Want to star in a Tim Burton movie? A casting notice for Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children has been released. The film has Tim Burton attached as director with Jane Goldman writing the script based on original book by Ransom Riggs. The project description is: "The book tells the tale of a boy who, following a horrific family tragedy, follows clues that take him to an abandoned orphanage on a Welsh island."
They are seeking a role for the lead character of Jacob, to be played by an 18-year-old male of any ethnicity. Here is a description of the role: "Jacob is an outsider in his Florida town. Wears odd vintage clothes, as if from another era. After the traumatic & mysterious death of his beloved grandfather leaves him troubled, he sets off in search for answers to the story of his eastern European grandfather. Seeking 18, to play 17."
After a hugely successful sell-out World Premiere performance at the Royal Albert Hall in 2013, Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton will return to the Hall in December 2014, reports Stereoboard.com.
The concert features Danny Elfman's famous Tim Burton film scores brought to life on stage by a live orchestra, with visuals projected on the big screen of Burton's original sketches, drawings and storyboards. Concert goers will also experience a special guest performance by Danny Elfman himself, singing onstage.
The concert will return to London's Royal Albert Hall on Friday, 12 December, 2014.
It's been one of the most fruitful composer-director collaborations in modern Hollywood.
Danny Elfman has scored 15 movies by Tim Burton, starting with "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" in 1985 and leading up to last year's "Dark Shadows" and "Frankenweenie." For the first time in the U.S., Elfman is to present his scores for Burton's films in an orchestral concert performance, scheduled appropriately enough for Halloween night at the Nokia Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.
"Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton" will feature conductor John Mauceri leading the 87-piece Hollywood Symphony Orchestra and the 45-member Page L.A. Choir. Elfman himself will appear at the concert to perform songs from "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
The concert will debut Oct. 7 at London's Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Concert Orchestra, part of a British tour, prior to coming to L.A.
Organizers said the concert will feature music from all 15 of Elfman's collaborations with Burton. (The only Burton movies that the composer didn't work on were "Ed Wood" and "Sweeney Todd.") The concert will also include film clips from Burton's movies and some of his art work.
A U.S. tour of the concert is in the works, but no dates or cities have been announced yet.
Elfman was the composer for the Cirque du Soleil show "Iris," which closed at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood in January. He was part of the influential rock group Oingo Boingo, which held a farewell concert in 1995 at the Universal Amphitheatre.
The composer previously worked with Mauceri on "Serenada Schizophrana," a 2004 classical piece that was recorded and released two years later. They also collaborated on "The Overeager Overture," which was performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 2006.
Mauceri was the music director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for 15 years beginning with its inception in 1991.
"Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton" is scheduled for 8:15 p.m. on Oct. 31 at the Nokia Theatre at L.A. Live. Tickets go on sale Sept. 13 at 10 a.m. through AXS.com, and by phone at (888) 929-7849.
PHOTO: Danny Elfman in Los Angeles in 2011. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Tickets are now on sale for "Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton," a concert that will take place at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Monday, 7th of October, 2013, and will feature Danny Elfman in person!
On Monday 7 October 2013, the Royal Albert Hall will be hosting an exclusive World Premiere of Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton, celebrating the extraordinary collaboration between the acclaimed composer and visionary filmmaker.
The concert will see Danny Elfman‘s famous Tim Burton film scores brought to life on stage by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by John Mauceri, whilst visuals from Burton’s original production artwork, sketches and drawings are displayed on the big screen. There will also be an exclusive special guest performance by four-time Oscar-nominated Danny Elfman himself, making his first public singing performance in 18 years.
With a range of films from a fascinating back-catalogue of classics including Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Alice in Wonderland, this concert will explore the collaborative relationship between music and storytelling and the process and importance that this has in filmmaking.
Quotes:
“I’ve always heard Danny’s scores performed live during our recording sessions for the films we’ve collaborated on… for others to finally be able to hear his music live, at such a historic venue as the Royal Albert Hall, is really something special.”
-Tim Burton
“I really look forward to revisiting this body of work which has been such a huge part of my life and bringing it to the concert stage. And the idea of performing some of Jack Skellington’s songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas live for the very first time is immensely exciting.”
-Danny Elfman
Tickets:
Tickets for Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton go on sale at 9am on Thursday 14 February and start at £20 (booking fees may apply).
Tim, this film was made in London, and you are an adopted Londoner. How do you feel about opening the London Film Festival?
Tim Burton: It's amazing. It is special because it was made here. It's strange because when we started the film there was no Olympic Stadium and by the time we finished it was done. It just shows you how long a film like this takes to make!
