Stop motion: A unique technique
Tim Burton, once again, has left his spectators speechless with the profound and meaningful Corpse Bride. With this movie, Burton shows how he masters an animation technique that has not been very used with the creation of 3-D animation; this technique is called stop motion (or frame-by-frame), and it involves the manipulation of a certain object (in this case clay puppets) and the record of its different moves in different frames.
King Kong (1933) was the first stop animated movie 
The clay puppets weremoved by very small amounts between individually photographed frames, which creates the illusion of movement when the serie of frames isplayed as a continuous sequence. When this animation contains clay puppets is called “claymation” and is highly used because of their ease of repositioning.
Corpse’s bride clay puppet 
The original 1933 King Kong was one ofthe earliest and most famous stop motion film, but Tim Burton adopted and take this technique further with his famous 1993 movie Nightmare Before Christmas. In this movie, Burton already showed his vision of the world with thin and unusually tall clay puppets and gave his unique vision of the dead world and the magic world. With Corpse Bride, Burton restates his interest and master of the stop motion technique altogether with his vision of the dead world and the living world.
Sources used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/stop_motion
The magic of symbols
Tim Burton, as we have previously seen, is a real author, almost a genius that combines different symbols and elements of the language of film to enhance character’s different feelings and emotions throughout all his movies. Butterflies, the use of color, and crows are just some of the main symbols in Corpse Bride that allow the spectator to feel really connected to what he or she is seeing. We are going to explain the meaning of these elements used by Burton on the movie and their importance on the movie.
1.Butterflies
They are symbols of nature, freedom, and good luck. They appear in the beginning and the end of the movie. When the movie begins, a butterfly is set free from its glass cage. An act that reflects a sort of unconscious release for Victor since he new beforehand he was destined to get married to an unknown girl, and his future therefore would be uncertain. In the end of the movie, lots of butterflies appear flying away which shows the good luck that Victoria and Victor finally had.
2. Crows
These birds are constantly repeated in the movie and because of its dark black color and enervating call are associated with the night and cemeteries. They are considered to be bad birds and a symbol of evil. Poets, authors and in this particular case, Tim Burton, often use them because they are seen as birds which represent death, danger, and darkness.
3.Use of constrative colors
There is a colorful contrast between the living and the death world. On the one hand, the living world is depicted with cold colors in which the predominant one is blue. On the other hand, the death world is very colorful in which warmer ones, such as light brown, yellow, and orange are more dominant. This issue reflects Tim Burton’s views toward the concept of death in which he wants to transmit and show a much more positive spiritual approach to life than the mere association of death with darkness and sadness
Warner Brothers Studio and its relationship with music
Music has played an important role in entertainment since the beginning of musical theatre in Ancient Greece, which involved only dance and music. With the advent of film, musical theatre evolved into what we know nowadays as musical films. Musical films became a genre in which several songs (sung by the characters) are interwoven into the narrative to advance the plot or develop film’s characters. In Corpse Bride music do play an important role. Although the movie is categorized as an animated film, musical is one of the genres to which this movie belongs. The way in which characters (even though they are made of clay) express what they feel through music and how each voice represents each character in a special way, makes the movie unique and unforgettable.
Its resemblance to another famous musicals as Wizard of Oz (1939) by Victor Fleming cannot be denied. One of the reasons of this resemblance is the studio that produced Corpse Bride and Wizard of Oz, Warner Brothers. With the Studio System, which was practiced in the Golden Age of Hollywood, Warner Brothers made its appearance as one of the most important studios at that period with an important accent on musicals. Since then, Warner Brothers has put a signatue to musical films as their vivid colours, fantastic situations, and beloved characters.
Even though Warner Brothers has produced diverse films from the film noir The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942) to the drama and realism of Rebel without a cause (1955) and Elephant (2003) , being the las a contemporary film just as Corpse Bride, the Studio still has that accent on musicals which makes each of their productions unique, but at the same time similar.
