3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema

Chapter 28: Immersed in Coraline

Immersed in Coraline 28 Coraline, the stop-frame puppet-animated 3-D feature film from Laika Studio and directed by Henry Selick, expressed a new philosophy of stereoscopic storytelling for motion pictures. By virtue of its understated and dynamic 3-D, it was simply more immersive, and potentially more emotionally engaging, in nature. Based on the darkly fantastic children’s book by Neil Gaiman, Coraline opened on February 13, 2009, in both 2-D and 3-D and grossed $16 million on its first weekend, with 3-D theaters outgrossing the 2-D theaters by a factor of 3 to 1. After only two weeks in release , Coraline had grossed over $35 million. Innovations with Machine Vision 3-D Cameras For the 3-D production of Coraline, director of photography Pete Kozachik, along with his team, developed new stereo photography techniques based on the use of digital single-lens reflex. Kozachik wrote about the production techniques of Coraline in the February 2009 American Cinematographer. The MegaPlus EC11000, a machine-vision camera based on a 4K Kodak CCD sensor (36 × 24 mm in size) offered features that Kozachik found promising, including the ability to double as its own video tap, a rugged aluminum body, Nikkor F mount, and software development documentation for custom user applications. “Because puppets hold still for multiple exposures,” wrote Kozachik, “we could shift a single camera left and right to capture both 3-D views.”1 This digital sidestep technique allowed for narrow interaxial or interocular values. “The big surprise was how little it takes to create a normal sense of roundness,” observed Kozachik. Initially, the photography team reasoned 318 3-D Revolution Coraline marked a new style of immersive 3-D storytelling with stop-frame puppet animation. Photograph by Ray Zone. that the interocular values should conform to the distance between the puppets’ eyes. “But to our surprise,” noted Kozachik, “normal-feeling roundness in puppet close-ups ranged from 1–3mm IO [interocular], and in wide shots from 3–10mm IO.” These subtle interocular values made Coraline easy to view on the big screen in 3-D. The 3-D in Coraline was well received by the press. With his February 6 review in the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan opened with, “The third Immersed in Coraline 319 dimension comes of age with Coraline. The first contemporary film in which the 3-D experience feels intrinsic to the story instead of a Godforsaken gimmick, Coraline is a remarkable feat of the imagination, a magical tale with a genuinely sinister edge.”2 The intrinsic use of 3-D for the story in Coraline is largely attributable to Brian Gardner, who worked as a stereoscopic advisor on the project. In the story of Coraline, the main character inhabits two worlds, the Real World, in which depth was minimized, and the Other World, which exaggerated 3-D. “For the ‘Other World’ scenes,” wrote Gardner, “my notes were very detailed, and I was often re-hired to do more of these detailed notes whenever there were changes to the movie, which is common. These notes were to all departments necessary (animation, lighting, set building, effects, etc.) and there were often notes for altering the storyboards to get better camera angles, character positioning, compositions, motion control and effects.”3 This attention to stereoscopic detail paid off, artistically and at the box office. The 3-D in Coraline exemplified the new thinking in Hollywood about stereoscopic cinema. The new idea dispenses with the gimmicks of 3-D, which often thrust the viewer out of the story by foregrounding the technology, and simply emphasizes the immersive and real nature of the imagery on-screen. A new visual grammar for stereoscopic narrative of motion pictures was being fashioned with Coraline, with new thinking about the narrative use of the z-axis. Brian Gardner created the depth script used on Coraline to produce innovative stereoscopic storytelling. Photograph by Ray Zone. 320 3-D Revolution Stereo Challenged Film Reviewers Stereographers pay attention to how film reviewers write about 3-D movies. Sometimes it seems like reviewers may be stereo challenged—predisposed to dislike any movie that requires the addition of glasses for viewing. One may begin to suspect that the reviewer’s antipathy to stereo could be the result of poor vision. This seemed to be the case with film critic Bob Strauss and his review of Coraline in the February 6, 2009, issue...