Coraline World Premier

Thursday night was the world premier of Laika's new animated movie Coraline. We have been helping with the marketing of the film, so we were all invited. The premier was held at the Arlene Shnitzer Theater in Portland. There were kluge lights, a red carpet, tons of press and all the stuff you would expect at a world premier, including stars. The voice talent Dakota Fanning and Terry Hatcher both flew up from LA, of course they came in a private jet.

The day started by meeting the crew from Focus Features, the distribution company that we have been talking to on the phone for five months. It was great to finally meet them, they are all really nice people. After a tour of W+K and a drink it was time to get cleaned up and head over to the premier. I decided to dress up a little even though this is Portland and you can go most anywhere in jeans. It was a lot of fun to stand outside the theater and watch people arrive. Of course we saw the stars show up, but it was also great to see Phil and Travis Knight work the red carpet. I thought we were going to have trouble when a crew of W+K folks showed up in a Hummer stretch limo and tried to go down the red carpet.

Once everyone was in the theater, we heard speeches from Phil Knight, the Governor, Travis Knight and the director Henry Selick. In a very embarrassing moment, Henry included me in his thank yous, which resulted in a lot of guff from the W+K folks in the crowd. Then the moment we'd all been waiting for, the movie started. The last time I saw it there were about five minutes left to animate and none of the music was finished. Needless to say it did not disappoint. The film was beautiful and sounded amazing, which is good because it cost a lot of money to get the 3-D projector and the screen in the theater. If you see this film (and I hope you will) make sure you see it in 3-D.

After the movie, there was a great party across the street at the Performing Arts Center. The room was beautiful. They brought in several of the sets from the film, and had a couple of stations set up where animators and puppet makers showed people how they made the movie. The food and drinks were all pretty great too. I also finally got the chance to meet Neil Gaiman, the author of the book Coraline. He was very nice and had a lot of compliments on the work we had been doing on the movie. To cap the night off, we got the news that the NY Times had given Coraline a great review, which made everyone very happy.

I'll post more pictures on my flickr site next week.