes would be unproportional. The 3D stop-motion animators brought the puppets to life with camera technique.

Due to my lack of animated film watching, I was surprised when the movie was over. I had never watched a “puppet movie”. I did, however, love the movie. Because of the strange idea behind Coraline, I would not recommend this movie to children under the age of 10.