Tim Burton – Stop Motion Animation

Tim Burton created many of his films from stop motion animation.  I was not quite aware of what stop motion animation was until I decided to this blog on Tim Burton, but now I find it quite fascinating.  I feel like it gives a production a little more character and artistic feel.  I like that about Stop motion.  It is time consuming, but it is amazing to create.  In the following paragraphs, I have found some ways to better explain exactly what Stop Motion Animation is, and some information about some of Burton’s films that were created by using stop motion animation.  I hope you enjoy!

“Basically, stop motion animation consists of 15 to 20 frames per second. If frame is a new term to you, think of your camera. One click creates one digital image or frame. An artist will pose his subject, take 15 to 20 photographs in the exact same spot, and then move the subject ever so slightly before taking the next set of 15 to 20 photos.  This is repeated over and over until the project is completed. When all this is put together it can literally create magic. A closed hand can open to contain something different entirely, people can disappear into walls, inanimate objects can move on their own, etc. The technology is only limited by your imagination.  The great thing about working with stop motion animation is that the creator can work at his or her own pace, and the projects can be as simple or complex as the creator desires. Projects can incorporate sound with simple microphones or be expanded to include images, video, and even music. The animation can simply feature props already in your library, like books, or be an elaborate project with clay or other moldable materials.”
(Vandenbroek, 2011)

One of Burtons Stop Motion Animation films is a beautiful film by the name of Corpse Bride.  Below, I have a quote from a book titled, Bringing The Dead To Life: Animation and the Horrific.  It explains a bit about the plot of Corpse Bride and the use of stop motion animation.  The quote states:

“The central thrust of the narrative is that the corpse bride, Emily, was murdered on the eve of her wedding by her fiancé, and although falling in love with Victor, sacrifices herself to enable him to attain the love she was denied. Crucial to the look of the film is the use of stop-motion animation, a form of filmmaking with its horror ancestry closely linked to the 1930s’ version of King Kong, and which relies on manipulating puppets by small increments between each shot. Although reviews such as Peter Whittle’s in the Sunday Times referred to it as an “old-fashioned” technique,2 the project was also noted for its technical innovations, including sophisticated mechanics within the puppets to enable subtle facial expressions and movements, and the application of much smaller digital cameras to get closer to the figures. The characters therefore register as inanimate puppets, but take on a more expressive, life-like form.”
(Allen, 2010)

I found a really good website that had a lot of information that came from Tim Burton himself.  It is just a page that consists of Tim Burton talking about how he feels about animation and why he enjoys stop motion animation so much.  I hope you find it as interesting as I did!

“There is an energy with stop-motion that you can’t even describe.  It’s got to do with giving things life, and I guess that’s why I wanted to get into animation originally.  To give life to something that doesn’t have it is cool, and even more so in three dimensions, because, at least for me, it feels even more real.
The Characters that were designed for Nightmare Before Christmas had the added burden of not having eyeballs.  The first rule of animation is: Eyes for Expression.  But a lot of characters either don’t have any eyes, or their eyes are sewn shut.  I thought if we could give life to these characters that have no eyes, it would be great.  So, after drawing all those foxes with their wet drippy eyes at Disney, there was a little subversion in having these characters with no eyes.  It was funny to think of a character that had these big black holes and to try to make that work.  It’s a funky old art form, stop motion, and even though new technology was used at times in Nightmare, basically it’s artists doing it and painting sets and making things.  There’s something very gratifying about that, something I love and never want to forget.  It’s the handmade aspect of things, part of an energy that you can’t explain.  You can sense it when you see the concentration of the animators as they move the figures, there’s an energy that’s captured.  It’s like when you look at a Van Gogh painting.  I remember the first time I saw one in reality.  You’ve seen them in books, but the energy that’s captured on the canvas is incredible, and I think that’s something that nobody talks about because it’s not something literal.”
(Tim Burton Talking)

I think this quote is the favorite that I found that is actually from the mouth of Burton himself.  I think his mind is so creative, and I find a weird sort of comfort in his words here.  I find him to be so real, and so honest.  That is why he is a good director to me.

Work Cited:

Allen, S. (2010). Bringing the Dead to Life: Animation and the Horrific. At The Interface / Probing The Boundaries, 6187-107.