This is a film that you've come back to. You started this as a live action short film in 1984 and now you've come back almost 30 years later. What made you want to make this Frankenweenie?
Burton: Looking at some of the original drawings at some point Don had mentioned the idea of it. It was such a memory piece, the drawings and doing stop motion and black and white and 3D, and kind of thinking about other kids I remembered from school and weird teachers and parents it just became a real memory piece. The purity of stop motion and for me the idea of seeing black and white in 3D stop motion was an exciting prospect. Obviously be able to work with all these people that I've worked with in the past just made it more special.
What's everyone's memories of their first impressions of Tim Burton?
Allison Abate: I just thought he was so energetic and so fascinating and so young!
Martin Short: On Mars Attacks I was so thrilled to meet Tim. I'm such a fan of Tim's, but what I was really excited about after my experience on Mars Attacks was how unbelievably collaborative Tim is. He really wanted to know what you thought and you kind of felt free to put out anything in the atmosphere and he would hone and refine it. It was a really ideal working situation for an actor.
Catherine O'Hara: I was called to meet Tim for Beetlejuice. I flew to L.A. and was told to meet him at Warner Bros. Boulevard and that's where Warner Bros. Studio is but I looked it up in the L.A. map book and I found a Warner Bros. Boulevard in Anaheim and I drove and drove and drove and I thought, 'whoever this guy is he is so far outside of where show business is really happening I'm not sure I want to work with him.' I finally phoned somebody and found out that I was in the wrong place and then finally got back there about two hours late and there was a note on the door [saying], 'I'm really sorry I missed you.'
Don Hahn: It was an odd time at the studio [Disney] and I think they didn't know what to do with Tim and to their credit gave him some money to make shorts called Frankenweenie and Vincent. It's amazing because they never knew what to do with those shorts, never quite knew how to release them, and didn't want to put the Disney name on them. And to come around full circle now a few years later and be able to revisit that and have the studio support and celebrate what Tim's trying to do is really odd in a way but terrific. It's interesting how a guy who's 25 years old can make a film that's as smart and interesting as Frankenweenie can turn around again and revisit that years later.
Martin Landau: I remember seeing Beetlejuice and I was very taken with the film. I saw it with my daughter and we left the theatre and I said, 'my God who directed this? I'd like to work with whoever it is.' I had no idea who Tim Burton was at that time. And here we are! It was a joyous experience working with him on Ed Wood with Johnny and Tim. I found that half the time he never finished a sentence or I did. We'd rehearse and he'd come up and say, 'you know what...' and I'd say, 'yeah.' He created a playground for the actors and he still does that and good directors do that. It's a fun place to work with Tim Burton and anytime he'd ask me to do something I would drop what I was doing, including my pants!
Legend has it you were fired by Disney, Tim. Are you surprised that your outlook is now considered part of the mainstream?
Burton: It wasn't like The Apprentice, 'you're fired!' It was a bit more Disney-friendly, 'here, let Goofy and Minnie show you out.' [Laughs] There's an exit with little cherubs on it, a magic forest door!
Short: [adopts Mickey Mouse voice] 'You're fired!'
Burton: It was a strange period in the company's history and it's obviously changed over the years. It's a whole different place. It was a low point for animation not just for Disney but for everything nothing was really going on. But at the same time I got the opportunity to do the films [Frankenweenie & Vincent shorts] so even though they weren't released the opportunity to do them was really great so I've always been grateful to them for giving me the chance to do it. [In terms of being considered mainstream now] I'm not so sure that's true.
What has it been like working with your heroes such as Martin Landau and Vincent Price?
Burton: It's so inspirational. When I talk to Martin and hear him talk about Alfred Hitchcock, or being on Space 1999 - I told him I had a Space 1999 lunchbox - you learn so much from people like him and it's just a joy. You love making films, meeting these people is why you like making movies. In terms of Catherine and Martin here, I've been a fan of theirs forever that's why I said 'guys do as many characters, do like three characters. It wasn't that we didn't want to pay other actors! It was because they're so great and interesting, it made it part of the creative process. They're coming in and doing things like a weird demon possession. Working with people that I've worked with in the past made it very special for me.
Martin and Catherine, you played three different characters and acted opposite each other which is unusual for animated films - what was that experience like?
Short: The parents Catherine and I did together which I thought was very smart but I think that Tim really had a very specific idea of what he wanted for those characters, very intimate and very real so by doing it together it was easy to achieve that. The other two characters that I did were just experiments that Tim and I would go on. Where you just kind of start with blank sheet but then you land in a Lionel Barrymore meets President Ronald Regan [place]. And then I'd say to Tim, 'what if he smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day and just quit about two months ago?' That pre-emphysema sound.
