Tim Burton-The Shot/Camera Techniques

“It is useful to consider a film as a hierarchy. At the highest level, a film is a sequence of scenes, each of which captures a specific situation or action. Each scene, in turn, is composed of one or more shots. A single shot is the interval during which the movie camera is rolling continuously. Most shots generally last a few seconds, although in certain cases they can go on much longer.”
(He, Cohen & Salesin, 1996)

In The Journal of Broadcasting, Robert K. Tiemens says, “The angle of a shot has a marked influence on the audience’s psychological reactin to the subject matter photographed.”
(Tiemens, 1970)

One technique that is perhaps more identified with Burton than anything else is that of stop-motion animation. Although Burton has only used this technique in a few of his films, the iconic “The Nightmare Before Christmas” has made this technique forever associated with Burton. Follow-up efforts like “Corpse Bride” were also very well-received. Stop-motion involves using physical sets and puppets and shooting each subsequent frame of the film as the puppets are moved through the motions you end up seeing on film.

He originally wanted to direct “The Nightmare Before Christmas” stop-motion movie himself but at the time of shooting, he was also pre-occupied with another movie that he was directing, Batman Returns. He produced and co-wrote the script for the movie and Henry Selick got on board to direct it. Tim Burton wrote the poem back in the 1980’s when he was still an animator for Disney. In 1990, he made a deal with Walt Disney Pictures to turn his poem into a full-length film.
(http://www.ehow.com/info_8651006_tim-burtons-camera-techniques.html)

The dutch angle or dutch tilt is a film technique that appears in many of Burton’s films. While certainly not unique to the director, he employs the technique much more frequently than more conventional filmmakers. The shot involves tilting the camera when shooting a frame in order to create a skewed sense of tension. In the resultant shot, the horizon of the shot will be on an angle rather than on a horizontal plane. He uses the technique in both his live-action and stop-motion camerawork.
(http://www.ehow.com/info_8651006_tim-burtons-camera-techniques.html)

Burton enjoys employing point-of-view shots quite often in his films. This technique is demonstrated most clearly in one of his breakout early successes, “Edward Scissorhands” starring Johnny Depp. This film has several shots where the camera is clearly seeing something from the point of view of a specific character, rather than serving as an outside eye looking in.
(http://www.ehow.com/info_8651006_tim-burtons-camera-techniques.htmlColor)

Color is a large part of Burton’s camera mastery. He shoots subjects in oversaturated and undersaturated color, often in order to use the color of the scene to help add to the Gothic mystery or surreal and dreamlike states that his stories frequently find themselves in. Although digital color grading assists in the process of achieving vibrant and specific coloring in his pictures, such as in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Burton is still known for using the camera to capture color unlike that which most other directors put on the screen.
(http://www.ehow.com/info_8651006_tim-burtons-camera-techniques.html)

There is a large variety of different shots that a cinematographer or director can incorporate into a film.  For example, there is what’s called a rack focus, eye level shots, close ups, medium shots, wide shots, and ariel shots.  Below, I will give examples of how each of these shots are used by Tim Burton in his film, “Alice in Wonderland”, and “Edward Scissorhands.”

1. Focus Shot/Rack Focus: This is a shot that focuses on one prop or person in the scene, while the scene goes out of focus. Using the scene in Alice in Wonderland as example, when Alice is kneeled down in front of the mouse hole and she noticed there is a drink on the table. The focus changed from her to the drink with the scene going out of focus.

2. Eye Level Shot. It is a shot that shows you the world through the character’s eyes.

Burton uses this shot when Alice is falling down the rabbit hole, and you see all of the items surrounding her by the point of Alice, herself.

3. Close up. Close up is a shot that shows you a closer look of a character or prop in the scene. For example, there is a close up of the Cheshire Cat’s head when it is appears from the thin air.

4. Medium Shot. This is a shot that shows you a character from the top of the head to right above the waist. For example, in Alice in Wonderland, there is a scene when the Mad Hatter is talking to Alice showing just from the head to the waist.

5. Wide Angel Shot. This shot is an establishing shot.  An establishing shot can be a very wide shot, one that frequently shows the setting of where the upcoming shots take place. This shot can be found in the scene of Alice in Wonderland, where at the moment that Alice walked out from the mouse hole and walked down the staircase.  In Edward Scissorhands, when Peg Boggs visits the mansion for the first time to sell Avon products, the camera changes its perception to view Peg’s view of the castle in a long shot emphasizing the feeling of unreality and illusion. As she reaches the castle, long and wide angled shots are used to convey the size of the character and also to show Peg’s vulnerability in the new but strange environment.

6. Ariel Shot. It is usually done with a crane or with a camera attached to a special helicopter to view large landscape. For instance, they used Ariel shot when Alice climbed out from the rabbit hole and walked away back to the party.

Work Cited:

He, L., Cohen, M. F., & Salesin, D. H. (1996). The virtual cinematographer: A paradigm for automatic real-time camera control and directing.

