I was obsessed with horror when I was a kid.
I did everything I could to get my hands on
it.
I’d borrow books from that section of the
library, I watched many a classic slasher
in 10 to 15 minute chunks on Youtube, I spent
hours wading through the wide world of creepypastas
and “found footage” web series online,
and thanks to my inattentive older brothers,
got a healthy dose of Japanese horror.
Of course, it often came at the expense of
a good night’s sleep.
There’s just something about the morbid
nature of it all that peaked my curiosity,
even if it was to my own detriment.
But amongst all the gore and nightmares, there
was always one film that stood out in my mind.
It found a delicate balance between the intense
dread that makes horror so exhilarating while
still maintaining a childlike whimsy that
makes it almost magical.
It’s a dark fantasy that blends uncanny
animation with a macabre story to create a
uniquely twisted world I still can’t help
but get lost in, and during this most spooky
time of the year, I want to talk about
what I think makes it so horrifyingly special.
Based on the book of the same name by Neil
Gaiman, Coraline is a stop motion horror film from 2009
directed by Henry Selick and animated by LAIKA
about, well, Coraline, a curious young girl
in a mundane world who's just moved into a
new apartment with her busy parents as, in
the midst of her frustrated boredom, she discovers
a small locked door that leads to a fantastical
version of her world, unaware of the trap
she’s wandering into until it's too late.
It’s one of a few adaptations of Gaiman’s
novella, alongside a graphic novel, a musical,
an opera, and even a video game tie-in, that
yes, I did play when I was younger and that
no, I never actually managed to finish cuz
I got stuck on that one level with the barn
and that YES, I’M STILL MAD ABOUT
It’s also become one of the highest grossing
stop-motion features of all time.
Yet, despite this success, it initially struggled
to make it off the ground.
According to Travis Knight, lead animator
for the film, whilst looking for potential
producers and distributors they were often
told things like: ‘Stop-motion is not a
viable filmmaking medium.’
‘Everyone knows you can’t have an animated
film with a female protagonist, unless she’s
a princess or a fairy, of course.’
‘No boy’s gonna go see a film with a girl’s
name in the title.
No girls will see it either.
The damn thing’s too scary.’
‘Teens aren’t interested in animation.’
‘Adults see animation as a babysitter.
They don’t want their kids to be challenged.’
It’s success was not always a guarantee,
but I think it’s in those risks that it
found its appeal, by bucking the trends expected
of animated works at the time, something that
can most obviously be seen in its . . .
With the rise of CGI animation at the time,
many assumed Coraline would follow that trend,
but it’s director had always hoped it could
be done with stop motion, as, through his previous
work on The Nightmare Before Christmas and
James & The Giant Peach, it’s the medium
he’s become most fond of:
There’s a certain tactility to it I think
works perfectly for the film’s darker tone,
in large part due to the eerie quality it
gives its visuals.
I’ve talked about this before in a video
that, ironically, was inspired by and originally
meant to be about Coraline, and I went quite
in depth about the idea there, so I’ll try
not to spend too long repeating myself here,
but basically - I think stop motion sits in
its own sort of uncanny valley between animation
and live-action, having elements of both that,
on the one hand, can give these exaggerated
worlds a genuine sense of reality, but on
the other, can also make them just as creepy
by reminding us of the fact that these are
real things being brought to life, which tends
to be made more intense by its often jittery
motion, and both of which I think Coraline
uses to its advantage.
In spite of their cartoonish designs, the
coarse, rough feel of its sets only adds to
the Other World’s spectacular setpieces
and the Real World’s dreary vignettes.
But it also heightens the impact of its more
horrifying moments because of its animated
distortions’ tangibility, as skin gets stretched
beyond its limit and its creatures’ movements
become concerningly erratic and unpredictable.
Even some of the simpler things can be uncomfortable
to watch because of the knowledge that there’s
something physically there being bent in a
way it shouldn’t be able to - or, seems
like it shouldn’t, anyway.