Burton: I think we even talked about a constipated Raymond Burr.
O'Hara: I think it was smart on Tim's part, it cut down the amount of times he had to say, 'um... why don't you say it like a human being would say it?' I was so happy when I saw their scenes, they are so beautiful and private and the way they stay back, it's so discreet how we shoot this family. I'm so proud to be their voices.
Short: Tim's always respectful. He would just say, 'go with your instinct and then divide by 7.' Animation is usually in colour but you have chosen to film this in black and white. The black and white was a crucial element. It's something that is hard to put into words but for me it made it more emotional and the idea of seeing black and white and also the 3D element, to me just helps support the work that the people who worked on the film did. You look at these puppets and you see the reality and tactile nature of it. Every little prop and everything is handmade and drawn, the black and white and the 3D process really shows you all the work that the artist put into it. To me the black and white really shows off their work very well.
There's an exhibition opening in London. Could you tell us about The Art of Frankenweenie?
Abate: One of the exciting things Disney did for us was to realise how beautiful the artwork is and how special every prop is. We have a travelling show and it's an exhibition of three sets from the movie and puppets, to represent three little moments from the film in real life. It's at the BFI Southbank next week. There's also something called, 'At the Desk of Tim Burton.'
Burton: Yeah but the desk is a bit too clean. There's no used tissues or empty beer bottles!
Hollywood tries to reproduce what is successful, did you have any problems with Frankenweenie in terms of the tone and the style, presenting that when the Pixar films and style is so popular?
Burton: from my point of view I feel like all forms of animation survive. I remember a few years ago after Pixar took off and computer animation took off that they said that they weren't going to make any more hand drawn movies which I thought, 'oh that's really unfortunate.' Thankfully they changed that and I hope it's the same for stop motion, I think it's a beautiful art form and you just hope that all forms of animation can flourish.
How much would you say Frankenweenie is a tribute to horror films and how do you open that up to children who haven't seen those kinds of films yet?
Burton: It's an interesting point because obviously a lot of references are based on, for me, a love of those movies but we thought very hard throughout the film that we didn't want to make it reference dependent. That's why we tried to shoot it and make it feel like one of those movies so you can feel what those movies look like even if you didn't know the references. We just felt like you should be able to enjoy the movie without having to know exactly every reference. It was always something in the back of my mind to make it more of a feeling of those films so that people that didn't know those exact references would still enjoy the film.
Martin your character looks like Vincent Price but doesn't sound like him - was that a very deliberate decision on your part?
Landau: Well one of the things about this I was floored by was Tim sent me a picture of Mr Rzykruski - it's like an eye chart this name! The wonderful about it is behavior, when I'm acting it's part of everything. In this instance I had a picture of this character but I relinquish the behavior to the animators. When I saw the film I was dumbfounded because if I'd been on camera I would've played it exactly the same way and my mouth was agape actually because I was shocked. I knew the character looked a little bit like Vincent and I little bit like I did earlier in life but I saw him as a completely singular person and a wonderful teacher and not a very diplomatic person. I think that when I read it I also felt that he probably lasted two months in any school he taught in! Have a conversation with your student's parents and you call them stupid or simple. I don't think Vincent would've played it the way I did, I think it would've been a different thing but I think there's a physicality there's no question. I always felt too that Tim was attracted to Ed Wood in a sense because of Ed Wood's connection to Bela [Lugosi] and his appreciation of Vincent Price's work - which I loved as a kid as well, as a young actor I would always go out of my way to watch a Vincent Price movie.
Burton: Most good animators try to get the actor in there. Don, this iteration of Frankenweenie began with you in a strange way because you went to Tim with the idea.
Hahn: Yeah I did. It wasn't a big leap. All I did was go to Tim's office and say, 'look you made this really great story years ago, there's got to be more.' And there was more. I think just the Frankenstein mythology and be able to go back into some of the ideas that were turning around in Tim's head for probably years and all I had to do was mention the name and I think he took off running. We had great collaborators, that's the other thing about working with Tim that I love is that he surrounds himself with people he trusts and lets them do their work.
Danny Elfman's score in Frankenweenie is fantastic. How important was it for you work with him on the film?
Burton: I've worked with him from the beginning of my career basically and on my first feature film, both didn't know what we're doing - we're still pretty much in the same boat! So I feel quite close to him. I always feel like he is another character in the film and helps to solidify the emotions of whatever's going on, because there's usually a mixture of things going on and he's always felt very good at sort of guiding as another character and setting the tone of what the film is.
Death seems to play a prominent role in your animations. What is your fascination with bringing characters back to life?
