Category: Core Competencies

Coraline:The Movie

My Movie

(couldn’t convert to video with my version)

Plot, Character, Setting and Mood

What did you learn about determining a character’s “markers”?  Explain how you figured out what your Avatar would look like

This was very easy for me since the character was described very early on in the book. There were a few differences from the book and the movie, but I like the book better. The book mentions things like being “small for her age” and having “brown hair” as well as having the iconic”blue raincoats and red boots”. I thought it would be useful to also include her age as it would be important to explain why the character was so stubborn and clueless throughout the book. I imagined Coraline being sort of short with a high pitched voice that would make people assume she was a little more innocent than other kids, making her perfect for the other mother to catch. She is also very adventurous and you can tell that this is the perfect kind of person to be found by the other mother, who needs kids to be curious enough to not realize all the unsettling things happening behind the scenes as the cool new world is presented. To me, Coraline is a very basic character, with not much of a backstory, which made her perfect to be put into a scary children’s novel.

What did you learn about choosing plot points for a story?

I learned that sometimes you need to be more specific in your notes to make sure you have the correct idea of how the cause and effect chain reaction happened in the story. Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish what is important and what isn’t so I went through the book multiple times to look at the beginnings of each chapter. One thing I found interesting was how Coraline started off as a character who’s actions did not change the plot, and then halfway through the book, she went from this ignorant child to someone who knew what needed to be done, and did it. I noticed that even though the other mother was the main antagonist, she didn’t even show up that much. It was mostly Coraline doing all the work, making the decision going through the door, going to the circus etc. The other mother just patiently waited until it was her turn to show her true self. Like she was this evil mastermind behind closed doors, and I thought that was a very nice touch, and must have been done on purpose, when Neil gamin was decided on the plot points when writing the book. Overall, I think I enjoyed this part the most.

What did you learn about determining the setting of a story?

While determining the setting of the story, I learned that some things are better left ambiguous, and a movie may not affect the viewer the same way a book would. In a book, the reader wants to come up with their own conclusions in their head about what is happening, such as the setting, what characters look like, and other things like that. In a movie, you can not do this. In a movie, you can see everything played out right infant of you, so the producer, or whoever is in charge has to make decisions about the dialogue or something else to keep the viewer engaged. So that is why in most books the writers do not like to directly say where the characters are. But my book was a special case. In a children’s horror book, sometimes things like that would only get in the way of the events that occur. I learned that the setting of the story was only somewhat important to the book Coraline and wasn’t really a matter of great detail.

Explain what the word mood means in literature and movies. What mood did you decide on for your movie?  Why did you pick the song that you picked?

Mood refers to the emotion the movie gives or what feeling the viewer is supposed to have in literature and movies. Obviously, for Coraline, I picked horror/mystery as the main theme. I decided that I like it better when each slide had its own song, because a story that provokes the same feeling all throughout, would be very dull, or draining to view. This way, it is a lot more realistic and the person going through the presentation can feel much more at ease with the whole experience. Something I considered when choosing the songs was that I absolutely did not want any of those generic songs that everyone has probably heard before in some other video. I wanted my movie to feel like an original so that it wouldn’t be as boring. Nonetheless, picking songs for the movie was the easiest part of the whole project.

In conclusion, this was very interesting to put all together!

Core Competency Reflection

I use evidence to make judgements or decisions as demonstrated in this presentation by using real quotes from the book to establish a better understanding of the book in mind and leave what was said in the book as it was rather than just adding my own perception of what the words meant. That way, it was a little more open for interpretation.

Some skills I have developed to make my creative activities better are trying to think in a way I did not before, and trying to look at things from different perspectives. An example of this was how, when I was working on this, I tried to think about not just what I thought some things meant, but what the writer was trying to convey while mapping this entire book out in his head.

I seek, develop and weigh options as demonstrated by trying to decide what were the most important things to add into the movie, and what things would go without any notice. By this, I mean, while trying to decide on the key points, I made the executive decision to do the start of each chapter as a key point.

One prompt I want to work on for next time is

This is how I select images and words to create impact for different audiences:

because I feel like each slide did not give great impact, and there could have been so many more things to consider, like color, secret meaning, texture, size, placement, I could have maybe even added multiple pictures on one slide for something, or added different layers to a picture.