Neil Gaiman on Coraline
author weighs in on upcoming movie adaptation of his children's book
Dec 18, 2006
(Source: www.neilgaiman.com)
Long-time readers of this site will have noticed that I have a certain respect (read: semi-incoherent fanboy awe) for British author/graphic novelist Neil Gaiman. If you know exactly what I'm talking about, then kudos for being a terminally geeky-cool fanboy like me. If you don't know who the **** I'm talking about, I have three things to say to you: Sandman, American Gods and Anansi Boys. Go read them. Now.
Right now, I'm digging on the fact that Gaiman's involved in three upcoming movie projects: Roger Zemeckis' motion-capture adaptation of the ancient poem Beowulf, a live-action adaptation of his fairy tale Stardust featuring Claire Danes, Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, and Laika Entertainment's stop motion adaptation of his bestselling children's book Coraline.
Laika Entertainment, hoping they won't be immortalized in The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories Pt 2 (Smoke and Mirrors reference), recently brought Gaiman to their studios to see what they've been doing.
Gaiman seems to be thrilled with the experience. As he writes in his blog, "(director) Henry Selick and his Laika team have already started making the film of Coraline: most of the voice actors have already recorded their parts. They've cut together 'story reels' of the storyboards (storyboards by a team including the talented Vera Brosgol ) for timing of each shot. (As Henry Selick points out, they can't shoot "coverage" on a stop-motion animated film. It has to be right, to be planned and edited, before it begins.)."
Gaiman continues, "The Coraline team are constructing puppets and costumes and armatures and they are building sets and making objects -- any single thing you see on the screen has to be made, after all. They are also doing technical tests -- it's easy enough for me to say in the book, and for Henry to put into his script, that as Coraline walks away from the Other House, the trees are less like trees and more like the idea of trees, but making an orchard turn into a misty abstraction is easier said than done when you have to build it. So they've built one, and are doing their camera tests to see if it will work."
Elsewhere, Gaiman was interviewed for the EPK/DVD and signed many copies of his books for thrilled Laika employees.
He also says that "I was slipped some semi-animated story reels last night, and watched enough before sleep claimed me to learn that Teri Hatcher is really good, that French and Saunders are likewise, and that a story reel is a long way from being a movie."
Oh yeah, and Gaiman also weighs in on the Ain't It Cool News/Beowulf pics fiasco: " . . . it is with a certain wry amusement that I notice that the mission impossible team over at Ain't It Cool News has a bunch of art from Beowulf up. It's taken from the Art of Beowulf book, to which I am currently writing the introduction. And my wry amusement derives from the fact that all I've been permitted to have at home of the material is teeeeeeny tiny images on photocopies, and now, online at Ain't It Cool, (Writer's note: Paramount has since asked them to remove the pics from their site) they have the real thing and up digitally.
"(Probably worth pointing out that this is 'concept art' though. Some of it is simply a 'what if we try this?', and not the way something will look in the finished film.)
"So now I'm hoping that I can get some Coraline stuff up here at least before they put it up on Ain't It Cool News . . ."
As noted before, photography on Coraline starts in March of 2007. You can read Neil's comments on his set visit here, here, and here.
