I went to see a movie last week that had a profound effect on me.  Mostly, it made me feel completely inadequate.  The movie was "Coraline."  Now, you may  be wondering how an animated film based on a story written for children by novelist Neil Gaiman could produce that kind of response, but it's true.  After experiencing "Coraline" in all of its stop-motion 3-D glory, I felt unworthy of ever writing another word.  If I were a painter, I would have flushed my brushes down the toilet.  If I were a musician, I would have smashed my guitar.  Since I am a writer (sort of), I felt like destroying my computer.  How could I ever create anything worthy of public consumption after viewing something with such artistic magnificence?

After a day or two of reflection, I calmed down a bit and was able to lift my self-esteem out of the gutter.  Slowly my attitude changed from one of self-loathing to something more along the lines of abject admiration--for the beauty of human creativity that makes such a work of art possible--as well as determination--that it's possible for me to raise my game, if I am willing to put in the time and effort to get better at what I do.

I'm not a film reviewer, so I will leave an evaluation of "Coraline" to those in the Conversantlife.com community who are true film critics.  (I hope someone does review "Coraline," because it deserves an expert evaluation).  What I want to suggest is that any of us who aspire to contribute to the faith/culture conversation would do well to raise our game.  The stakes are just too high for us to settle for mediocrity.

As I said, "Coraline" was made using a technique called stop-motion, a highly labor-intensive process that involves frame-by-frame manipulation of three-dimensional models.  Adapted for the screen and directed by Henry Selick (the creative force behind "The Nightmare Before Christmas"), "Coraline" was the result of more than two years of preparation. 

Los Angeles Times reporter John Horn visited a warehouse just outside Portand, Oregon, where the film was shot, to view the process and the pieces.  He took special note of the "precise craftsmanship, including tasks as delicate as sewing tiny costumes and assumbling complex, miniature metal armatures that permit a full range of movement."  Georgina Hayns, who led a team of puppet fabricators that produced nearly 200 different figures, told Horn there were 200 parts in a 4-inch cat that is central to the story.

It took two years to construct the puppets and build more than 40 sets, and another 83 weeks to shoot the film, frame-by-frame.  And yet, with all of the painstaking detail, the end result is so fresh and fantastic that you get completely caught up in this classic story of good vs. evil threaded with delicate skill through a phantasmagorical world without getting bogged down in the artistic complexities.

In the aftermath of the "Coraline" experience, I was left with a sense of inadequacy, but I quickly recovered and was filled with a kind of resolve to get better at what I do. And just how does that happen?  Certainly a degree of skill is involved.  Writers like Neil Gaiman, directors like Henry Selick, and puppet fabricators like Georgina Hayns take years to learn their craft.  But there's more to producing a work of art like "Coraline" than skill.  It also takes time.  Lots of time.  The more I reflect on what I do, not just when I write, but when I do ordinary stuff like talking to my wife or interacting with friends, the more I realize that often I don't take the time to do things well.

Just about everything worth doing well takes time to do well.  Yet in our attention-deficit world with instant everything, where our focus is fragmented and our efforts are interrupted by the noise of the culture, nobody seems to be doing much of anything with excellence.  We're just doing, and very little of what we are doing seems to matter because it's just not very good.

If "Coraline" inspires me to do anything, it inspires me to raise my game by taking more time to do fewer things better.  If I want what I write to matter, if I want what I say to have meaning, I need to work harder on the front end.  Otherwise the content I produce will be swallowed up in a world filled with mediocrity and noise.