This month sees the release of ParaNorman, the latest stop-motion animated film from Laika, who brought us the captivating Coraline back in 2009. Directed by Chris Butler and Sam Fell (with a screenplay written by the former), ParaNorman’s a zombie comedy flick, school drama, and loving homage to classic horror movies of the 70s and 80s. And while the process of making it involved traditional techniques, which at one point saw around 300 people building sets and making clothes, ParaNorman also used new technology to bring its characters to life. 3D printers were used to print the thousands of different faces required to animate its characters’ range of expressions, which speeded the process of animation, while also allowing the filmmakers to add greater nuance to each painstakingly wrought performance. Ahead of ParaNorman’s release, we caught up with Butler and Fell to talk about how the movie was conceived and created. Chris Butler: Many years ago, about 16 years ago is the current estimate, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to do a stop-motion zombie movie for kids. That was the initial seed, it was as simple as that. What’s great about zombie movies is that they always have some sort of social commentary – they always have something else to say; they use zombies as a metaphor. And I thought, how cool would it be to do that for a kid’s movie. So we’re playing out a situation in a high school – or a middle school in this case – but then I’m using zombies along with that. It’s like juxtaposing the real horror of what it is to be 11 years old with the horror of zombies. So that was the original idea. And then it became, very rapidly, this soup of ideas from the 80s; that’s where the John Carpenter meets John Hughes idea came from. But it was very much based on The Goonies, Ghostbusters, Scooby Doo. And over the years there was more and more of that world that I wanted to go back to, and wanted to play in. Sam Fell: You wrote the script during Coraline, and I came along while it was in development. I came along just to get involved in the studio, actually, but I read Chris’ script and loved it. We started talking, and we became a team at that point, in about 2009. You talked about the themes in the story. They’re quite dark, aren’t they, for a family film? You’ve got death, horror, bullying [Laughs]. Did you think when you were writing it, “Right, I’m going to tackle these themes head-on”? SF: Movies are entertainment as well, but we wanted it to work on both levels, so you can go and have a great time. That fun means you have some scares as well, so it’s like funny jokes and enjoyable scares. CB: It’s a rollercoaster. SF: Yeah. And kind of emotional, as well. It’s got a lot of heart, which helps when you’re dealing with serious issues, that there’s an emotional core to it. CB: The movies I remember from my childhood had that emotional core. They had that heart that really makes it stick with you. It wasn’t just some flight of whimsy; it has something to say that you remember. We liked that time of filmmaking, and wanted to go back to it. Do you think that animation’s exploring weightier themes, these days, in a way that a lot of mainstream live-action films aren’t? So how did you divide up the job of directing the film? SF: We didn’t really divide it – we worked as a team. Even early on, we worked really hard on getting a unified look for the movie – what’s the camerawork like, what’s the design like, what are the colours like, what’s the editing style for each scene – because we didn’t want it to be a schizophrenic film, with two directors pulling in two different directions. We worked very closely together, in the first year and a half, probably. [To Chris] Me and you, in that last year, we spent so much time together. CB: We spent a lot of time together. Many, many hours a day, many days a week. You end up knowing what the other would think in any given situation. It’s very strange. One thing I was interested to read about was your use of 3D printers. How did that come in, and how did that help you? CB: It started, actually, with Coraline. It was such an innovation on Coraline, to enable stop-motion animation to have much more nuanced and varied facial animation by designing them on the computer and printing them out. How do you retain a handmade feel? Is there the possibility of losing that with the use of those printers? SF: The prints aren’t perfect. The machine was a prototype, designed to print one offs. So the faces aren’t absolutely perfect – they still jitter a little bit. And the clothes are all hand-made, as are the sets, so most of what you see is handmade still. I don’t think you’ll ever lose that feel. Chris Butler and Sam Fell, thank you very much. ParaNorman’s out in the UK on the 14th September. You can read our review here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