Tiemens, R. K. (1970). Some relationships of camera angle to communicator credibility. 14(4), 483-490.

Tim Burton-Narrative Function of Mise-En-Scene

Narrative Structure

Motif: there is definitely a character trait motif in films by Tim Burton in the way that he visually portrays his characters.  In James and The Giant Peach, The Corpse Bride, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, there is definitely a significantly repeated element of his films by making the characters look gloomy and dark.

There is also a trait that is repeatedly shown through the use of color in his films.  Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and The Corpse Bride are all heavily using the color gray.  The use of the color gray and black are repetitively used as a motif is his films.  This motif is used because Burtons genre is one of a dark nature.  There is gloom and death is many of his films, and this is definitely evident of the color choices that he chooses.

The use of Gray/Darkness is evident here in "Corpse Bride"

The use of Gray is also evident in "Edward Scissorhands"

"Beetlejuice" is known for being dark and you can see an example of this in this photo.

Burton uses a strong narrative structure to pull together your emotional world into a fantasy world.  ”Big Fish” tells the story of Edward Bloom, who is played by Albert Finney. (Edwards figure prominently in the Burton oeuvre — there’s Edward Scissorhands and the director Ed Wood and now Edward Bloom.) Bloom is a wild fabricator who has turned every incident in his life — from the birth of his child to his stint in the military to the wooing of his wife — into an elaborate tale. His estranged son, played by Billy Crudup, long tired of his father’s yarns, has nonetheless returned home to Alabama to reconcile with Bloom before he dies. ”Big Fish” jumps back and forth in time as Bloom, played as a young man by Ewan McGregor, spins his tales of wild adventures, some of which involve a giant, a pair of Siamese twins and a witch. Bloom is a mix of Odysseus, Candide and your long-winded uncle, and just when the movie seems in danger of veering off into the sentimental, Burton pulls it back. The extraordinary ending of ”Big Fish,” in which the son, finally, gets to tell his own story, is a perfect melding of the visual and the verbal: the words are bolstered, rather than overwhelmed, by Burton’s artistry.

Edward Scissorhands marks Barton’s return to fairy tale as the narrative structure for his films, but this time applied and manipulated in a sophisticated way, blended with humor and pathos, the lessons of his early TV work clearly well learned.  Looking over his film output from the beginning to Big Fish, it is clear that the fairy-tale narrative structure suits him even better than that of animation; he would not use animation narrative structure again in live-action films except for Mars Attacks!  Obviously, animation narrative and fairy-tale narrative have much in common, which perhaps excuses David Mills, one of the reviewers who picked up on the animated narrative structure in Burtons early films, for saying it applied to all of his films up to Sleep Hollow.  In his films that used stop-motion animation, Burton returned to a combination genre-narrative with animation as the dominant narrative structure; In the Nightmare Before Christmas, the animation structure was combined with a fairy-tale structure.

In a German Expressionist book, I read that:
“Twentieth-century art is characterized by a growing disbelief in an objective reality.  Emphasis has shifted from the outer world of empirical experience to the inner world that a man can test only against himself.  As the subjective personality of the artistic has assumed control, it has demanded, in place of the old passive contemplation, an active participation from the observer.  This is perhaps the most important single factor in the development of the expressionist movement.”
(Selz, 1974)

From this passage, I think you can definitely see the function of mise-en-scene from Burtons films birthing directly from the German Expressionist movement.  Burton, time and time again, has characters that have experiences of an inner world that a man can test only against himself.  Burton is constantly making characters that are in a world beyond our reality.

In a book about German Expressionism, I read:
“The German Expressionist movement arose out of a feeling of dissatisfaction with the existing order, and desire to effect revolutionary change.  This attitude–rejecting bourgeois social values and the stale traditions of the state-sponsored art academies–was perhaps best reflected in Paul Klee’s 1903 etching Virgin in the Tree, a grotesque parody of the long convention of idealized or allegorical female nudes.  In their efforts to tap into vital forces” or “inner feelings,” many Expressionists shared an interest in art of non-European or “primitive” cultures, which they felt offered a more immediate and authentic mode of expession, in contrast to centuries of academic refinement and placidity.  Directness, frankness, and a desire to startle the viewer characterize Expressionism in its various branches and permutations.”
(Figura & Jelavich, 2011)

I find this to be particularly interesting in the fact that Burton tends to fit directly into this category of film-making.  He seems to tap into inner feelings of his characters, and there is definitely an interest in non-traditional ways of making a scene or a film.  From the sources that I have been reading, I believe that the mise-en-scene of Tim Burton films comes directly from German Expressionism.

Work Cited:

Figura, S., & Jelavich, P. (2011). German expressionism: The graphic impulse. The Museum of Modern Art.

Selz, P. (1974). German expressionist painting. London, England: University of California Press, Ltd.

