The animated film Coraline is directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton was inspired by the children's book written by Neil Gaiman. Dakota Fanning stars as the voice of Coraline, the young girl who feels ignored by her parents and happens upon an alternate universe where she has an other mother and an other father. Everything seems perfect at first, however she soon finds out that her "perfect" world is too good to be true. This film also stars Teri Hatcher as the other mother and John Hogman as the other father. Coraline has the choice to stay in this seemingly wonderful other world or to fight her other mother to get back to her real family.
This film starts out with Coraline exploring her new home when she stumbles across a secret small door that has been covered by wallpaper. When Coraline first opens the door it reveals only a brick wall, however, later that night when she follows a mouse escaping through it the brick wall has transformed into a colorful tunnel that leads to what appears to be her home. In this world everything seems to be better and happier. She meets her other mother who is cooking a delicious meal and her other father who is writing and playing a song for her, something that would certainly not happen in her real world. After dinner Coraline goes upstairs to sleep but when she wakes up shes not in her perfect world, shes just back at her normal world with her ordinary parents. All day Coraline longs to go back to her other home with her other parents. What Coraline doesn't know is that if she keeps going back to this world, she's falling straight into her other mother's trap and may never be able to leave. That night Coraline again adventures through the door. She finds he other mother making another wonderful meal again while her other father plants an amazing garden to resemble her face. At dinner her other parents surprise Coraline with the proposition to stay there and live with them forever, under one condition, Coraline must sew buttons on her eyes just like them. Naturally Coraline is not willing to let her other parents stab a very sharp needle into her eye to sew a button onto them, so she lies to her other parents and says she needs time to think about their offer and will sleep on it. This time when Coraline wakes up in her normal world she is disappointed to find that her real parents have gone missing! Coraline has to fight her other mother and beat her in a game of her own to get her real parents back and seal the door to the other world forever.
The film Coraline is a stop motion film which basically means that set designers have to move little clay figures just a tiny bit and photograph them to make it look like the figures are coming to life and moving on their own. Animators work tirelessly for weeks just to produce seconds of film. Costume designers create hundreds of different heads and faces to portray the characters many different facial expressions and produce a realistic figurine. The character of Coraline could produce 208,000 facial expressions. The clay figure has to be able to support itself while still being flexible in order to make it appear to walk or perform any action. The skeleton of the figure is usually made of wire with joints for wrists, knees, elbows and other parts of the body to insure realistic movement. The film Coraline took about 18 months to shoot with the help of 450 people. 
The overall set design was also a critical aspect of the film. Artists that worked on the set had to scale everything down so it would be the appropriate size for the clay figurines. Some of the special effects could be made digitally on the computer however, some needed to be made by hand. For instance to create the look of fog set designers would pour dry ice and film it flowing over the set and then later add it digitally to the stop action film of the characters to make it appear as though they are walking through it. Int eh film Coraline there's a scene where the garden is growing and illuminates to look like Coraline's face. To produce this look set designers had to create a way to make thousands of tiny flowers appear to grow on their own. To achieve this goal they shot pictures of a single mechanical flower "growing" from many different camera angles and then reproduced it hundreds of times on the computer.
Before watching the film Coraline I had pre-judged biases from what I had heard about the movie. I thought the movie was going to be super creepy and not very interesting. However, while I was watching it I found myself intrigued and wanting to know what was going to happen next. After watching the special features and learning about how the movie was created I had an all new respect for stop-motion films. Coraline had an amazing set and such ornate character wardrobes that really made the film spectacular. After watching the entire movie my first impression was proven inaccurate and I would give this movie two thumbs up.