Tim Burton Talking About Animation. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://minadream.com/timburton/Animation.htm

Vandenbroek, A. (2011). Creating Library Magic with Stop Motion Animation. Library Media Connection, 29(5), 44-47.

Editing – How Tim Burton Effectively uses a Match Cut in his film, Ed Wood.

In class, we have recently been learning about editing.  The editing technique that I find particularly interesting comes from the way directors use transitions to move their story along.  As a person in the Electronic Media Production option here at Eastern Illinois University, I am constantly pressured to make good videos for projects.  One way that I am taught to do this is through the use of good transitions.

I found a very nice way of introducing transitions in an article that I read by Michael Kurland.  The title of his article is very interesting in itself.  It is titled, Get Your Characters Through Doors Without Stumbling: The Art of Transitions is a Subtle but Important one for Good Storytelling.  In this article, Kurland states,
“Transitions–moving characters through space or through time–seem simple, but they are a recurring problem for all but the most experienced writers. Do they just appear–pop!–at the new location, or should I slowly and in great detail get them from here to there? Both are technically correct, as are all the infinite possibilities in between the two extremes.”
(Kurland, 2008)
This section is very true when it comes to editing.  When you think about editing, you don’t think about all of the ways to get your characters moving throughout the scenes.  What makes a good editor or director is the way that this happens throughout the film.

In class, we touched on match cuts.  In our class notes, we defined a match cut as shapes, objects color, overall composition in shot A will fall over into shot B.

I came across a periodical that was written by Vincent LoBrutto, and LoBrutto states,
“The art and craft of editing is comprised of two overarching approaches–invisible and visible editing. Invisible editing is a cut that is hidden by strategy–a match cut where a prominent action within the frame is continued over the cut so the event is embraced by both Shot 1 of this moment through Shot 2. This phenomenon allows the creator to present a flow of images that tell a story without reminding the audience they are watching a motion picture. Where to make the cuts–outgoing of Shot 1, incoming of Shot 2–demonstrates the very essence of the invisible editing concept.”
(LoBrutto, 2009)

There is a very good match cut done by Tim Burton in the film Ed Wood.  This film was done by Burton in 1994, and is about a mostly true story of the legendary director of awful movies and his strange group of friends and actors.  This film stars Johnny Depp, Martin Landau (Who won Best Supporting Actor in this Film), and Sarah Jessica Parker.  In this movie, Ed Wood is a very bad filmmaker who is trying to join the film industry.  Upon hearing of an announcement in Variety that producer George Weiss is trying to purchase Christine Jorgensen’s life story, Ed is inspired to meet Weiss in person.

In this post, I would like to analyze a scene in the film that has a good match cut.  It occurs when Ed walks into Variety and overhears 2 employees “gossiping” about an article in Variety.  The news that the two employees are gossiping about is about George Weiss’ announcement of his new idea for a film.  In the first frame, Ed is looking at the newspaper, reading the announcement.  The camera tightens up on the newspaper to the point where the only thing in the frame is the news article itself.  The next shot opens with the same tight shot of the newspaper, but then zooms out and you find that Ed is holding the newspaper in an entirely new location.  This jump of location is done in order to move the plot along and move the character from one scene to the next, just in a flow of images that is subtle, but successful.

I find this clip to successfully make use of a match cut, and I believe my description of the scene effectively shows how the match cut is used.  I have inserted a link to the clip below. This clip is on YouTube, and it can be found at 10:00 and it ends by 10:30.

Work Cited:

Kurland, M. (2008). Get your characters through doors without stumbling: The art of transitions is a subtle but important one for good storytelling. Writer, 121(1), 31-33.

LoBrutto, V. (2009). “Invisible” or “Visible” Editing: The Development of Editorial Styles and Strategies. Cineaste, 34(2), 43-47.

 

Tim Burton – Big Fish

An article I read from Time International stated,

“Tim Burton, misfit child of Hollywood, has made a movie about incorrigible grownups. What could this mean?