Sources used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/musical_film
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/musicals
Blogs visited: The Maltese Falcon http://the-maltese-falcon.blogspot.com/
Casablanca http://www.thewhitehouseproject.blogspot.com/
Elephant http://elephantfilm.blogspot.com/
The wizard of Oz http://yellowbrickroad2.wordpress.com/
Rebel without a cause http://rebelwithoutacausemovie.blogspot.com/
A true author: Tim Burton
Timothy William Burton, best known as Tim Burton, is recognized for being one of the most important directors in the film industry, but is that the only thing that Tim does? of course not. Tim has performed in different areas, such as, writing, acting and producing and he has been successful in all of them, proving the quality of his work and his native talent. His life was influenced by many important people from whom Tim learned what he needed in order to become the true star he is nowadays.
He was born in Burbank, California on August 25, 1958 being the older brother. Since his childhood he has admired actors as Vincent Price and writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Goreyand; but he has also been motivated by science-fiction and horror movies which influenced him to choose his future career as a director. After this, he won a scholarship at the Institute of arts in California, founded by Walt Disney, in order to study animation. Although he felt happy for three years studying what he loved, when he started his first works, like “the Fox and the Hound”, he felt disappointed because he wasn’t allowed to do the drawings he wanted. Nevertheless, everything changed when Walt Disney gave him the opportunity to do his first short called “Vincent”, in which he used the stop-motion animation and his great imagination creating a new style in animation movies by developing popular, terrifying, and defenseless characters that didn’t feel part of the society in which they lived. These characters were represented with black colors that tended also to be gothic, fantastic and unreal being this the type of type of characters that are commonly presented in most of his movies.
As the short was a great success, it opened the doors for him in the film industry. His real famous career as a director started at the age of 26 when he began directing movies such as “Nightmare before Christmas” (first movie stop-motion animated movie), “Sweeney Todd “, the memorable “Edward Scissorhands” and “Corpse Bride”, the last two received a nomination for the Academy Awards. Tim Burton is considered an author such as the Cahiers du Cinéma said, because his works are unique. Burton’s work reflects his own thoughts, feelings, and personality with a particular style shown by the types of characters that are commonly repeated in his movies, which are his signature in each of his works. Another reason to consider him a true author and one of the best directors of all times, is that he contributed to the film industry with his several cinematographic works and techniques that have enriched animated films and elevated them to a pure and unique work of art. * Check out Tim
Burton’s amazing filmography here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000318/
Sources used: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Burton
http://www.terra.es/cine/biofilmografia/articulo.cfm?ID=3415 (concept of author)
Corpse bride, a trip to the past…
Films definitely had evolved with the new tools and techniques that incredible directors and producers have implemented over the years. We could realise the advances of the film industry by comparing the first movie Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory) by the Lumière Brothers in 1895 to the movies we see nowadays and their advanced special effects and realistic film techniques. It is because of this that stop motion films like Corpse bride call the attention of people.
Stop motion (or frame-by-frame) animation is an animation technique in which static objects seem to move, similarly to the first movies made in the 1890s, in which still photos were projected very quickly in order to appeared to be in motion, This technique is achieved by moving the object little by little between frames that are individually phootographed. When the series of frames are played as a continuous sequence the effect of motion is produced. Although this technique can be used with any object, clay puppets are the favorite ones due to their ease of repositioning; when the stop motion technique is used with clay it is called claymation, which is what people could see in Corpse bride. It was Georges Méliès, who turned moving pictures into moving stories, and Corpse bride uses some of the devices he created like the fade out and fade in, and the dissolve of some of the characters providing a unique narrative to the movie similar to watch a theatrical play.
The use of stop-motion photography, also developed by Méliès, set the origin of animation films, which are mostly directed to children, but as this movie, they can be seen by all kind of people. The earliest animated film ever made was Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) by newspaper cartoonist J. Stuart Blackton; however, it did not used the same technique as stop motion, it used 2-D images of cartoons in different positions in order to create the illusion of movement in a flip book, which was the first animation device. Afterwards in 1939 appeared the first full-length animated classic Show White and the seven Dwarfs which included the use of color and sound, and later, during the golden Age of Hollywood animation in the 1940s, Disney created another successful animated film which was Fantasia in 1940, thanks to the use of well-developed techniques that combined classical music and animation. It is this combination that attracted Tim Burton to work with classical music and music in general.