Stop motion allows the film to render its
more disturbing elements in grotesque detail.
And for me, that element is only helped along
by the dynamic nature of its characters’
designs, especially those of the denizens
of the Other World, whose fantastical facades
fall away when its true intentions are revealed
- the adorable mice turn into disgusting rats,
the Other Bobinsky shifts from handsome ringmaster
to ratty conglomeration, the Other Spink & Forcible
go from cute and curvy to just, fucking creepy,
the Other Father changes from a handsome goofball
to a literally deformed pumkpin, and the Other
Mother slowly but surely turns more spider-like
as time goes on, her clothes becoming more
patterned and layered like a bug’s carapice,
before she completely changes into something,
terrifying.
Other Mother: 1 . . . 2 . . . 3!
Coraline: Ow! What are you doing?!
Even Coraline herself changes quite drastically
from a visual standpoint, as she has a full
wardrobe of costumes that reflect her emotional
state over the course of the film, from the
bold colours that define her brash curiosity
to the soft pajamas she wears in her more
vulnerable moments to the tough adventurer’s
gear she wears over them to face off against
the Other Mother.
This approach can also be seen in the design
of the world itself, not only in the way the
Other World transforms the mundane sets of
the Real World into grand-standing wonderlands,
but also in the way the Other World’s bright
and invitingly warm hues eventually skew dark
and cold later on.
These transformations reflect the shifting
tone of the story and its characters growth
throughout it, making its world feel that
much more alive in the process.
And an interesting detail about its visual
design is the cues it takes from the concept
art by Tadahiro Uesugi, a renowned japanese
illustrator whose style is heavily influenced
by 50s American illustration, as his artwork’s
stylized silhouettes, exaggerated shapes and
pronounced use of colour and contrast can
be seen bleeding into the film’s final aesthetic.
But with all this also comes an incredible
amount of attention that needs to be paid
to those details.
Every single little thing on screen not only
had to be built from scratch, from the scaled
down sets to its miniature wardrobes, but
also had to animatable - all of Mr. Bobinsky’s
mice, all of Spink & Forcible’s yorkshire
terriers, all of the plants and bugs and the
collapsing stage, the way the train manages to go under the loop - oh Jesus!
All of them are real props
that were individually animated by hand.
It hurts to just think about.
Even something as small as the models’ faces
reached ridiculous levels of tedium.
For the most part, they’re all made using
3d printed plates that could each be swapped
out to give the animators more malleability
for the character’s expression, something
that was also used for The Nightmare Before
Christmas, but where that film’s protagonist,
Jack Skellington, had about 800 unique facial
expressions, Coraline has over 200,000.
However, as daunting as it seems, some clever
workarounds were found that made the process,
for some scenes, at least, a bit more reasonable
to achieve, such as the way the blue flowers
sprout from the ground as the Other Father
trundles along the hillside . . .
"So we just made one big one, twice as big as the normal ones, and they filmed that just once or twice,
but with lots of mirrors around it, so then you can get lots of different angles of the same flower,
and then the visual effects department comped them into the shot . . ."
The level of dedication and thought behind
Coraline’s animation is an astonishing feat
for its, at one point during production, over
400 staff, who I have to commend for managing
to pull it all off so well.
It adds so much to the hand-made feel of Coraline’s
aesthetic, which is made even stronger by
its limited use of special effects.
Selick ensured as much of the film was done
as practically as possible to maintain that
hand-made look, with CG mostly being used
to hide the cracks between a character’s
face plates and the rigs that keep them balanced,
as well, on occasion, smoothing out a shot
they can’t afford to reshoot.
And even the few digital effects it does rely
on still start with a practical approach,
like the mists that curl around the Pink Palace
on a cold morning . . .