Because he tends to dress like a mortician and has made a fair number of films that romanticize gloom, Tim Burton has emerged as one of those directors who are not just makers of myths but subjects of them too. The most prevalent Burton myth is that he is dark and possibly a little disturbed. In addition to his clothes and movies, there are eerie bits of biography to support this view, like the fact that Burton’s parents blacked out the windows of his childhood bedroom, apparently to save on heating bills. (Burton grew up in Burbank, California–not a notoriously difficult place to heat a home.) The second Burton myth is that his mind is still trapped in the eremitic universe of that darkened bedroom. Evidence includes his lavish re-creations of ’60s pop trifles (Batman, Mars Attacks! and Planet of the Apes) as well as more personal films (Edward Scissor-hands, Ed Wood) that center on misunderstood emotional savants with a likeness to a certain director.”
(Tyrangiel, 2004)

Big Fish is a movie that you can watch and never know that Tim Burton directed it.  Yes, after realizing the fact, you may think to yourself, “Wow!  That makes a whole lot of sense!”  You may make the reference of the odd moments of the film and relate them to the ideal Burton movie, but you also may not.  There is something about Big Fish that is intriguing and interesting.  After watching this movie, I had no idea that Tim Burton had directed it.  I was much younger than I am now, and I wasn’t too interested on the Directors of movies at the time.  But now, I really enjoy the fact that Tim Burton directed it.  As I start to become an adult, I find myself connecting with Tim Burton movies due to the meaning that comes from within the films.  I do not only find interest in the cinematography and editing of the films, but in the implicit meaning as well.  I think this film, Big Fish, is a film that quite possibly had more of a personal meaning to Burton than anything else.

In an Entertainment Weekly article that I read titled, “Tim Burton’s BIG Adventure,” I found interesting information regarding the movie.  It explains a little bit on why the movie is not the typical “Burtonian” film that you would normally see.  It also explains a bit on why Burton chose to do this movie in the first place.  This article was written and published in 2003, so keep that in mind when you are reading and thinking about the years being referenced.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

“Columbia Pictures spent at least $75 million making Burton’s rendition of Daniel Wallace’s slender novel, and for a drama without built-in marketing hooks, that’s a risky sum. While it showcases a notable cast–Ewan McGregor (as the Finney character’s younger, imagined self), Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman, and Helena Bonham Carter (Burton’s girlfriend of two years and now the mother of his 2-month-old son)–none of the actors are exactly marquee draws. A potentially bigger hurdle: Big Fish isn’t typically Burtonian. It hasn’t got the obvious teenage appeal of such loner-brooder fantasies as Pee-wee’s Big Adventure or Edward Scissorhands, or the familiar mythology of the first two Batman films or Sleepy Hollow or Planet of the Apes (which grossed $360 million worldwide despite gripes about the ending).  “Part of the reason I did it,” says, Burton, who’s 45, “is because it’s not something to put into a quick category.” But Big Fish is also partly an act of therapy. Burton’s father, Bill, died in 2000, while Burton was scouting locations for Apes. His mother, Rickie, passed away last year. Although he wasn’t close to them–as an adolescent, he left their suburban house in Burbank (where he was raised with a younger brother) to move in with a grandmother–their passing shattered him anyway. “You cannot prepare yourself for it,” he says. “It’s heavy-duty. It’s hard to sort out. It’s hard even with a therapist to put into words.”  Then along came words and images that spoke to Burton’s pain. When screenwriter John August (Charlie’s Angels, Go) and producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen (American Beauty) approached Burton about making Big Fish, he quickly said yes. The script barely changed from green light to final cut. “It’s stuff that’s real,” says Burton of the dying-father story line, but very difficult to talk about. That’s what I loved about the movie. It was a way of exploring that. Otherwise, those feelings would’ve just kept swirling around.”
(Daly, 2003)

Finally, the Time International article put it best.  In this ending, Burton discusses his need for connection in movies, and he discusses his family and how he grew up.  This ending is very interesting to me because it makes it easier to think of Burton directing this film after reading this last part that I have for you.  When I read this, I was able to picture Tim Burton connecting to Big Fish through his own troubled and bizarre childhood.  Big Fish can be summed up as troubled and bizarre, most definitely.  And it has been nice to make that connection through doing research for this blog post!  Ok.  Here is the part of the article that I was just talking about:

