Coraline, the 2009 stop-motion film directed by Henry Selick from Neil Gaiman's novella, was made in a 140,000-square-foot warehouse in Hillsboro, Oregon. The crew built about 150 sets, including three miniature Victorian mansions and a model of Ashland, Oregon. Each puppet had interchangeable upper and lower head parts, letting characters show more than 200,000 facial expressions. Selick wanted to keep the visible seams on the faces to show the handmade nature of the puppets, but studio owner Phil Knight asked for them to be removed digitally. Production took about eighteen months of principal photography, with a team of 450 people at its peak.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.