Corpse bride, as well as other stop motion films, uses musicals with original lyrics that gives even more life to the clay puppets making it more “realistic” to the audience. As well as fantasia, the classical music also plays an important role in the film setting the mood in each scene and providing life to the characters actions and emotions. It is true that animated films nowadays are not what they used to be, along with 3-d animation and computer-graphics imaging (CGI) it has evolved into a new era, but it is good to know that there are still movies that preferred to go back into the roots of film and animation in order to make even greater pieces of art as Corpse bride.
Sources used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion
http://www.fathom.com/course/21701779/session1.html
http://www.filmsite.org/animatedfilms5.html
Technical file
Directors: Tim Burton
Mike Johnson
Writers: John August
Pamela Pettler
Caroline Thompson
Cast (voice): Johnny Deep (as Victor Van Dort)
Helena Bonham Carter (as Emily, the corpse bride)
Emily Watson (as Victoria Everglot
Tracey Ullman (as Nell Van Dort and Hildegarde)
Joanna Lumley (as Maudeline Everglot)
Albert Finney (as Finis Everglot)
Cristopher Lee (as Pastor Galswells)
Producers: Tim Burton
Allison Abbate
Jeffrey Auerbach (Executive)
Joe Ranft (Executive)
Derek Frey (Associate)
Tracy Shaw (Associate)
MPAA: PG
Parents Guide: Add content advisory for parents.
Color: Color
Aspect ratio: 1 . 85 : 1
Sound Mix: DTS-S / Dolby Digital EX / SDDS
Filming location: 3 Mills Studio, Mile End, London, England, UK.
Release date: September 23, 2005 (USA)
DVD release date: January 31, 2006 (USA)
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Genre: Animation, Family, Fantasy, Comedy, Romance, and Musical among others.
Running time: 77 min.
Country: UK/USA
Language: English
Translated Languages: German, Spanish, and Japanese.
Budget: 40,000,000
Certification: USA:PG (certificate #42021) / Germany:6/ Taiwan: PG-12 / Netherlands: MG6 / Finland: K-7 / Australia:PG / Singapore: PG / Philippines: G / Malaysia:U / Mexico: A / Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Nova Scotia/Ontario) / Canada:G (Québec) / Portugal: M/12 / Spain: 7 / Hong Kong: IIA / UK:PG / Ireland:PG / Brazil:Livre / Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud) / Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) / Argentina:Atp / Czech Republic:12 / Iceland:L / Norway:7 .
Plot Outline:
Tho story is set in a cold and obscure Victorian Town back in the late 1800s as a parody of the aristocratic England. Everything started when Victor Van Dort, son of Nell and William Van Dort (rich fishmongers), met and fell in love with the daughter of the bankrupt aristocrats Maudeline and Finis Everglot, Victoria, with whom he has been arranged to get married. After an incident on the wedding rehearsal, Victor is forced to learn his wedding vows, and by saying them he accidentally evoke the corpse bride that emerges from beneath the earth declaring Victor her husband. Meanwhile, a rich newcomer wanted to marry Victoria, so Victor would be forced to choose between the two brides. Did he pick the alive or the dead one?.
Origin of the story: “The finger” folktale by Isaac Luria of Safed from the 16th century.
Awards: Academy Award Nomination for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year (2006).
An Academy Award of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA for Best Animated Film (2006).
A British Animation Award for Best Feature (2006).
A National Board of Review Award, USA for Best Animated Feature (2005).
The Future Film Festival Digital Award at the Venice Film Festival (2005).
It was nominated in 13 different categories between 2005 and 2006.
Official website: http://corpsebridemovie.warnerbros.com/
Sources used:
- http://www.answers.com/topic/corpse-bride