“Burton needs movies not just as an excuse to get up in the morning but also as a means of exchange between himself and the real world. “Half the things I’ve ever worked on are these big behemoths where there’s a release date before there’s a script” he says, but the other half are abstract attempts at autobiography. “I’m amazed at people like Robert Wise [The Sound of Music, The Andromeda Strain] who can go from genre to genre, and every movie seems different” he says. “I never felt that I could do that. I need some sort of connection. The doing of it–making a movie–is a cathartic experience, so there’s got to be …A wound? Burton would prefer that no one confuse the art with the artist, but he makes it tough. Many of his earlier films are responses to growing up in a family that couldn’t express itself. His father, a parks employee, and his mother, who ran a gift shop, rarely touched their two children, says Burton, and at age 10, he left his family and moved in with his grandmother. He never fully reconciled with his father before the elder Burton’s death in 2000, which could be why he was driven to direct Big Fish. “My father died, and my mother was ill, so I read the script” he says, “and I feel like it captured a thing that was always quite difficult for me to put into words. That relationship, it just, you try to talk about it, and it doesn’t, it didn’t … Well, you can never really talk about it. You know, these issues are just in you. So I thought I’d just show it.”

Burton may live in his own space, but it is not juvenile, and it is not sealed. While he refuses to attend industry events like the Oscars–“It’s a popularity contest, and based on my growing-up experiences in school, I lost”–he loves having movie people around him. “I enjoyed working with animation a little” he says. “But I love actors and sets and all of that. It’s just more fun. No matter what you’re doing, you stand back, and it’s like there are all these people standing around in funny clothes looking at you and … Maybe I seem to them like the most foul-tempered, sealed-off zombie creature, but I get such incredible joy. It’s like a wonderful, absurd dream.” Just real.”
(Tyrangiel, 2004)

Work Cited:

Daly, S. (2003). Tim Burton’s BIG Adventure. Entertainment Weekly, (741), 44.

Tyrangiel, J. (2004). BIG FISH IN HIS OWN POND. Time International (South Pacific Edition), (4), 54-56.

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp – What a Duo!

I would like to start this blog post by sharing an interview I found from and Entertainment Weekly article featuring Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.  They have done 7 movies together to date, but this particular interview is about the movie, Alice in Wonderland.  I have inserted a small portion of the interview below.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

EW: Alice in Wonderland has been adapted in one form or another hundreds of times. What inspired you to take a crack at it?

TIM BURTON Disney came to me with the idea of doing Alice in Wonderland in 3-D, and that seemed intriguing. I’d never really read the Lewis Carroll books. I knew Alice through music and other illustrators and things. The images were always strong, but the movie versions I’d seen, to me, were always just, like, a little brat wandering around a bunch of weirdos. [Laughs] It was fun to try to make the characters not just weird–I mean they are weird, but we wanted to get deeper into those characters.

EW Johnny, how did you approach the role of the Mad Hatter?

JOHNNY DEPP Oddly enough, I had reread both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass not long before. I started looking up things on hatters and where that whole term “mad as a hatter” came from. It was actually due to mercury poisoning, because when they were putting together the hats, they used this really vile substance that–it’s like huffing–it makes you go sideways. So I just started to get these images in my head. That’s where the orange hair came from.

EW When you did Pirates of the Caribbean, the executives at Disney famously panicked at first over how you were playing Jack Sparrow. Was there any concern this time about portraying the Mad Hatter as a sort of pale-skinned, green-eyed, orange-haired freak?

DEPP When we first went in to do the camera tests, I was thinking, “They’re going to lose their minds.” But Tim fully supported it. It was a couple of solid hours in the makeup chair every day, but it really helped. You start to understand who the guy is through all that weird kind of Carrot Top Kabuki.

BURTON From Edward Scissorhands on, Johnny has always wanted to cover himself up and hide. [Laughs] I get it.

DEPP I still do. Absolutely.

BURTON It’s fascinating to see Johnny work up to a character, though. In the past, we’ve done some studio read-throughs of the script and the executives will come up to me afterward, like, [in a nervous whisper] “He’s not going to do that in the movie, is he?” I remember on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we did a read-through of the script early on and Johnny was holding a pencil and pretending to smoke it like a pipe. And this studio executive said to me, “He’s not going to smoke a pipe in the movie, is he?”

DEPP The subtext underneath that question is so funny. It’s like [with mock outrage], “Are you kidding me? He’s smoking a pipe?!”