Burton: When I was a kid I always wanted to be a mad scientist, a regular scientist was no fun. It's not so much about bringing dead things back to life; I find that quite creepy actually. It's more about creating. Creation, making things, that's why I think I always loved the Frankenstein story because it's partially about creation and making things and that's what filmmaking is and that's what stop motion is and so for me that's the fun of it. That's why you like doing it; it's not so much about the business or box office or reviews it's about actually making something. I think that's why this was so special, it's with a smallish group of people, real artists and a more pure version of why you like making movies.
"The European premiere of the stop-motion animation film will take place October 10th at the Odeon Leicester Square and will unspool simultaneously at the BFI London Imax and 30 screens across the U.K. in a first for the fest," says the Chicago Tribune.
Tim Burton, producer Allison Abbate, executive producer Don Hahn, and voice cast Winona Ryder, Martin Short, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Landau are all expected to attend.
“Funny, dark and whimsical, this gloriously crafted stop-motion 3D animation from Tim Burton – the reigning prince of outsiders – playfully turns the Frankenstein story on its bolted-on head. Frankenweenie is a perfect choice of opener – it’s a film that revels in the magic of movies from one of cinema’s great visionaries. Tim Burton has chosen London as his home city and hundreds of talented British craftspeople have contributed to this production. To host the European premiere, to present The Art of Frankenweenie Exhibition and to take our Opening Night out to 30 screens means we are making the festival even more accessible for film fans across the UK.”
Producer Allison Abbate adds:
“I am delighted that Frankenweenie, which was produced here in London at 3 Mills Studios, will be opening the 56th BFI London Film Festival. Living and working in the UK, I’ve been able to collaborate with some of the most talented artists in the industry including the puppet designers and fabricators from Manchester-based Mackinnon & Saunders. In the last nine years, I’ve attended the festival as both a filmmaker and guest, and I know how passionate and enthusiastic the audiences are, so I am thrilled to share the film’s European premiere with them.”
Colin Walsh, Managing Director, American Express UK adds:
“We’re thrilled to be further strengthening our partnership with the BFI and the Festival through our support for this year’s Opening Night Gala. In addition to Frankenweenie being a much anticipated film, what makes this year’s Opening Night so special is the opportunity for audiences across the country to experience the excitement of a West End premiere. That, coupled with the interactive exhibition giving people an insight behind the scenes of the film, is sure to make this a fantastic start to this year’s festival.”
Above is a video showing a time-lapse of the making of a contest-winning mural created to promote Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Dread Central has more information:
"The online Art Competition ‘Fresh Blood Hunt’ was an opportunity for budding creative talent to design an art piece inspired by the film for the chance to win a 17” MacBook Pro and have their design painted by visionary street artist Jim Rockwell (Endoftheline) as a mural on Great Eastern Street, East London.
"The competition began on Friday, 18th May, and budding artists had until 30th May to enter. After the competition closed, people had from 1st–9th June to visit the site and vote for their favourite piece of art from 12 shortlisted entries. The winning artwork was created by seventeen-year-old Emily Jane Neal from North Devon.
"Emily said, 'My inspiration for my piece was mainly about how Abraham Lincoln was the President of the USA. That is why I included the American flag and a well-known picture of him with his iconic hat on - so that anyone who saw my design would know that the film is about him.'"
Here's a video providing us with a glimpse of the upcoming global exhibition, "The Art of Frankenweenie." Producer Allison Abbate gives us a preview, which includes some sightings of new characters and new footage from the stop-motion film.
UPDATE:Click here to see a video preview of the art exhibition.
UPDATE #2: Listed below are the newest details on the global dates for the tour.
A new art exhibition for Frankenweenie will be touring select locations around the world, writes Disney Vault. The exhibition will display actual sets, puppets, and artwork revealing the process of making the hand-crafted stop-motion film.
Here is a list of the museums that will be visited by the exhibition:
Locations:
Barcelona: June 18-21
San Diego (Comic-Con): July 11-15
Mexico City: July 27 - August 7
Toronto: August 23-26
Anaheim (Disneyland Resort): September 14 - November 5
Madrid: September 9 - October 14
London: October 17-21
Paris: October 23 - November 2
Tokyo: December 5-26
Frankenweenie will hit theaters on October 5th, 2012.