Tim Burton-Genre Analysis

According to our book for class, genre can be defined as the following:
“Most scholars now agree that no genre can be defined  in a single hear-and-fast way.  Some genres stand out by their subjects or themes.  A gangster film centers on large-scale urban crime.  A science fiction film features a technology beyond the reach of contemporary science.  A western is usually about life on some frontier (not necessarily the American West, as North to Alaska and Drums Along the Mohawk suggest).  Yet subject matter or theme is not so central to defining other genres.  Musicals are recognizable chiefly by their manner of presentation: singing, dancing, or both.  the detective film is partly defined by the plot pattern of an investigation that solves a mystery.  And some genres are defined by the distinctive emotional effect that aim for: amusement in comedies, tension in suspense films.  Objects and Settings often furnish iconography for a genre.   A close up of a Tommy Gun lifted out of a 1920’s Ford would probably be enough to identify a film as a gangster movie, while a shot of a long, curved sword hanging from a kimono would place us in the world of a samurai.  The war film takes place in battle-scarred landscapes, the backstage musical in theatres and nightclubs, the space-travel film in starships and on distant planets.  Even stars can become iconographic – Judy Garland for the musical, John Wayne for the Western, Arnold Schwarzenegger for the action picture, Jim Carrey for Comedy.”
(Bordwell & Thompson, 2010)

You can definitely use iconography to determine films that Tim Burton does.  He most definitely features Johnny Depp in quite a large number of his films.  Johnny Depp is a character that you can see, and think to yourself, “hmmm, I wonder if this film is a Tim Burton film, because Tim Burton frequently makes films featuring Johnny Depp!”

In a book titled Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology by Keith Grant, it states that:
“Iconography may also refer to the general mise-en-scene of a genre, as in the case of low-key lighting and Gothic design in the horror film or the visual excess of the melodrama.  Iconography provides genres with a visual short-hand for conveying information and meaning succinctly.”
(Grant, 2007)

“Tim Burton, like his work, is a wonderful mess. He’s falling-apart funny and completely alienated; he’s morbid and ironic; he’s the serious artist as goofball flake. A self-described “happy-go-lucky manic-depressive,” he’s like a bright flashlight in a very dark place: the grim factory of Hollywood. Burton is a true visionary. Our culture usually doesn’t use that word for people whose visions look like cartoons and go down like dessert, but Burton is spitting in the eye of our culture while simultaneously celebrating it. That’s the fabulous, odd thing about his work: He’s angrily spitting something sweet.”
(Breskin, 1992)

When I began to think of the Genre that Tim Burton’s movies reside in, I first thought of Fantasy and Animation.  When you start to think of a few of his most popular films such as, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Sleepy Hollow, you begin to also see themes of horror and terror.  There is definitely a theme of darkness in his movies, and I think that aspect of being creepy and dark makes people fall in love with his movies.  Tim Burton is definitely put into a genre of his own, and it is very easy to tell when you are watching a Tim Burton film.  There are themes of long, stick-like characters, artwork that seems deathly and gloomy, and a sense of not belonging in his characters or main character.

One of the most characteristic parts of Burtons films is how it looks to the eye.  The places and scenes in his films are made with such a unique style that is a lot like German Expressionism.  I happen to be doing my group presentation for this class on German Expressionism, and I have found that German Expressionism is based on distorted shapes, heavy lines, sharp contrasts, and lots of black and white.  German Expressionism was the birthing place for horror films to this day.  Characters do not just exist, but rather form visual elements that mere with the setting.  Burton seems to love dark, shadowy, and bizarre settings that allow him to fall into the fantasy/animation genre that he rightfully does.

Many of his movies also have two different worlds in them. For example: in Big Fish, there is the reality, and then his father’s story-world. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there is the dull world outside, and then the fantastic and magical world inside the chocolate factory. In The Corpse Bride, there is the land of the living and the land of the dead, and the same goes for Beetlejuice.  There are also common themes of death and murder in his films.  There are also themes of isolation, and longing. In Edward Scissorhands, he wants somebody he cannot have, just like the dead bride in The Corpse Bride.

For the most part, Burton creates these whimsically gothic worlds, filled with sweet, wonderful, memorable characters. He also gets wonderfully sincere performances from his actors, regardless of the fantastical worlds they find themselves inhabiting.

Beetlejuice is notable for establishing certain Burtonian trademarks on both a stylistic and thematic level. The film’s opening, for example, has become a Burton staple–a sweeping travelling shot across a skillfully constructed model that serves to literally waft the viewer right into the film. Burton’s approach here is what might be called radical-reactionary.

Tim Burton has certain technique when it comes to his filmmaking and being put into the genre that he is.

Work Cited:

Bordwell, D., & Thompson, K. (2010). Film art: An introduction. (9 ed., pp. 328-330). New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.

Breskin, D. (1992). The Tim Burton Collective. Rolling Stone.

Grant, K. (2007). Film genre: From iconography to ideology. Wallflower Press.