BURTON “The character isn’t wearing any socks? He’s got ripped jeans? Oh my God, don’t do anything to embarrass us!” It’s funny, because the thing that worries people most is often the thing that makes it work.

EW And to prove it, there are now people standing out on Hollywood Boulevard dressed as Jack Sparrow.

DEPP I was driving down Hollywood Boulevard one day and stopped at a light, looked to my left, and saw Willy Wonka having a conversation with Jack Sparrow. It was so cool, man. [Laughs]

EW Johnny, you’ve said you don’t like watching yourself on screen. What is it like to see yourself in 3-D in Alice?

DEPP I’m actually unable to see 3-D. I’ve got a weird thing where I don’t see properly out of my left eye, so I truly can’t see 3-D. So I have an excuse [not to watch myself] this time. [Laughs]
 (Rottenberg, 2010)

“Twenty years ago, a frustrated young TV star and a wild-haired filmmaker met at a hotel off the Sunset Strip, drank coffee, and talked. To an outside observer, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton would have seemed an unlikely pair: one, a reluctant teen idol; the other, a shy, rumpled director with a penchant for the macabre. But from that meeting sprang a creative partnership that has produced some of the most memorable oddball characters in recent movie history: An alienated teenage Frankenstein with scissors for hands. A cross-dressing Z-movie director. A demented candy maker. A murderous barber.”

(Rottenberg, 2010)

“In 1990, Burton cements his signature style into the minds of filmgoers around the world and his Hollywood legend is all but secure.  Edward Scissorhands is full of visual layers that offer a glimpse into the personal world of Tim Burton.  On the most basic level one could read Edward Scissorhands as Tim Burton; lonely, misunderstood, and longing to touch and create in an environment more inclined to label and destroy.  He infuses Edward with a purity and essence of goodness that is symbolic and in many ways extreme.

The elegant simplicity of Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Edward and the classical structure of the narrative allows audiences to identify with and ultimately understand the character on a base level.  By using the elemental structure of the fairytale as a template, Burton creates his most personal film by tapping into universal themes.
Edward Scissorhands signaled the beginning of one of the most fruitful relationships of Burton’s professional career.  He and actor Johnny Depp would team up again for Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride.  Many credit their successful collaboration to Depp’s uncanny ability to take on the role of Burton’s onscreen alter ego.  For Burton, a director who externalizes the internal struggles of his character with his extreme imagery and use of costumes, make-up, and masks (Beetlejuice, Batman, Joker, Catwomen, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, etc.)  Depp’s chameleon-like nature as an actor makes him a perfect fit.  Burton says, I love actors who like to transform…it’s exciting to see that.  And I really get a lot of energy out of somebody like him who, you know, doesn’t care how he looks, is willing to do anything.”

(Burton & Fraga, 2005)

I have to say that one of my favorite Tim Burton movies that features Johnny Depp is Alice in Wonderland.  His character in that movie is just amazing to me.  He pulls off a Mad Hatter so well, and his character is one that you can never take your eyes off of.  He is convincingly “mad” in this movie.

The following is a “Behind the Scenes” look at Alice in Wonderland from an Entertainment Weekly Article done by Josh Rottenberg:

“Lewis Carroll’s 1865 literary classic about a young English girl who follows a white rabbit into a fantastical world has been adapted into everything from silent films to anime to stage musicals to porn movies, but Burton–who has already put his unique stamp on such beloved characters as Barman, Willy Wonka, and Ichabod Crane–didn’t feel weighed down by all that history. “There are interesting versions of Alice, but I don’t feel like there’s one iconic version,” he says. For this latest take, which boasts a budget reported to be over $200 million, Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton incorporated characters including the Mad Hatter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the Cheshire Cat into a whole new story that returns Alice, now a strong-willed and independent 19-year-old, to Wonderland for the first time since her childhood. Reuniting with the nonsense-spouting Mad Hatter, Alice learns that she must slay a fearsome dragon called the Jabberwock in order to fulfill an ancient prophecy and free Wonderland from the tyranny of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). To bring his vision of Wonderland to life, Burton shot the actors against a greenscreen and filled in the world around them with computer-generated imagery. Still, Depp had no problem getting into the proper bizarro spirit. “There’s all this surreal stuff going on: Everything around you is green, there are people dressed in, like, green Spider-Man outfits so they can hand you something during a shot. Maybe some actors would find it all a hindrance, but it was so ludicrous I actually got into it.” As for Depp’s Mad Hatter getup–from the pale makeup to the green, walleyed contact lenses to the frizzy orange hair–that was all real. “We did research on orange haired characters, from Bozo to Carrot Top and everything in between,” says Burton. “It was quite disturbing.”
(Rottenberg, 2010)

 

Work Cited:

Burton, T., & Fraga, K. (2005). Tim burton: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi.

