I had the fantastic opportunity to chat with ParaNorman Directors Sam Fell & Chris Butler about ParaNorman.  ParaNorman is a movie about a misunderstood boy who can talk to the dead.  Norman Babcock takes on ghosts, zombies and grown-ups to save his town from a centruries old curse.  

Of course, it's not just the story of the boy that doesn't fit in becoming a hero that caught my attention on this one.  This movie was made using stop-motion animation.  A tequnique that many animated movies do not use anymore since we've entered the digital era.  Stop motion animation is a movie literally created frame by frame using real objects and sets.  A very time consuming process. 

ParaNorman is the biggest production ever to be made in stop-motion animation, being only the third stop motion movie to be made in stereoscopic 3D. 

I talked to Sam about the magic of stop motion animation and, of course, a bit about the movie.  He has had an early fascination with animation.  He discovered it at school and found work animating puppets and it was a magical process.  There are miniature characters and sets.  It's a mini live action world.  An astounding piece of magic.  ParaNorman was over 2 years in the making.  I asked Sam what his favorite part of the process is.  He really enjoyed the first year.  That is when they figure out how they're going to make your ideas come alive.  It is a movie art form.  

With Paranorman, he wanted a whole group of kids and he wanted them to work together rather than apart (like many animated films).  In this movie, they used real kids to play the characters.  Young actors that worked so well together.  Recording the kids together, rather than apart, he was able to get magical spontaneous moments into the film.  The hardest thing about animation is to keep it fresh.  They way that they recorded this film, they were able to do just that. 

The biggest challenge for Sam was the tone of the movie.  They had to make sure it was not too scary for the little ones.  They added a lot of comedy and a great message.  The film has a number of different tones throughout it.  

Talking to Chris, I got the same feeling about the magic of stop motion.  Chris' favorite part of the process is the writing of the movie.  Chris started writing this movie 16 years ago and came up with the original concept (a zombie movie for kids).  Being able to produce it into a movie like this was a pipe dream of his.  Now a dream come true, ParaNorman is hitting theaters and his idea has come to life. 

He really enjoyed watching the cast create magic every day.  There were 320 talented cast people working on this movie and he enjoyed every aspect of it.  Some people spent 2.5 years making leaves and blades of grass.  There was an insane amount of detail put into this movie.  He compared it to Santa's Workshop.  

ParaNorman is in theaters now and I definitely recommend taking the kids to see this one.  My kids LOVED it!  And the message, of course, is a great one.  Anyone can be a hero!