Wouldn’t it have been easier to just make a 3D, stop-motion animated film?
Why goof around with technology to make a regular movie appear that way?
These questions will dash through your head like Mohawks chasing a deer as you watch ParaNorman.
Scuttlebutt from the set says directors Chris Butler and Sam Fell faced studio wrath for squandering significant portions of the budget on fancy director chairs with built in Wi-Fi and Heineken spigots.
Under pressure from Laika Entertainment to deliver a 3D stop-motion movie based on Butler’s script, the duo took a wild chance. From Russia, they obtained an experimental lens that alters the output of a Canon EOS 5D Mark II—the camera used on the shoot. This alteration creates a product that appears animated.
I didn’t know technology could do that.
But then Russians were the first to mass-produce iron carpet slippers so I suppose anything is possible.
As to our tale, it’s a bit of the Sixth Sense mixed with The Walking Dead and a cup of Ernest Saves Christmas.
Young Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) talks with the dead. He is often late for school because the gabby dead keep bending his ear. Bullied and mostly friendless, Norman keeps to his strange self in the town of Blithe Hollow.
Incidentally, I’d like to eliminate two persistent rumors.
ParaNorman has nothing in common with William Castle’s 1959 black and white horror film, The Tingler. A witch’s curse and zombies menace Blithe Hollow, not a lobster-like parasite that feeds on fear.
Additionally, ParaNorman is not a remake of Disney’s 1967 The Gnome-Mobile.
While some ParaNorman characters are indeed short they are not diminutive enough to be classified as gnomes or even “gnome-like.” Plus there’s no old car filled with the magic of an elder race.
I hope this clears matters up.
The rest of the film involves Norman and his unlikely allies dealing with incidents and saving Blithe Hollow.
Clever work by the filmmakers in choosing a 2.35: 1 aspect ratio.
Overall, it is among the more pleasant, non-invasive aspect ratios.
Two stars to the directors for quick thinking on the lens. More stars were available if the audience had been asked to scream in order to help Norman drive back zombies.
But, alas, it was not to be.