Rottenberg, J. (2010). HOLLYWOOD’S MAD HATTER. (Cover story). Entertainment Weekly, (1092), 26-35.

 

Tim Burton- His influence from Gothic Style and Expressionist Art

“Burton’s work, as a collective, contains the dark Gothic element of expressionism with a distinct edge. Many of his sets are artesian or hand made and have the appearance of a human touch. There is a consistency in all his work with harsh lighting, muted color, period design costumes, mono-chromatic set designs, and a surrealistic overtone to each film.”
(Chambers, 2007)

“Tim Burton, a director and animator, produces a continuous stream of films . While it appears his works are influenced by the German Expressionist, they have instead advanced the traditions of Dark Gothic Art by continuing into mainstream film productions.”
(Chambers, 2007)

“Gothic Art originated with architecture during the late medieval times in Europe and was ridiculed during the Renaissance period as an offensive style. Mostly found in religious buildings, the form was also seen in castles, city buildings, and colleges. The advent of film at the turn of the 20th century, Gothic Art gained another attribute through the lighting of the sets and more significantly, the lighting of the architecture of the buildings. Shadows, long drawn elements, harsh contrasts, cold forms, and necessary at the time: black and white, produced the Dark Gothic effect. The effect of shadows on the set give the dark element to the Gothic form and evoke the feelings of terror without actually showing something horrific. Dark Gothic Art applies to films, and only those that present the architecture so familiar to the style and an important part of the Expressionist form.”
(Chambers, 2007)

With nearly all of Burtons films having the effects of shadows, long drawn elements, harsh contrasts, and black and white used a lot in his films, I can definitely see how he would be said to be heavily influenced by Gothic Art.  From the standpoint that dark elements evoke the feeling of terror without actually showing something horrific, Burton does this all the time.  When you watch a Burton film, you are immediately hit by a depressive emotion, or a scary emotion.  But does he really show something horrific?  No.  He is usually just going against the norm of our reality, by bringing out the side of things that other mainstream directors do not.  His characters ooze goth.  But they are usually really nice, friendly characters on the inside.  His characters are just usually outsiders to the normal, mainstream people of society

“The expressionist art form distorts reality to produce an emotional effect. It comes from difficult social times, usually during recessions or immediately after wars. Created to express inner emotions, Expressionism began in Germany, spread throughout Europe, and eventually reached America.” (Chambers, 2007)

I think Burton definitely has influence from expressionist art.  His realities in his films are definitely distorted from the true reality that we all live in, and it almost always has some kind of emotional effect on the viewers of his film.  The inner emotions of his characters always come out in one way or another, and you are shown this by his way of distorting reality and then bringing his characters back down to a more un-distorted reality, one that many of his viewers can relate to more. 

Elements of Gothic Style
“Burton’s films contain the visual and emotional elements of Gothic nature but do not encapsulate the modern ideas of the genre of horror or gore. Even though the topics of death and the slight over tones of the morbidity come out in his films he does not fit the contemporary horror genre. The German Expressionists were not about the horror but more about the emotional content of the terror.”
(Chambers, 2007)

“The Expressionists, who liked to call themselves “apocalyptic adolescents,” display an almost childlike love of youth; they abhor old people, those representatives of a chilly conformism, which reproves their unbounded high spirits.”
(Eisner, 1965)

I definitely think that Tim Burton has a childlike love of youth.  I think he finds comfort in death, but does not associate death with only old people.  I believe Burton appreciates death as something that we should look forward to in many ways.  I don’t think he wants it to be something to fear, which is why I think he has death, or some form of death, whether it be skeletons, grave yards, the two worlds of reality and the after-life, you can definitely see the fascination that he has with the world that comes after our passing.  

