Coraline
We worked with Portland, Oregon newcomer LAIKA Studios, director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas), Focus Features, and Phil Knight to make the marketing for the film, Coraline.
Coraline’s actual box office was twice the expected opening weekend and twice the expected total U.S. gross. Part of the reason was our choice to market this in a non-traditional way. Instead of a movie for little girls and their moms we figured out ways to ignite internet communities and subcultures to widen the audience and spread love for the movie. Also….since creepy hand-crafted was our aesthetic, I hand wrote as much as possible..
Role: Creative, Art Director, Creepy Handwriting Person, Old Box Expert, Mustache Scout
Official Web Trailer
Edited by Hank Corwin
Mustachio
We were backstage at Laika, wandering around, looking for interesting stories to tell, and I realized the film’s Art Director had the most incredible mustache I'd ever seen. What if we could…stop motion animate it.
Miniature Knitter
Coraline lived in the Pacific Northwest where it’s rainy and cold, which meant she needed sweaters. But her stop motion form was only 8” tall. And that meant someone had to knit the world’s tiniest sweater. So we went to visit her and tell her story.
Neil Gaiman “Koumpounophobia”
We traveled to a secret location outside Minneapolis to the author, Neil Gaiman’s house. It was a wintry day. He was still sleeping. His assistant made us coffee but accidentally put tea grounds into the machine. I wandered out to his writing shed where he had a view of the woods and a few feather quill pens. Eventually Neil came downstairs and read our script. He said, do you mind if I try something? And of course we didn’t mind. He finessed our Hitchcockian film and made it 500 times creepier.
It was perfect.