Jamie Portman of dose.ca had the opportunity to visit the London set of the stop-motion film, Frankenweenie. Posted below is the in-depth article in its entirety, offering insights into Tim Burton's approach to revisiting this material, the expansion of the story from the original live-action short from 1984, the work of the animators, and much more. Beware of a few SPOILERS!:
Timur Bekmambetov, director of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, posted this image of composer Henry Jackman scoring the music of the film at the Air studio in London:
Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times wrote an article on his recent visit to the set of Dark Shadows in London. The article speaks with various cast and crew members (including Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and production designer Rick Heinrichs, among others) to get an inside view on this enigmatic new movie. Here is the article in its entirety:
Reporting from London — There’s a night and day difference between the soundstages of Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows” and his previous movie, “Alice in Wonderland,” and, no surprise, this is a filmmaker far more comfortable in the darkness.
The digital ambitions of “Wonderland” required numbing weeks of work in a green-screen chamber, and by the end of it Burton was desperate to get back to his roots — building a cinematic house and then haunting it with his unique brand of cemetery cabaret. For “Dark Shadows,” an eccentric vampire romance starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Eva Green, he’s staged a minor one-man rebellion against CG imagery; the story has some digital effects, but where the script called for a Maine fishing town’s waterfront, circa 1972, Burton persuaded Warner Bros. and the film’s producers to build it on the back lot of England’s storied Pinewood Studios instead of on a computer screen.
“It’s so nice to come to work here — not everything is green,” Burton said last summer as he roamed the gothic, crushed-velvet trappings of the mansion that is home to Depp’s aristocratic bloodsucker, Barnabas Collins. “It’s a soap opera — or started as one — and that really means working with the actors. And the sets help everyone. And it’s just more fun.”
“Dark Shadows,” which doesn’t arrive until May 11, is a curious creature and an ongoing mystery. A trailer recently premiered to mixed reactions; its winking tone possibly suggested that the film is an elaborate goof on the overwrought “Twilight” movies, but actually, like so many Burton projects, this one is a fractured valentine to the pop-culture obsessions of his youth.
In the film, Depp plays Collins, the 18th century playboy of Maine’s high society whose lothario ways earn the wrath of Angelique Bouchard, a witch portrayed by Green. She transforms him into a vampire and dispatches him to an underground crypt where he is imprisoned until 1972. That’s when an unlucky construction crew sets him free, and in a world of lava lamps, glam rock and Richard M. Nixon, he finds purpose in the new era. The ensemble cast features a number of Burton’s regular players — in addition to Depp and Pfeiffer, there’s the director’s romantic partner, Helena Bonham Carter, Chloe Moretz and English horror legend Christopher Lee.
The setup and characters are taken from the truly weird TV series also called “Dark Shadows,” an ABC soap opera that logged 1,225 episodes before it went off the air in 1971. Created by Dan Curtis, who later did the landmark “The Winds of War” miniseries, the show starred Jonathan Frid as tortured Barnabas and brought ghosts and ghouls to the afternoon hours that usually belonged to handsome surgeons and conniving heiresses.
Unlike “The Addams Family” and “The Munsters,” this monster-mash of a show was a fringe taste, which is why it attracted the young outsiders who would be called goths today. Three of them were Burton, Depp and Pfeiffer, and they have nearly identical memories about racing home from school to catch the same strange transmission.
“It was a real thing for me, I had to watch it, and it was tough because you’d miss the beginning — it started at like 3 p.m., but that’s when we got out of school,” said Depp, who grew up in the sunbaked suburb of Miramar, Fla. “And then it moved later because all the kids wrote in letters. When you met someone who knew the show and loved it, there was an instant connection.”
That connection doesn’t exist with young moviegoers today, however, and the producers of the new movie aren’t going to encourage anyone to check out the originals because, well, it wasn’t, technically speaking, a great show. “I think,” Burton said evenly, “you could say it was actually awful.”
So what exactly was its appeal? The London-based filmmaker searched for the right words.
“It’s a different animal,” Burton said. “If I go back and watch something like ‘Star Trek,’ it’s not that hard to analyze what the appeal was, and even if the show is dated you identify what it was that made it work. The ‘Dark Shadows’ appeal was a little more abstract. What I loved about it was the fact that it was a melodramatic soap opera, and, well, that flies in the face of any modern studio’s interests as far as moviemaking. But what we’ve gone for is a mixture, and that’s always what I’ve been interested in; I think most of my movies are mixtures of light and dark and serious things and things that have humor in them.”
On the set, during one scene last summer, Depp emerged from the shadows — in costume and full makeup — with a sort of gliding majesty. He couldn’t hear Bonham Carter’s playful whisper teasing him about a previous role as she watched from a nearby corner.
“Just look at him,” she said with a wink. “He only does parts if he can wear eyeliner. ‘The Tourist’? Should have had more makeup.”
Depp has one of the most famous faces in Hollywood, but in many of his roles he hides it. “I don’t think about it that way, I just go to the role that feels right,” said the 48-year-old star.
