My review on 'Colraline' 3D on DVD

When I saw 'Coraline' in the cinema I fell in love with it, the 3D technology was absolutely amazing and made everything look real. The stop-motion animation was unbelievable, everything looked alive and I kept wondering how big the sets and characters actually were.

I got Coraline in 3D on DVD, I was disappointed with the 3D technology, it was not the same as the technology in the cinema. It was like the old red and blue glasses, but instead is was green and purple. It said it would take 5 minutes for your eyes to adjust and me and my family couldn't cope, our eyes hurt and we had to turn it off and put the 2D version on. The film was still great in 2D but there was no depth and it didn't have the same effect.

I watched the making of Coraline and It was really overwhelming how much they had to do. They had multiple sets, people and costumes. They had over a hundred pairs of hands and clothes that were all identical. Everything that moved had wires in them so they weren't flimsy, were easy to animate and so big character were held up securely. There was one animator per scene, to make a fast progress of the film. I saw a clip of someone animating the scene of the other father playing on the piano and the movement was so small for every scene, they did this to get a smooth, realistic movement. The heads where in two parts and there were many differen't expressions for both the top half and the bottom. The top half has the eyes and eyebrows and the bottom has the mouth. To make the character look even more realistic their hair was real, but they had glued each strand and added coloured wire so it could be easerly animated.

To make the film 3D they explained that you see everything different from your right eye to your left eye and that's what they did, they took every frame twice from two different very slightly perspectives. To save the animators from making mistakes on where the camera is positioned they had a machine that when they took the first frame the camera would move slightly to the side and take the second frame, then move back ready for the next frame.

I have done animations with my friends outside of lessons, obviously they aren't as good as this. Most of our animations are Lego music videos, we have started on a Christmas one on the song "Merry Christmas Everyone". We do have one animation where the only character, Bubble, is made out of blue tack. One of our recent Bubble episodes has a sheep, Sketch, that was inspired by Shaun from 'Wallace and Gromit'. Sketch's body is made of a toilet roll tube covered in white cotton from an old jumper, his head and legs are made out of plasticine with wire inside to hold him up and to move his head.