"We came up with this way of shooting big buckets of dry ice spreading out over this,
different shapes of objects.There are a lot of shots where what has been done is they'll shoot a specific
fog element just, for, say, going around a car, and we'll take that piece, cut it out, and put that piece in
and then say we'll shoot a piece for the tree, like we need the fog coming over the tree,
so we'll shoot a specific element for that and put that on . . ."
or the fire that rips through the puppet of
Coraline’s parents . . .
"We drew it on paper, and it just existed as line-drawings that in Photoshop I filled in as black
so they became black flames on my paper. I have software in which I can take those flames and
colour them, and I was able to give it a clear centre to blur it, so the computer was great for that
because I could change my drawings into something that looked pretty photographic . . ."
However, there is one use of digital technology
that Coraline’s creators seemed more than
happy to indulge in - stereoscopic 3d.
It was a pretty big deal back in the day,
and I can still clearly remember how much
its trailers leaned into it as a selling point.
Ironically though, it wasn’t even clear
if they would be able to implement it originally,
but as Selick explains:
To get the effect, they made a special rig
for their cameras to capture every frame of
the film from two different angles to be composited
together to create the illusion, and . . . I’ll
be honest, I’m not really sure how much
I can talk about this part of the film.
I can only vaguely remember seeing it in 3D
in theaters when I was about 11, and since
I’m stuck working with a DVD copy for this
video - as well as whatever else I can find
on youtube - there’s not really a lot I
can do to experience and comment on it . . . I
mean unless I went out of my way to use what
footage I do have to create a 3D effect for
myself to watch . . . no, that’d be too
much extra work for such a small part of this
video, and it probably wouldn’t even work,
so . . . no, no I don’t even know if I have
any 3D glasses to use in the first place,
so . . .
. . . okay, so here’s what I did:
I found an old pair of RealD 3D glasses and
looked up how they worked, and found out they
achieve a 3D effect by polarizing light, a
fancy science term I learned in secondary
school physics that, in overly simplified
terms, refers to the way a material can prevent
light from passing through it by trapping
wavelengths that vibrate along certain axis.
The RealD glasses’ lenses each cancel out
a different direction and then let your brain
put the two images together to create a stereoscopic
effect.
The problem is that most computer, and just
screens in general, are not built to emit
light in that way, so I gave up on my quest
because I’m not gonna waste my time tryna
figure out how to make old school 3d for -
*groan* for fuck's sake . . .
I looked for some old 3d glasses, couldn’t
find any, got some transparent plastic from
an old eraser packet, cut it up, coloured
the pieces with a red and blue sharpie respectively,
got some paper, made a makeshift frame to
stuff them in, pulled open premiere, realized
premiere is pointless for anything other than
basic editing, pulled open after effects,
right clicked on my footage, went to camera
- create stereo 3d rig, fiddled with the variables
and got, something that worked.
Granted, it’s still a bit fucky, since,
instead of compositing two different perspectives
its just distorting a single angle, but it’s
enough to make it clear what it’s meant
to add to the film.
While it certainly has its more gimmicky shots,
it feels like it’s less about making things
jump out, and more about pulling the audience
in.
It pushes the backgrounds far into the distance
and drags the foreground front and centre,
giving its macabre world a genuine sense of
depth that makes it feel like I could just
reach through the screen.
It’s a subtle detail that adds an amazing
layer of immersion to the film.
Coraline’s visuals are designed to make
its world feel as tangibly immersive as possible,
begging the audience to lose themselves in
it, just like Coraline herself.
Which I think is quite fitting, given the
focus of its . . .
Coraline’s story is just as fun as it is
terrifying.
It maintains a sense of mystery that magnifies
the magic of its lighter moments and the dread
of its darker ones as many aspects of its
world are left up in the air, particularly
regarding the Other World and the Other Mother,
where they came from, how they came into being,
and so on.
These questions, and the uncomfortable unknown
they bring, fester throughout the narrative,
and lets it develop a foreboding atmosphere
that lingers around every corner as Coraline
dives deeper into its rabbit hole.
