Following the premiere in Argentina of Coraline and the secret door, the Argentine newspaper page 12 reproduces an interview conducted by Bill Connelly, in the film critic's translation Horace Bernades.
For those who don't know him, henry selick is none other than the director behind one of animation's masterpieces: Jack's Strange World (The Nightmare Before Christmas). After the premiere of monkeybone, in 2001, Selick took the time to adapt a children's novel written by Neil Gayman. Coraline, as the name of the tape, returns to Selick to the field of the best artisan animation, filmed "frame by frame", which required hard work and several months of filming.
In the interview he comments that he could never enjoy the deserved credit that he deserved for directing The strange world of Jack, film that is immediately associated with Tim Burton (He was a producer), although he emphasizes that Burton He came up with a lot of ideas and let him work freely.
After the event of Jack & Cía., Selick embarked on Jim and the Giant Peach (1996), magnificent animated adaptation of the popular tale of Roal dahl, and in 2001 he released monkeybonestarring Brendan Fraser, which turned out to be a box office flop.
In the talk, He confesses to being a comic book reader since he was a child, and ensures that they are ideal to adapt to animation. He expresses his immediate interest in the children's novel by gaiman and his character, Coraline; reflects on the fear of the youngest and the need to face itl; of the modifications made to the original novel; the budgetary advantages of filming under the stop motion technique; and of the duality between digital animation and artisanal animation.
The full interview, below:
"What was it that attracted you to Neil Gaiman's book?"
–Coraline seemed like an Alice in Wonderland that leads to Hansel and Gretel… I'm going to tell you something. I gave the novel to my mother to read. Do you know what he said to me when he finished it? That when I was a boy I was talking about another family that I had in Africa. Like what happens to Coraline! And I didn't remember that! So something deep must have touched the novel, right? Lots of elements from the novel enchanted me. But what I liked the most was Coraline's personality. That she is a most ordinary girl, but that at the same time she has enough curiosity to allow herself to be drawn into the unknown.
- Are you a reader of graphic novels?
–As a boy I read like crazy, especially Marvel comics. When I grew up I read Watchmen, The Dark Knight, those things. Then I continued, but more discontinuously. I'm not a superfan, one of those who devour everything. Now, if you ask me about the relationship between graphic novel and animation, I'll tell you from now that yes, I think graphic novels are ideal to take to animation.
"Speaking of superheroes, is it true that you were suggested to give Coraline superpowers?"
-Oh yeah! (laughs) It was the brainchild of David Fincher, the director of Se7en and Benjamin Button! He suggested that to me, as a way for the girl to defeat a supernatural Evil. But if I like something about the character, it is just the opposite: that she is a girl like any other ...
–In your two previous films, you combined animation with real actors. Did you ever think of doing something similar with Coraline?
- Look, if those experiences were of any use to me, it was to confirm that my thing is animation. I am more about interacting with the artisans, in a collected and silent work environment –which is what happens with frame-by-frame animation– than with the actors, in the middle of a set, bossing them around and yelling at them.
-Like her previous films, Coraline is full of dark elements. At least in the last part. In fact, that whole stretch must be the scariest thing he's filmed yet. Did you ever think that for boys it could be a little too much?
–Neil Gaiman was always convinced that his novel was for boys from 9 years upwards. In the time that has passed since the publication, we estimate that that age will have lowered more or less to 8. It depends a lot on the boy. One of 9 more fearful may be scared, and in one of those there is one of 6 or 7 more courageous, who banks it perfectly. Of course, the issue is not so much the children as the parents ...
- Do parents tend to become more and more overprotective?
-Uh, it's an old question ... It started back in the '70s, with the challenge of traditional fairy tales, supposedly because they stimulated violence, aggression, fear. But first-line pedagogues consider that the fact that all these elements appear in stories allows children to sublimate their fears, their desires. And that's what Coraline is all about: when wishes and fears materialize. It seems good to me and even necessary for the boys to familiarize themselves with this. Boys also love it when someone like them faces Evil and defeats it. It is not very new what I say: Disney already did it, in its beginnings. Look at Snow White: the witch wants to rip out her heart and put it in a box ...
- One of the changes that you produced, in relation to the novel, was the introduction of a friend of the girl, Wybie, who was not there.
- Gaiman himself maintains that it is a necessary addition, since it is the way to replace Coraline's interior monologues, which in the novel look good, but in a movie they would have been boring. What I can tell you is that the first script I wrote was so faithful to the original that it didn't work. I had to think about it a lot to come up with that idea and round out Wybie as one more character. Another change I made was that in Gaiman's novel, once Coraline passes into the other world, she doesn't come back. I made her come and go, because it seemed necessary to me to build the situation.
- Another modification has to do with the character of the witch.
Yes, in the book she was always a witch. I preferred to make a second mother of her first, full of love and charm, as a way of accentuating the contrast.
-Let's talk a bit about your specialty, stop-motion. You and Tim Burton seem like the latest crusaders for that manual technique, at a time when everyone is turning to computer animation.
–What do you want me to tell you, I love painting-by-painting. I don't know, it has a real character that no other animation technique achieves. You grab a doll, accidentally wrinkle the dress, and when you shoot, the dress comes out wrinkled. These are things that happen only when you work with this technique. It is less perfect, but it allows you to see the work of the one who created it.
- Did the event of The strange world of Jack help to continue filming in stop-motion?
-Definitely. Even more so with the 3-D version. When I started trying to "sell" Coraline, to convince the executives I told them that I was going to film her all on computer. Then it was no longer necessary. Also note that frame-by-frame is very hard work for those who work on it, but the studio is cheap. A movie like Coraline costs a third of what any Pixar or Dreamworks product makes.
"Didn't he finally use computers?"
"We use something, but not where it seems." The sequence of the mouse circus, which is very complex visually, the producers were sure that we had done it by computer, and it was not like that. The sequence with the Scottish dogs in the theater, either. There are 500 dogs, sitting in the seats as spectators, and we made a doll for each dog. Five hundred dolls. Nothing to multiply by digitization. We always prefer to work manually, because we believe that this is what gives what is done its own personality.
–And then where did they use computing?
–In very specific cases. To give a fog effect in a scene, for example. For the raindrops on the window, in another. In the entire film there is a single, fully computer-generated scene, which is the one in which the three ghost-boys appear, to warn Coraline of the true character of what she calls her "other mother." There we use computers for the funds.
- An important technical difference, with respect to his previous films, is that Coraline is his first digitally filmed film.
"Yes, and I felt very comfortable doing it." Until now he had only worked in film.
–Finally, the 3-D.
-Look, for about twenty years that I have been following the advances in this field, it is a technique that always interested me. Now I finally had the opportunity to use it, because 3-D was mature, the producers wanted to apply it and the film was very good for them, because it allowed me to accentuate the extraordinary character of the other world to which the baby is going. It's like in The Wizard of Oz, where, from the moment the protagonist goes into the world of dreams, the world takes a turn, from black and white to color. Here it is something very similar, with the exception that instead of being colored, it acquires relief.
Source: page 12