Between takes, he offered his hands to a visitor for inspection — each of his fingers was extended into talons with rubbery prosthetics, and one held the weight of an especially opulent ring.
“There’s an elegance to this guy that’s kind of fun; Barnabas is a good one,” Depp said as, over his shoulder, Burton chatted with Bonham Carter next to a laboratory vat of vampire blood. “And just look around — there’s nothing like working with Tim.”
The filmmaker and star clearly adore each other — this is their seventh live-action collaboration. “Sleepy Hollow” producer Scott Rudin memorably quipped that Depp is “basically playing Tim Burton in all of his movies,” which doesn’t really hold to scrutiny — but the actor does know he faces a greater challenge each time he steps into Burton’s universe to play yet another spooky soul.
“Have I been in this arena before? That’s the thing you have to watch,” said Depp, who joked that Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd and Ichabod Crane would enjoy a tour of the Collins mansion.
The actor paints portraits of his characters as he dials into their minds and hearts, and to get their voices right he counts backward from 10 — he’s himself at the top but the accent and affectations gather with each digit until he is a vampire at zero.
Costar Jackie Earle Haley, who plays caretaker Willie Loomis, said whatever tricks Depp uses, they are good ones.
“He was using those long fingers in one scene where he has to hypnotize me,” the “Watchmen” star said. “So I’m watching them and his eyes and listening to his voice and it kind of started to work a little bit. I was like, ‘Wow, this guy could be the real thing.’”
“Dark Shadows” is built around the comedic timing of Depp and the immersive world of Burton, the Edward Gorey of Hollywood. Just as he’s assembled many of his usual team in front of the camera, he’s relying on previous collaborators behind the scenes, including costume designer Colleen Atwood and composer Danny Elfman. Production designer Rick Heinrichs, who won an Oscar for his work with Burton on “Sleepy Hollow,” may be in the running again with his “Dark Shadows” sets. Yes, those were real boats in the water of the fake Maine harbor that was built on an elevated platform and covered a wide plain of the Pinewood lot — it was cheaper and logistically more practical to construct a fake port than use one in Maine, and the counterpart fishing harbors in England are constructed differently.
“A few months ago there was just string here to show where the road would be and the canneries and the pier,” Heinrichs said as he strolled past. “It’ll be a little sad when we tear it all down. These buildings say a lot about the families. Once there was a competition, but now the Collins Cannery is derelict — as is much of the town — but the AngelBay Cannery is thriving, and you get the feeling it’s sucking the life out of the town.”
Heinrichs smiles when asked if he was part of the “Dark Shadows” cult during the original run.
“I was in school when ‘Dark Shadows’ was on, but I didn’t particularly run home to watch it every day, but I know a lot of girls did. It was the ‘Twilight’ of its time, really…. What Tim and Johnny like is that there’s a slightly overwrought soap-opera feel to the families and the town and this gothic horror story beneath it all. There’s the innate humor in it too, the layering and juxtaposition of putting the courtly, 200-year-old Barnabas in that decadent post-hippie, pre-disco era.”
Burton’s previous movie, “Alice,” made more than a billion dollars worldwide, but the quirks of “Dark Shadows” has Hollywood wondering if this will be an overly eccentric misfire like his 1996 sci-fi spoof, “Mars Attacks!” (which, interestingly, was the last Burton film without Depp, Bonham Carter or both in the cast). Of course, many also doubted 2005′s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which made roughly $475 million.
All of Burton’s films since 2001 have been produced by Richard D. Zanuck, now 77. He has been making movies since the 1950s, but that understates his experience. As the son of Hollywood mogul Darryl Zanuck and silent-film beauty Virginia Fox, he grew up in the business and may be the only working producer today who can say he’s visited a movie set in nine decades.
“I’ve never seen a movie like this one; it’s like no other,” Zanuck said of the film, penned by Seth Grahame-Smith, a writer perhaps most famous for his literary mash-up novel “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” “It’s like five movies in one. It’s a comedy, it’s a romance, it’s got special effects, it’s got action, it’s got some horror elements of a kind. I think it’s got a lot of great things going for it. We just have to find a way to let people know what it is and what it offers.”
There have been dark shadows under Burton’s eyes every day of 2012 and with good reason. In addition to the exhuming of Barnabas Collins, he’s got two other films that reach theaters this year (he’s the director of October’s “Frankenweenie” and producer of June’s “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) and long-range projects (such as the just-announced “Alice in Wonderland” Broadway musical) always nibble at the corners of his mind and the edges of his schedule.