And that dive is almost perfectly paced, gradually,
if somewhat slowly, escalating the tension
from story beat to story beat in a way that
feels natural and exciting.
Though, I do have to nitpick the final act,
as, despite how cleverly I think it pays off
the story’s many setups, it also feels like
it just rushes by.
I think it could have expanded on the dangers
the Other World’s wonders could present,
but I also say this while painfully aware
of the fact that, with how tight it’s narrative
already is, I’m not even sure how they could’ve
done so.
But even still, Coraline’s mystery and progression
adds to the horror that permeates its story.
It’s only strengthened by the empathy with
which its characters are portrayed.
As strange and eccentric as they can be, both
in design and personality, each one is written
with strongly relatable qualities, whether
it be the passion of the performers past their
prime or struggling to make it big, the simple
curiosity of a kid with abnormal interests,
the feelings of neglect its bored protagonist
is burdened by, or her busy parents' struggle
to keep up with work while taking care of
a child, and their awareness of how little
time they get to spend with her.
And particularly with Coraline and her parents,
those internal conflicts create an interesting
strain in their relationship that’s clear
to see in even the subtlest details of their
interactions, from the tired deliveries of
their lines to the pained looks that flash
across their face afterward.
Coraline: That's what you always say . . .
It’s characters feel like everyday people
doing their best to get by in a suffocatingly
plain world where things rarely go the way
they want them to, and it’s easy to understand
where their choices throughout the story are
coming from.
It’s also what makes the Other World so
appealing for its protagonist in the first
place, which is where the story’s main thrust
starts to come into play.
Coraline’s thematic throughlines are relatively
straight-forward - unless you want to talk
about all the conspiracy theories about it
DID YA HEAR THE ONE ABOUT HOW THE CAT WAS
ACTUALLY THE VILLAIN ALL ALONG - GAAAAAH -
Aside from the general ideas about confronting
your fears and being wary of things that seem
too good to be true, the one I’ve always
been most interested in is its focus on the
way we escape from the stress of everyday
life, and the danger that can bring.
It follows a bright young girl in the middle
of a less-than-ideal situation, thinking nobody
listens to or pays attention to her, not even
her parents, where the world around her is
painfully drab, emphasized right at the start
of the film by the stark contrast between
the muted palette of the Real World’s landscape
and her own colour scheme.
The Other World, however, is vibrant and whimsical
realm where the neighbours are outstanding
and her other parents are more than happy
to attend to her every need.
It’s an idealized version of Coraline’s
reality, one that seems to make living at
the Pink Palace that bit more bearable for
her.
It’s her escape from the monotony of the
everyday.
Of course, everyone has their way of destressing
and relaxing and getting away from the mess
life can so often be, otherwise I think a
lot of us would just kind of lose our minds,
and I don’t think the film has a problem
with the idea of people having that escape at all
- its instead concerned with the way some
people choose it over reality, just as Coraline
eventually decides to venture into the Other
World in the middle of the day, rather than
at night, and effectively leaving her reality
behind for the sake of this fantasy.
It’s great at first, but she soon realizes
it’s not as easy to get back out . . .
Coraline: Mom! Dad! . . . oh god . . .
, and even when she does, she finds that she’s become
isolated, literally, with her parents nowhere
to be found, and figuratively, in how incomprehensible
she sounds to those around her.
Wybie: Yeah, uh, I think I hear someone calling me, Jonesy -
Coraline: Don't believe me? You can ask the cat!
Wybie: T-the, cat? I-I'll just tell grandma that, that you couldn't find the doll - OW!
Her indulgence in her escape does untold damage
to her and those around her, and even after
she turns things around, a remnant of the
Other World still follows her home, its impact
forever lingering.
In a way, it’s almost like an old fairy
tale - not the ones full of unicorns and rainbows,
but the Grimm kind, the ones that use magic,
fantasy and folklore to warn children about
the dangers lurking in the shadows of the
real world.
