‘This is Halloween’
By Lael Loewenstein
It’s Halloween again, and that means it’s time to rent last
year’s feature smash, Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. An
astonishing combination of ghouls, effects and stop-motion
technical wizardry, the recently-released video is the perfect
Halloween treat.
The story of Jack Skellington, spiritual leader of
Halloweentown, and his misguided attempts to kidnap Santa Claus and
highjack Christmas, Nightmare is the product of Tim Burton’s warped
imagination.
Burton dreamed up the idea over a decade ago while he worked as
an animator at Disney. Once the director had achieved success with
Beetlejuice and Batman, he was able to secure financing for his
darkly comic animated vision.
The film’s grueling three-year production process was made
easier only through the collaboration of a talented team of
production designers, animators and camera operators. While Burton
supervised the production, director Henry Selick and his crew
assembled an unforgettable work.
Nightmare’s director of photography Pete Kozachik recently spoke
with The Bruin about his experience on the film. He recalls that
while Burton wasn’t always on the set, his presence was
palpable.
When Kozachik and art director Deane Taylor first sent images
from the cheery Christmas sequence to Burton, then working on
Batman Returns, Burton insisted they make it darker. They continued
to send him dailies until, "finally," says Kozachik, "(Burton) got
that I got it."
Burton’s legendary quest for perfection was infectious, and the
crew worked arduously to film each shot, blending a motion-control
camera and stop-motion puppet animation techniques. While this
process had been used as far back as 1904 in George Meliès’
short film A Trip to the Moon and more famously in King Kong
(1933), Nightmare was the first film to exploit the full potential
of stop-motion animation and a movable camera.
So difficult was the process that even after detailed
storyboarding, it could take up to a week to film a single shot.
"The Holy Grail for the crew was to get one shot, from start to
finish, in a day," says Kozachik. "That almost never happened."
Kozachik worked closely with director Selick and Burton to craft
the look of the film. Together they discussed the kinds of films
they wanted to emulate, especially crime films from the 1940s. The
chilling film noir Night of the Hunter was a particular
influence.
"Although we were shooting in color, we wanted to capture the
feeling of a black and white film," Kozachik says. "(Nightmare) has
a strong sense of gray values and contrast. We used lighting, not
color, to separate and define space, like those older films." Along
with the warped and twisted sets, influenced by German
expressionist films, the deliberate low key lighting helps to evoke
the eerie mood of Halloweentown.
Because Kozachik had previously worked with Selick on animation
projects for MTV, the cinematographer and director had a fruitful
and comfortable collaboration. The two next plan to adapt the Roald
Dahl story "James and the Giant Peach" for the big screen.
Kozachik recalls that one of the greatest honors bestowed upon
Nightmare was that American Cinematographer dubbed it "the most
retro" film of the year, for its look, its feel and its
incomparable use of stop-motion animation. "That," says Kozachik,
"was exactly what we’d hoped for."