Travis Knight: in 200-2001, at the time Will Vinton studios was concerned with advertising, commercials, television, that sort of thing, and at that time, we had a couple TV shows that went under. The advertising market was hit really hard after 9/11, and the company was in dire finical straights. So my father Phil stepped in to rescue what was left, and it didn’t seem that the path that it was going was a viable business, so we shifted it towards making a film. So it was such a rebirth, adjusting the focus and so this is our first major foray with the exception of The Corpse Bride, which we helped to set up at the beginning. This is the first thing that we’ve done here from start to finish.

Q: What are you responsibilities as a lead animator?

TK: To get the movie done? Lead animators come on very early in the process. We figure out the visual vocabulary of the characters, each character has to move in their own individual way. You don’t want something standard or generic in animation. You want the dad to move in a way to reflect his personality. Coraline shouldn’t move like a grown man, she should move like a little girl. We figure out the characters, and then once that gets established, then we’re able to disseminate that information to the animators who work on those characters. So, for instance, my main focus is a couple of characters, and so any questions come to me, and we’re also given the complicated shots, the ones that require the most experience, eye, whatever.

Q: Often in 2-D animation they have an animator focuses on one character, is that they way it is with stop-motion?

TK: It’s sorta the case. There are physical limitations to what we do, you can’t squash them or stretch them. We have a vault of puppets, but we only have so many. We don’t have iterations. The leads will typically focus on a handful of characters, along the way, other animators will focus on certain things, so you try to cast them like you would cast an actor. Disney used to say, an animator was an actor with a pencil, same thing with stop motion. But, that’s an ideal world, there are other concerns, and you have to get the movie done, so animators will hope around. But it’s not as strict as the old Disney way. We’ve all read the book, and had many briefings with Henry, it’s not super cartoony, it’s realistic, and we all draw influences from our lives, and I raw from my daughter, who’s much younger than Coraline, but I got so much from her.

Q: What were some of the more challenging sequence you tackled?

TK: It’s all challenging.

And that was that, and then came Henry and Claire.

Henry Selick: We told them we had all the space we ever needed here when we came to Hillsborough, but like a foul gas we expanded to fill the entire space.

Q: Did the film get bigger in term of scope.

HS: I’ve been involved with process for many year,s and I wrote this script many, many years ago. But it always came back to 92 pages long, so it hasn’t grown longer, but the scope and the scale of it has. It wasn’t so much me pushing for more, but everyone out there saw this as an opportunity to go for something special. From the level of replacement animation we do for Coraline, and all the mothers, it’s a hundred times more interesting and complex than doing Jack Skellington, or the Spider in James and the Giant Peach. This time we able to computer to push that, but in the end, it’s still in your hand to make the choices. But in every area of the film, people wanted to push things, and you don’t stop them, it sounds great. Shooting in3-D is something I wanted to for a long time. Stop Motion really lends itself to 3-D. When you go on a tour, you see that, and now we get to share that with the movie-goer.

Claire Jenings: It’s also an independent company, and so there was more freedom allowed to experiment and not fit into tighter things.

Q: So there’s no studio, then?

HS: There were hurdles to get the film going. ‘Make it funny, make it shorter, make it this!’ Once we got greenlit, there was phenomenal support. Our distributors gave us some good notes, but it’s not the same as the studios (laughs)

Q: What’s been your relationship with Neil in terms of input and involvement

HS: He’s not directly involved, but the script from the start… at first I had to get away from Neil for a while in able to turn it into a movie, it’s a great wonderful book, I was little to close, so it was hard to make a transition while being near Neil. I mean he’s incredibly talented, and it’s intimiadating, he’s such a fine writer. I said “I can’t talk to you for a year.” And when I came back, and I changed things, and got another character, but everywhere I could I respected the book, and he was really happy.  He understoof that a movie’s not a book, and along the way I’d show him character designs, I’d show him reels. So it’s not like an all the time interaction, but fairly regular basis I send him new stuff. And he’s always right, he always has one or two comments and except in one case – except for the cat’s voice, which he didn’t like because he wanted to do it himself – every other he’s given is right and doable. He’s great. An amazing collaborator, and not pulling out his hair ‘they’re ruining my book!’

CJ: He’s been here a couple of times before, he’s been around the studios, the magic of the studios.

Q: This is your first film using a digital camera, I assume that’s made a huge difference in the process. Do you find it better? I think of the Neil Young quote where he says Analog is like looking through a number of small holes, and digital is lie looking through one medium sized hole.

HS: There’s great things and scary things the scary thing being you can’t hold in your head the picture that exist. I always get nervous, “we have back up and its stored, but what kind of drives are those?” But it’s still a little fear making that there’s nothing that actually exists that is a true copy. I think we should still strike two negatives, left-eye, right-eye when we’re done, just in case, but the advantage is, I don’t know how to explain how we got here… there’s more going on here then there ever has before, and dailies, which in the past were once in day, here are pretty much constant, four times a days. Shots, tests, camera, stand-puppets, like in live action. I feel like a farmer some times, with all these flower plants.

Q: Because it’s a series of photos, with digital, can you pick up from 25 frames in in a way you couldn’t with film?

HS: Yeah, we get to tweak things, and it’s one of the razor’s edge that we walk on, that if we’re doing stop motion, but we’re using digital cameras and computers, what keeps it stop motion? What retains the handmade quality that is the only reason to do it? What CG can do so well, we shouldn’t attempt. CG can do anything, it can ultra-realistic, what can stop motion do?  So we’re always trying to hold on to it, so buy shots that have flaws and mistakes, but there are times when the shot’s not right, the point of the shot is confusing, so we do a cut back, and we can pick it up.

Q: With everything going CG, why do you keep working in this realm?

HS: It’s complicated. Why do you do it, Claire?

CJ: I enjoy stop motion because it’s so physical, because the production is a physical thing. It’s much more like a live action thing. As a producer you’re really interacting with things, and you know, physical objects. It’s that much more satisfying. Whereas with CGI, you’re not anywhere near as in contact with production side things.

Q: I heard that you thought about doing it as live action?

HS: At the very start I met Neil Gaiman in 200, and the book wasn’t published yet, and I read the pages, and I knew that Bill (Mechanic) started an independent company, and he said “I’m only doing live action.” It took a while to get where it was going to go.

CJ: And to be honest, I enjoy it because I don’t want to work in live action, it’s more physical, and I think stop motion is more special, everything about it is so exciting. And every film I’ve worked on you get inspired to carry on.

HS: There’s a reason why we want to make these films. The other side is: Why would the public want to see them, and certainly, and Pixar making incredibly good films, and making CG films was a lightning rod, and Jeffery Katzenberg and other have gotten on board to monumental success, it might seem odd, but on the other hand it’s way less expensive than those films, and I think kids, I have two boys, nine and sixteen, and I can still put in Jason and the Argonauts, and they’re riveted. And they don’t care about smooth. It doesn’t mean anything. Remember when we saw the first CG effects “It’s mind-boggling, it’s perfect, it’s better than real!” and they don’t care. Rough is as good as smooth. Is it alive? Do they care, is that monster, do they believe in it. So I think it’s a very good time to be doing this.

CJ: I think there’s all different ways to tell a story, and at the end of the day we’ve chosen, it’s a personal preference. But I think there’s some amazing CG films, some amazing 2D films.

continued on page 2 --------->

Page 2 >>>