In late February, his exhaustion was clear even across international phone lines. “I forget how hard it is at the end, just to get the movie done, but that’s probably a good thing,” the 53-year-old said. The filmmaker knows that soon he will have to put his strange creation in front of the world and hope that it survives the searing judgments and bottom-line numbers.
“I can’t think about all that right now,” Burton said. “The thing with this one was trying to get it done right. And I think we have but, well, that’s what I think.”
Shock Till You Drop visited Three Mill Studios in London to see how production is coming on the upcoming Tim Burton stop-motion film, Frankenweenie. Click the photos for high-resolution versions.
"Tim always wanted to make it into a feature and into an animated feature," explains producer Allison Abbate, "We had to open the story up a little bit. Pretty much, the whole first act is like the short. We meet Victor and his beloved dog, Sparky. There's a terrible car accident tragedy and the dog gets killed. Of course Victor, being a clever guy, figures out how to reincarnate him. Where the story diverges is that Victor is now desperate to keep his dog a secret. He doesn't really know if what he's done is a great thing. He doesn't tell his parents and he doesn't tell his school friends... Of course, the other kids at school get wind of it and kind of want in."
Art director Tim Browning also spoke with Shock Till You Drop to discuss the creation of many of the sets in the film, which are located in Victor’s hometown of New Holland, California.
"[Our setting] is a California suburb sometime between 1965 and 1975," says Browning. "There's no real specific date but, from a design point of view, you approach it much the same as any other period drama. You do the research and try to find all the details of the architecture. Of course, on a project like this we have the luxury of making everything and having complete control. In live action, you have to rely very heavily on locations, purchased props and hired props. Here, you make every single thing."
Browning also discussed the lead canine character.
"He's one of the principal characters," explains Browning, "and in real life he would be sort of bull terrier sized. He needs to be manageable... Our adult puppets are about 50 cm high whereas on 'Corpse Bride' they were more like 25 to 30."
The other aspect of the sets that's instantly striking is that they merge color and black and white. Though the film is being shot for the latter, some elements of puppet-making are simply easier to come by in color and others are designed to make use of the contrast.
"Back in the old days, set painting was geared towards black and white photography," continues Browning, "and it became a whole new challenge when color came in. We're re-creating techniques from the '40s and '50s that this film is homaging."
You can learn more about the film at the original link. But watch out for a few SPOILERS.
Frankenweeniewill be released in theaters on October 5th, 2012.
Tim Burton has said that he's going to take a little time off from filmmaking to spend time with his kids, says the Telegraph.
"I want to hang out with my kids," the director says of Billy Ray, six, and Nell, two. "I don't want them to forget who their dad is. I have worked really hard these past two years. I think I need to recharge my batteries."
Helena Bonham Carter and Burton have not said how long he will take time off. Bonham Carter joked that their north London homes are connected by what the actress describes as an "airlock" through which they pass to meet up.
Don Hahn of Disney recently spoke to Empire. Hahn discussed several forthcoming Disney projects (The Snow Queen, Who Framed Roger Rabbit 2, and the 3D re-releases of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King), including two titles that Tim Burton has been attached to: the feature-length, animated version of Frankenweenie and an in-development project called Maleficent. While there's nothing too big to announce, it's valuable hearing information on these two films from a Disney big-wig.
In the article, Hahn first mentions Maleficent. The live-action film would be the story of Sleeping Beauty told from the villain's perspective. Disney has reportedly attached Tim Burton on the project as possibly directing the film, and there are rumors that Angelina Jolie would play the title role (this has not been confirmed yet). Linda Woolverton is also attached as the screenwriter.
Rumors state that Angelina Jolie is being considered to play Maleficent in a new movie.
"That's another one I can’t talk about!," said Hahn on Maleficent. "All I can say is that it's in active development and will be pretty fun. It is great working again with Tim on Frankenweenie, though: I love that he's back to doing puppets. But Maleficent is a way off and it's a little too early to talk about it, except to say that it’s happening."
Don Hahn was recently in England, observing the status of Frankenweenie. The film is currently in pre-production, and is set to begin filming at London's Three Mills Studio very soon. Hahn will be serving as an executive producer.
FirstShowing.net has an interview with Danny Elfman. The composer discusses his creative process, working with Tim Burton, his future projects, his inspirations, and more.
Also, Elfman fans might appreciate this stop-motion animated short film: DemiUrge Emesis by Voltaire, which was narrated by Elfman, and features music by Voltaire and Rasputina (and Burton-alum writer Caroline Thompson gets a "Special Thanks" shout-out, too):
Here's the interview:
I'm very fascinated with the process and the technique of scoring and I wanted to focus on that. Starting at the top, I was wondering if you could walk through a little bit of your scoring process. Do you read the script at the beginning? And what comes next in creating the score?
