ParaNorman Directors Discuss the Stop Motion Animation Process
Posted 08.12.12 by Ryan
It's taken animation studio LAIKA 3 years to make a follow-up to the 2009 family fantasy hit Coraline, and for good reason: stop-motion animation takes time. A really long, long time.
"A good week — a really good week — was two minutes of footage a week," said screenwriter and co-director Chris Butler about the process of making the upcoming ParaNorman, which follows a boy named Norman Babcock (voiced by Let Me In's Kodi Smit-McPhee) who is forced into saving his small Massachusetts town after it falls under siege from the undead due to a centuries-old curse. While talking to Reelz, Co-director Sam Fell (The Tale of Despereaux) explained that ParaNorman had as many as 26 animators working at a time on the movie, but, using Butler's comment as a guide, making the 92 minutes of ParaNorman took... well, you do the math, but it took a while.
"I think it's the perfect story for the medium because there's something kind of other-worldly about it," said Anna Kendrick, who voices Norman's older sister, Courtney. "Even more so than most animation, you know, to use this format to tell, essentially, a ghost story."
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The rest of the voice cast includes Casey Affleck, John Goodman, Tempestt Bledsoe, Jeff Garlin and Leslie Mann. Check out the trailer below.
Next Showing: ParaNorman opens August 17th