Henry Selick.

After visiting the magnificent Coraline set up at Laika in Portland last year and recently seeing the completed movie that opens today through Focus Features -- the first stop-motion feature made in 3-D -- I finally had the chance to sit down with director Henry Selick last week to discuss his latest stop-motion journey. Sitting near a Coraline maquette on an end table next to a copy of Neil Gaiman's Newberry Award-winning The Graveyard Book, the soft-spoken Selick very much conveyed the "Rock 'n' roll meets Da Vinci" aura that his late friend Joe Ranft once offered. In fact, Selick pays marvelous tribute to Ranft in Coraline, but you'll just have discover it for yourself.

Bill Desowitz: Let's begin with the wonderful advancements you were able to take advantage of on Coraline: the improved puppetry, with movable parts and silicone and better hair and fabric; the beautiful sets; the ability to shoot digitally and in 3-D, all contributing to a more tactile and immersive experience.

Henry Selick: That was a big part of shooting 3-D. When you're doing stop-motion and weighing it against the other formats, you're trying to determine its strengths and weaknesses. For me, the strengths are that it's all real stuff: it's all real props and miniaturized but the stuff really exists and 3-D captures that. I've often said we don't have the best movie in the business but we have the best tour. So people would come visit us and would see these huge miniature sets with forests and trees all rigged with wires like they will move in the wind and the beautiful lighting. This feels like we finally captured that experience of what you get when you finally visit the film in production.

Coraline travels through a portal between her world and Other World in Coraline, from Laika Ent. for release by Focus Features. All images © 2008 Laika, Inc. All rights reserved.

BD: Talk about the 3-D journey, which is significant on Coraline.

HS: I have a long history with 3-D -- I shot a 3-D rock video 20 years ago for the View-Master Corp. with Lenny Lipton. Lenny is the godfather of the modern digital 3-D cinema.

BD: It's funny you should mention View-Master because that's how I would describe this whole new "immersive" approach to 3-D.

HS: That's what it goes back to: So I met Lenny and he's a genius and I would check in with him every few years and ask how it's developing. And going back to shooting Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, there were always a couple of 3-D hobbyists from our crew that would shoot stills in 3-D. And we just had this longing to shoot the stop-motion in 3-D. And then there was Lenny, who was developing how that might be and this long gestation period for Coraline, and in that time, getting to a stop-motion film and 3-D was happening, all these things started coming together. Ultimately, for a couple of years, I was looking to do The Wizard of Oz going from black-and-white to color. And so I thought that in a more subtle way, 3-D would really enhance the story, with Coraline discovering what appears to be a better world. And we actually designed the film for 3-D, changing the shapes of sets and so forth.

Coraline tries to get the attention of her harried parents. Selick says the film is about loving your family with all their warts and flaws.

BD: Coraline does benefit from the subtle 3-D approach in the way you dial down the real world and dial up her alternate one.

HS: Yes, it's easy to punch people in the eyes with 3-D, and that's appropriate for My Bloody Valentine, but for this film, it was more about bringing people into the space as Coraline is seduced by this Other World that's full of magic in a place that she's starting to feel real good about. So this draws people into the screen rather than hitting them over the head.

BD: Fortunately, I'm happy to report that most of your colleagues share your view. Jeffrey Katzenberg says it's more about extending the proscenium rather than breaking it.

HS: I'm glad people are coming to the same conclusion.