Work Cited:

Chambers, R. (2007). Tim Burton’s Advancement of Dark Gothic Art.

Eisner, L. H. (1965). The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt.

Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice: The Use of The Graveyard, Black and White Stripes, and a Model Town

This blog post will be on one of my favorite Tim Burton Films, Beetlejuice.  The reason I like this movie so much is for the visual elements in the film.  I like the darkness to it.  In fact, I find it to be too dark for children to watch.  I remember one day, I was watching television, and I noticed Beetlejuice was on, so I watched it of course, as I do with all films on my top 10 list.  But this time, I noticed Beetlejuice was playing on the children’s channel.  Usually, only G rated animated films play on this channel, but today, Beetlejuice was making an appearance.

I found it interesting that, “In both Edward Scissorhands and Beetle Juice, Burton is not only the director but also the writer and producer.  Therefore, Burton put a lot of his own ideas into these movies making them as personal  as he could to make it a good movie.  The film’s opening has become a Burton staple–a sweeping traveling shot across a skillfully constructed model that serves to literally waft the viewer right into the film.”
(Woodford, 2005)

The images in this film are even disturbing to my 22 year old self, so it was interesting to see this film being directed to a much, much younger age than me.  The reason I think this film is too disturbing for children is the many visual elements I this movie that are downright scary.  I find Beetlejuice to be one of Tim Burton’s most disturbing movies.

I read in a book entitled, “Burton on Burton” that Beetlejuice features a number of visual references that surface continually in Burton’s work: these include a model town, characters patterned with black and white stripes, and a graveyard setting.

The following is an excerpt from this book.

“There was a graveyard right next to where we lived, about a block away, and I used to play there.  I don’t know exactly why it keeps showing up, except for the fact that, again, it’s part of your soul; it was a place where I felt peaceful, comfortable; a whole world of quiet and peace, and also excitement and drama.  It’s all those feelings mixed into one.  I was obsessed with death, like a lot of children.  There were flat tombs, but there was also this weird mausoleum with weird gates on one side.  And I would wander around it any time of the day or night.  I would sneak into it and play, and look at things, and I always felt really good there.
-As for model towns, I used to draw big tableaux of flying saucers attacking an army.  They were very elaborate, almost like miniature in a way.  Also, when we were shooting those Super 8 movies we used to make miniatures.  Again, I don’t know why, but all those movies I used to like as a kid had them.  It’s like stop-motion animation, there’s a certain energy and vibe which is quite strong.  A lot of it has to do with those Godzilla movies.
-As far as the black and white stripes are concerned, that one I have never been able to figure out.  I guess there must be some sort of prison element involved in there somehow.  I am drawn to that image, I always have been, it’s in a lot of drawings a well, but I don’t know why.”
(Burton & Salisbury, 2006)

It is very interesting to hear where these visually elements came from when Burton was making this film.  I enjoy knowing what Tim Burton was thinking when he was creating this film, and I feel like I can connect to the movie better in knowing where a  lot of the elements came from.

Work Cited:

Burton, T., & Salisbury, M. (2006). Burton on Burton. London: Faber and Faber Limited.

Woodford, J. (2005). Tim burtons themes and trademarks.

Tim Burton-Form and Meaning/With a Focus on Implicit Meaning

Implicit Meaning was defined to us in class as: The significance left for the viewer to discover upon analysis or reflection.  It is something that you have to interpret.

I found a good way to define how to find meaning constructively in films in a book titled, “Making Meaning: Interface and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema.  In this book, David Bordwell states:
“Taking meaning-making as a constructive activity leads us to a fresh model of interpreting films.  The critic does not burrow into the context, probe it, get behind its facade, dig to reveal its hidden meanings; the surface/depth metaphor does not capture the inferential process of interpretation.  On the constructive account, the critic starts with aspects of the film (“cues”) to which certain meanings are ascribed.”
(Bordwell, 1991)

After  coming across a book entitled, “The Films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Contemporary Hollywood” by Alison McMahan, I was intrigued of the story where Tim Burton is asked to direct Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp.  In this part of the book, Alison McMahan explains the meaning that is supposed to be taken after seeing the production.  I found it to be interesting to hear the directors point of view of the implicit meaning that was hidden in the production.  You are usually not that fortunate to hear from the director, and only left to talk with your friends or just ponder the thoughts to yourself.  This way, you know what the real meaning was directly from the creator.  Below, I have the section of the book that discusses Aladdin and then I explain what the implicit meaning was from this section.

