With more than enough time on my hands with the current state of the world, I thought it about time to crack out my laptop, endlessly research and write another post. After a fair bit of aimlessly swimming around the depths of the Internet, I happened upon Coraline, The Nightmare before Christmas and the curious relationship between Tim Burton, Henry Selick and Disney. I’ll start from the beginning.
Coraline is by far one of the most impressive pieces of film ever. Understanding the process that the team go through to get to the finished outcome is a little mind boggling at times, but once you get your head around how much work, time, money (and I’m sure blood, sweat and tears too) it takes to produce of film of this standard, you really get to appreciate the craftsmanship. It’s astounding. If you’ve never seen Coraline (which you absolutely should have), it’s a story of an adventurous, young girl who finds a secret door in her new home that leads to a topsy turvy version of her life, where everything isn’t all as it seems. Exploring themes of courage, fear, childhood and dissatisfaction, Coraline was released in 2009 after over 4 years in production as the first 3D stop motion film and received a marvellous reception. Henry Selick, the director of the film, who worked with Laika at the time of production, is very open about the making of the film, going into detail of the intricate lengths they went to to achieve the finished outcome. With more than 28 animators working at one time, the production per week was approximately 90-100 seconds of film, without editing.
If you’ve ever played with stop motion before, you’ll know it’s a lengthy process as it is because the film is created by the placing of photos in a sequence at a fast frame rate per second to create a smoother looking movement, meaning hundred of pictures are usually taken to create just seconds of film. However it’s even lengthier to create a film like Coraline as the building of the scenes and characters, who all had interchangeable body parts and facial expressions, was done through 3D printing that had to account for easy access to move the parts slightly between shots. By this I mean, sets often had trap doors or access from beneath that animators could get into to move the character or scene between photographs. Each character had multiples because of wear and tear in production, even down to the clothes that were micro knitted up to 30 times per outfit that had to be identical down to the way that pattern matched on the seams. Taking 10 people 3-4 months to create one character, Coraline had 6300 face replacements alone, all being hand sanded and painted. Two shots were taken at slightly different angles to make the film an option for 3D, and the parts of the image that had to be animated, including the smallest items such as a couple of leaves or a piece of hair, all had to be wired and set ready for post production work. Although there were up to 450 people working on this film, Henry Selick, director of production, is the man to praise for Coraline, which is nothing short of a masterpiece.
After looking into Selick a little more, I found he also worked on films like James and the Giant Peach, The Fox and the Hound, and Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. I thought this rather strange because I’d never come across Selick before and after all it’s Tim Burton’s A Nightmare before Christmas, not Henry Selick’s. Obviously from the title you presume that Tim Burton is the sole man to blame for one of Disney’s most successful stop motion films. However this is far from the case. Tim Burton is a household name in terms of slightly creepy children’s animations, and worked for Disney during the changes to the system between old and new management of the early 1980s. Whilst also working on Fox and the Hound, Burton wrote a poem and some sketches based around the yet to be created The Nightmare Before Christmas, sharing these with fellow colleagues such as Selick and executives that had no interest in production at this time. After massive success from Batman and Beetlejuice, Burton was hoping to ride the wave of glory and found that Disney still owned the rights to The Nightmare Before Christmas as it was created during Burton’s employment with them. This was to be his next passion project. Knowing that it was to be an animation, Selick was brought in as director, the same role he played in the making of Coraline, to bring Burton’s story to life. Selick was given creative freedom and a budget to do so, while Burton spent days deciding the pattern of Sally’s socks. The film was created in a way so similar to Coraline, with the trap door sets, puppets and stop motion style, yet when it came to release, the film was named Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. A bit of a kick in the teeth, right?
Although this was a simple marketing adjustment made by Disney to ride with Burton on his wave of success, poor Selick was hardly mentioned when it came to praise for the film. Selick was given the praise from Disney by being presented with the gift of directing James and the Giant Peach, soon after going on to make Coraline with Laika. Disney and Burton seemed to be secretive about the means of production of The Nightmare Before Christmas, but with Selick and Laika being so open about the means of production therefore making Coraline even more impressive, I think this is an opportunity they massively missed out on. After returning to Disney in 2010, the two films Selick started production on got cancelled and he left Disney in 2012 due to scheduling and development, after creating nothing. Since then, it’s reported that Selick is in production for a couple of films, including one picked up by Netflix in partnership with Jordan Peele.
What started as what was supposed to be praise for Coraline, ended up as a reveal for unfairly credited work. Far too often, work isn’t credited properly and the true genius behind work is left ignored. Tim Burton isn’t at fault, and who can blame Disney for wanting their film to do well, but poor Henry Selick. Coraline is now often mistaken for a Tim Burton film after The Nightmare Before Christmas, when both truly belong to Selick. Let’s hope Henry Selick will not always have to live in the shadows of Tim Burton because of one greedy marketing decision.
As always, there are links on the images to relevant works including some super interesting videos on the making of Coraline. Deffo worth a watch.
Cheers,
Abi x
abigailboreham 