MSU in Hollywood

rmaximp · 02-06-2009, 03:26 PM

From the freep about Coraline

Early in the process of making the animated film, he was asked to approve the look his creative team had settled on for various characters in the film about a little girl who conjures a bizarre fantasy world after moving from Michigan to Oregon.
Mechanic, a proud alum of Michigan State University, immediately spotted a problem -- a big one: The sweater the team had designed for Coraline's father sported a big maize-and-blue University of Michigan logo.
"I said, 'You can't do that in a movie I'm producing,' " says Mechanic, who grew up in the Detroit area and received an English degree from MSU in 1973.
In computer animation, a few keystrokes would have solved the sweater problem. Not so with a stop-motion animation movie like "Coraline," where tiny models are moved up to 24 times for a single second of screen time.
Still, Mechanic, an executive at Disney and head of 20th Century Fox through much of the 1990s, prevailed.
"I think everyone thought I was kidding. Fixing it is pretty expensive and cumbersome because someone has to literally knit a miniature MSU sweatshirt using a magnifying glass. Ultimately, the 'MSU' is only about a half-inch tall."

Good to see a proud Spartan taking on the

He also add a vew other michigan touches such as the Detroit Zoo.

02-06-2009, 03:26 PM	#113 (permalink)
rmaximp Walk-On 500+ posts Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 755	From the freep about Coraline Early in the process of making the animated film, he was asked to approve the look his creative team had settled on for various characters in the film about a little girl who conjures a bizarre fantasy world after moving from Michigan to Oregon. Mechanic, a proud alum of Michigan State University, immediately spotted a problem -- a big one: The sweater the team had designed for Coraline's father sported a big maize-and-blue University of Michigan logo. "I said, 'You can't do that in a movie I'm producing,' " says Mechanic, who grew up in the Detroit area and received an English degree from MSU in 1973. In computer animation, a few keystrokes would have solved the sweater problem. Not so with a stop-motion animation movie like "Coraline," where tiny models are moved up to 24 times for a single second of screen time. Still, Mechanic, an executive at Disney and head of 20th Century Fox through much of the 1990s, prevailed. "I think everyone thought I was kidding. Fixing it is pretty expensive and cumbersome because someone has to literally knit a miniature MSU sweatshirt using a magnifying glass. Ultimately, the 'MSU' is only about a half-inch tall." Good to see a proud Spartan taking on the He also add a vew other michigan touches such as the Detroit Zoo.