Hell, it even has a lot of similarities to
one particularly well known fairy tale, Hansel
& Gretel, as we see a young character stumble
upon a fantastical house in the middle of
nowhere inhabited by an ancient woman who
fattens them up and hopes to soon devour them.
Though what I find most interesting about
this thematic exploration is the motifs and
metaphors it uses to hammer it home in subtle
but intuitive ways.
Dolls are the most prominent one, something
that’s clear right from the start with
the film’s opening sequence.
Even its setting, the Pink Palace, with its
bright pink exterior and sectioned off nature,
can be seen as a sort of dollhouse, one the
Other Mother fills with picturesque little
scenes for Coraline to play with as she’s
lured deeper into the Other World’s web.
A less obvious motif is the idea of performances,
which is most obvious in Coraline’s neighbours,
Spink & Forcible, formerly renowned actresses
well past their prime, and Mr. Bobinsky, with
his wild dream of setting up a dancing mouse
circus.
Like everything else in the Real World, their
situations are painfully mundane, and, for
some, arguably deranged - but in the Other
World, they’re spry, energetic, and put
on extravagantly impossible performances their
Real World counterparts could only dream of.
This distinction not only makes for an interesting
commentary between the reality and the fantasy
of pursuing entertainment based professions,
but is also a literal manifestation of the
fact that everything about the Other World
is an act - an over the top facade meant to
lull Coraline into a false sense of security
to keep her unaware of its trap, something
even the Other Mother herself indulges in, not only
with her early performance as a “motherly”
figure, but also in the way she literally
pretends to be Coraline’s mother to get
her to come back.
Mother: Coraline?
Coraline: Mom?
Mother: Coraline! You came back for us!
Coraline: Mom!
Mother: Darling, why would you run away from me?
Even something as simple as the film’s heavy
focus on food ties into its themes, with its
deliciously detailed meals acting as a symbol
of the allure of the escape the Other World
provides, and the way Coraline indulges herself
in it.
Coraline: *burp*
It also comes to represent the all consuming
nature of its fantasy, quite literally, when
we learn that the Other Mother eats up the
children she brings into her domain.
They’re all simple visual details that amplify
the film’s throughlines.
And by the end, I think it’s message is
quite clear.
Life can be a rough road to walk down, and
there’s nothing wrong with finding a way
to get away from it every now and then, but
it’s important to recognize not only the
fact that, just like you, everyone else is
doing their best to navigate its crumbling
twists and turns as best they can, but also
to appreciate the bright spots life does offer
while you can.
To this day, I adore Coraline and the way
it uses its stop-motion to simultaneously
make its horror more approachable while still
letting it reach bone chilling depths, and
whose quirky approach to its story and art
direction only makes its magically macabre
experience that much more inviting.
The technical achievement of its painstakingly
tedious production is praiseworthy in itself,
and I think really goes to show that sometimes
the best route to take for a project, is often the
one less traveled.
And yeah, those are my thoughts.
And Happy Halloween!
I’ve been wanting to specifically talk about
Coraline since that first stop motion vid,
and I’m happy I managed to get around to
it.
I was actually unsure about what to talk about
this Halloween, but, probably because of my
nostalgia, I just kept coming back to Coraline
and eventually felt like I just had to get
it out of my system, you know.
It was also a fun excuse to fiddle around
with some of the visuals for this video, especially
my avatar - I really like how the puppet version
came out.
And the next thing I have planned oughta be
just as much fun to mess around with, since
it’ll let me try out a more comic-book aesthetic
- I'm just not entirely sure how the hell I’m
supposed to make that work.
Anyway, let me know what yous think, if yous
agree, disagree, how yous feel about horror,
how yous feel about stop motion, etc, and
thanks for watching!
If yous enjoyed this and wanna see more, than
check out my last video, where I ramble about
my Top Things of Fall 2019!
Or, watch me break down Houseki no Kuni’s
use of CG/3D animation, and the way it sets
the stage for its haunting story of loss and
growth!
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