“In 1985, after Burton had made Frankenweenie, which featured Shelly Duvall, Duvall invited him to direct Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, an episode of Showtime’s Faerie Tale Theatre series for which she was the host and executive producer.  Burton was honored to be asked, especially because name directors like Francis Ford Coppola usually directed.  Also, it would be his first production away from Disney.  As with Hansel and Gretel, Burton was faced with a format over which he had little control, and a tight budget.  Again, Burton brought on Rick Heinrichs and Steven Chiodo for model and effects work.  Burton had a week to produce the show, which was shot on videotape with three cameras, a new format for him.  The episode, which is still available on video, features Leonard Nimoy, as the evil magician who first leads Aladdin to the magic lamp, and James Earl Jones, as the narrator, the Genie of the Ring, and the Genie of theLamp.  Burton was less starstruck working with them than he had been with Vincent Price on Vincent.  The story begins with Aladdin, as a happy go lucky fatherless boy about town who survives by pickpocketing and petty thievery.  He encounters a magician who claims to be his long-lost uncle.  Though Aladdin and his mother are doubtful, they are pleased to be fed and at the prospect that the uncle will set Aladdin up in business.  Bt the Uncle’s real goal is to have Aladdin go to a cavern in the desert and steal a magic lamp from its magical guardians.  The cave features a humorous use of forced perspective, the kind of extenal-to-the-narrative joke that Burton would use increasingly in his later films.  There are two magic trees in the cave that have fruit that turns into jewels when picked.  The lamp itself is held in place by a hand protruding from the mouth of a large fish.  When Aladdin steals the lamp, monstrous figures on the wall come to life and appear ready to chase him.  When Aladdin refuses to give his uncle the lamp, the uncle locks him in the cave.  However, Aladdin manages to escape with the help of the Genie of the Ring.  When he returns to town, he catches a forbidden glimpse of the sultan’s daughter as she goes to her bath and promptly falls in love.  He sends his mother to plead his case to the sultan, with the jewels he took from the fruit tree as gifts.  However, the grand vizier convinces the sultan that he himself is a better match.  Meanwhile, Aladdin discovers the lamp’s hidden powers accidentally and gets the genie to help him win the princess.  The sultan is fond of bizarre toys, and Aladdin gets his attention by having the genie provide him with a sort of television and by building a new palace over-night.  However, once Aladdin is happily married, his uncle manages to steal the lamp from the princess, and Aladdin has to struggle all over again to get it back, which he and the princess manage to do in collaboration.
The story’s moral seems to be that good fortune can come to the undeserving, but they have to earn it in order to keep it.  For Aladdin, this means showing kindness to the class of poor folk he came from and being polite, as well as firm, with the genie, who has a deliciously reactionary sense of humor, played to the hilt by James Earl Jones.  This blatant message about paternalism as the ennobling characteristic of the upper class is overlaid by a more subtle one: although the transfer of power goes through the Princess, she is not allowed to rule or even to be looked at by others, ensuring that she lies her life in virtual isolation.  As if to emphasize this, her boudoir greatly resembles that of Jeannie’s (from the television series I Dream of Jeannie) in her bottle, as does the shape of the castle that Aladdin has the genie build for her.  The fact that Aladdin can discard her whenever he pleases is also alluded to by the genie, who protests that he doesn’t want to build anything too fancy if Aladdin isn’t fully committed to the relationship.”
(McMahan, 2005)

So, In this story about Aladdin, it is said that, “The story’s moral seems to be that good fortune can come to the undeserving, but they have to earn it in order to keep it.  For Aladdin, this means kindness to the class of poor folks he came from and being polite, as well as firm, with the genie, who has a deliciously reactionary sense of humor.”  This meaning must be interpreted individually by the viewer.  It is not told to you in narrative form on the screen.  You must figure it out on your own, which is an example of Implicit Meaning.

Work Cited:

Bordwell, D. (1991). Making meaning: Inference and rhetoric in the interpretation of cinema. First Harvard University Press

McMahan, A. (2005). The films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Contemporary Hollywood. International Publishing Group.