The Nightmare Before Christmas DVD > Reviews > Burton and brilliance

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Outstanding
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	Beautifully filmed
Disadvantages:	Left wanting more, too short

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Burton's film is a cinematic masterpiece. The juxter-position of is flawless stop-motion photography and beautiful sound track leave the viewer wanting to watch this film again and again. Its story is reminiscing of the old films Burton loved as a child, such as ‘The Grinch who stole Christmas’ but its image is based more on film that only now students and film buffs may have watched ‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari’. Like Dr Caligari Burton uses fantastic design work, clearly inspired by this German Expressionism, making the shapes of the characters and sets highly memorable and distinctive. All through the film it is more like the models were drawn on the screen, an effect the makers sought to get. Many of its other visually effects are simple but very effective. Take for example the ghost dog (Zero), which is made by using a sheet of glass with the dog reflected on. I made an essay on one scene for a film studies course it might prove useful. If you don’t want to read on, lets just say its well worth buying the special edition copy of this film, it has many intriguing insites into its making, design and also contains a few short films by Burton from earlier in his career. The Director, Henry Selick, does not seem too important over the design and the sound track, so I haven’t mentioned him, though, as far as direction this film is his best. His film which I bought after seeing this one, James and the Giant Peach failed to achieve anyway near this standard as was quite disappointing.

So here’s that scene study. This scene is called ‘Jack Lament’ on the DVD I have.

How do animation techniques and set design create a fantasy world in the scene called ‘Jack’s Lament’ in ‘Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas’?

The stop-motion animation film ‘Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas’ was released in 1993 and was created by Tim Burton and directed by Henry Selick. This is a dark story about the different worlds where holidays like Halloween, Christmas and Easter are created. The film concentrates on a Halloween character called Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, who has become tired of the same old Halloween celebrations. The film is a very dark fantasy, reflective of German expressionist films and film noir as well as qualities not far from Burton’s experience at Walt Disney pictures. This films style and tones can be traced back to one of Burton’s early films called ‘Vincent’. In this scene, near the start (0.5.37), Jack laments having to repeat the same holiday celebrations every year and has a feeling that there is something more he yearns after. Although not revealed in this scene, Jack longs for the excitement of Christmas.
One method employed in this film is used to create the ghost dog ‘Zero’. Near the start of this scene, just before the song, Zero emerges from his tombstone kennel. Normally to make a character appear transparent in model animation, double exposure is used. This means filming the normal scene first then rewinding the reel and filming a blacked scene with only the character you want to be transparent lit. This technique can have its risks and doesn’t always work. The amount of work going on in the scenes in ‘A Nightmare Before Christmas’ would have been complicated if some scenes had to be re-filmed, so a different technique was used. This is a technique called ‘beam splitting’ it involves using an angled piece of glass in front of the main animation set and reflecting the lit model in a dark set onto it. This makes the image both appear in front of the camera and seem transparent. This technique isn’t a new one; it was used to make ghosts in Victorian theatre.
The film uses a range of animation techniques to create its fantasy image. When the song begins, Jack’s head appears to sing. The key method it used for animation in this film is called ‘substitution’. This is a technique first invented by a Dutch man named George Pal in the 1930’s where by moulds are used to recreate, for example, a set of different heads for different mouth shapes or expressions. This technique is no more than a method used in 2D cel animation converted to models. Using this method ‘Nightmare’ can give the illusion of a puppet without strings that can seemingly talk and move on its own.
Jack steps and dances through the various sets in this scene. The smoothness of the movements made by characters in ‘Nightmare’ is down to two factors. The first being that the animation was made at the standard filming rate of twenty-four frames a second (called ‘singles’ by animators), rather than using a method called ‘doubles’ when two pictures are taken per shot by the animator. The second factor is a use of armatures in the models. Armatures are skeletons used inside animation puppets; they can be made out of wire, plastics, balsa wood and various mechanical parts. This film used highly engineered armatures with ball and socket joints and hinges. Each model had an individually designed armature. The care taken in perfecting the construction of the characters meant that when moved by skilled animators they would create movements as smooth and as graceful as ballet dancers. This is most noticeable in the scene when Jack walks amongst the gravestones.
A problem the average film watcher would not pick up on is that of keeping the model standing upright. There are a number of ways to do this, mostly involving holding down feet. The main method is to magnetise the feet of the puppet. Another is to stick them down with a piece of wax and then paint it in the same colour as the set or limb to disguise it. The other ways include using wire to hold the character up, or a stand that holds the character whilst being out of shot. Notably in this scene, at one point, each time Jack steps his foot lands behind a gravestone. Although I do not know which method they used to hold Jack up, the fact his feet land behind those headstones is no coincidence. What ever is holding him up in that sequence is definitely hiding behind the tombstones.
Whilst on the subject of tombstones, this set must have been designed depending on Jacks movements through it. When Jack is near certain stones his body mimics their shape or mood. There are a number of good examples of this. The first is when Jack is next to a statue of a demon, like this statue Jack is bent over and reaching out in this shot. The other good example is when Jack huddles close to a mournful statue and his face reflects its shape.
The sets in the film are mainly based on drawings by Tim Burton. In this scene the set is made up from right to left by the gate to Halloween Town, the graveyard, Halloween hill, the pumpkin patch and the woods. As the drawings are the main basis of their creation the sets are made to look like drawings themselves. There is no use of complicated colour schemes, it is all mainly black, grey, white and orange. The use of black is especially important in scenes like these as their dark qualities, similar to those used in film noir, give most of the tone and feeling. The sets are also made to look like they were drawn by using etched clay that gives the effect of cross-hatching. Another notable element in Tim Burton’s style is the use of bizarre or extreme angles to give a distorted image. To see examples of this just look at the placement and shape of the gravestones or even the shape of the long limbed, thin Jack.
Every set, prop and character in this film has some kind of purpose or use. This is an idea reinforced by Tim Burton, though it has a few exemptions. This use of everything in the set is another theatrical resonance probably coming from Brecht. The gravestones being used to hold Jack up is one example, another being a tombstone shaped like a kennel from which Zero the ghost dog appears. Things like the spiral on Halloween hill that unfolds downwards is used to take Jack to another part of the set that was previously inaccessible. Even the pumpkins are used to emit screaming ghosts. This practical feel extends even to the lighting. ‘Practical’ lights, as they are known in animation are lights in the scene that are expected to be there naturally in day to day life, these practical lights in the case of this scene are the pumpkins and the all important moon. Basically everything in the film needs to have a reason for being there or else it is irrelevant.
Overall this film manages to recreate the idea of a storybook, like ‘The Grinch who stole Christmas’, a key inspiration to Burton, by using the effect of a drawn yet 3D world. The film is more like a piece of ballet than the clumsy animation previously expected from such films in the past. This is all down to well-planned, smooth animation techniques. All the techniques used to recreate these tones, textures and moods make the audience feel really involved in this fantasy world created in ‘Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas’. These kinds of films are sadly in a slight decline due to 3D animation that relies more on mathematics than skill and creativity. Maybe this is why films this brilliant and unique are now harder to find amongst the unimaginative world of the mass produced computer generated imagery (CGI) favoured by the film industry.

Biliography

Film: ‘Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas’ on DVD.

Scene: ‘Jacks Lament’, DVD scene 3.

Word Count: 1343

Clip length: 3 minutes 17 seconds (0.5.37 to 0.8.54)

Bibliography:
· ‘The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas’
· ‘Cracking Animation’ by Peter Lord and Brian Sibley
The Encyclopaedia of Animation Techniques.