Danny Elfman: No. I don't actually start with the script. I'm sometimes sent a script. And I actually — believe it or not, I try to avoid getting any ideas or taking any ideas seriously from the script. And what I discovered over the years is that every time I started early and wrote music, none of it ever survived, not a note, when I actually saw the movie. Because what I came to understand is that there's so many ways to shoot the same script. And depending on how the director decides to shoot that script, really, will have a lot to do with what kind of music [I create]. You can take the same script and shoot it very theatrically, with the lighting and the sets, or shoot it very raw or more naturally. And if the cuts are quick and jarring, if the cuts are smooth with lots of dissolves, they just really want a completely different kind of music. Not to mention the huge factor of the performances. And the performances are really– for me, it just so changes what I imagined in my head. I've never seen a movie that ended up like what I thought it was going to be from reading the script.
So it sounds like your process comes from actually watching the finished product, or close to a finished product?
Elfman: Yeah, exactly. It comes from the visuals. Sometimes it's finished, sometimes it's unfinished. On one extreme, you've got a movie like Batman, where [Burton's] only halfway through shooting. He brought me in to sit in with them for a few days on the Gotham City set. And really, between looking at, maybe, 30 minutes of footage that they'd roughed together and walking around the set, I really did, in fact, on the way home from that trip to London, get the whole Batman theme worked out in my head, what became the main title. But that was the type of theme where 30 minutes was certainly enough to get the tone of it. So you have to see something– or rather, I have to see something. I think everybody works completely differently. But for me, as soon as I have a picture, whether it be rough or finished, in front of me, I start hearing the music. It's just an immediate response to image. And so I'm definitely image driven.
Now, it could be a polished, finished film, which happens sometimes when you step in at the very end. Or, more likely, it's just a big rough mess with huge gaps not there. That doesn't matter. You still get the tone and the feel and the performance and the story enough to get started moving. So it all starts with looking at picture, no matter what form that picture is. And then I just start immersing myself in it, really. I get into it a lot, and I try to write down my initial impulses.
I mean, the best way to describe my process is I'll try to pick three or four scenes that I think are crucial turning point scenes to the movie. Maybe, something in the beginning, something in the middle, and certainly there's always some major moments towards the end that define the bigger or more important moments in the film. And I'll put an inordinate number of hours into those scenes. Sometimes, I'll even add the main titles to that. The main titles may not seem important, but they often are to me. Because that's, again, very often how I'll define the tone of what I'm getting into and how it's all going to work.
So if I've written a main title, and I've got three or four or five scenes leading up to a finale. And I feel like I've got those nailed, and I can understand in my head where the themes go and how I need them to behave for me — meaning, do I need them to: If I have a theme I like, do I need it to get whimsical? Do I need it to get heroic? Do I need it to get serious? Do I need it to get mocking? Do I need it to get sarcastic? You know, what do I need it to do? And I need to know that it's going to do all those things I'm going to ask it to. So it's kind of like the theme become an animal, and I've got to make sure it can do all these tricks that I'm going to demand it to do. Before I, then, go about the process of starting the rest of the score.
Do you do a lot of revisions on a particular theme or a piece of music in the film? And how many revisions usually are there? For example, on the theme for Alice in Wonderland, how many different revision did you go through until you got to the final theme we hear in the movie?
Elfman: Well, I mean, there's two levels to that. But in the beginning, when I'm playing music, let's say on Alice for Tim, it's very common that I'll have half a dozen pieces worked out first time I play music for Tim on a particular scene. Because early on, I'll have a lot of ideas. And I'm not sure exactly what my main themes are going to be. I have pieces that I like. So I might try an approach to a scene that I like. And I might try one or two variations to that approach. And then, I might walk away from it, come back– in fact, that's what I try to do. And then approach the scene completely separately again from a totally different perspective. And then, if I can, to even do that a third time.
So whatever I've been working on, whatever I think, "Oh, that's interesting," I'm going to intentionally go back. Leave it for an hour, come back, and then try to write music for the same scene again and do something totally different. That's the kind of variation process when I'm first bringing the director into my world. When we get to the point where, okay, we've got all that stuff nailed down. We've got the big scenes nailed down, and I start scene by scene, there's really no limit to the number of revisions I can do. I mean, there are scenes — there's one scene I know I wrote 23 pieces of music before the final one actually got in there. That's kind of extreme on Alice. Others might've been three or four revisions.
Where does your biggest inspiration come from in composing in general? Is it other musicians or artwork?
Elfman: I don't know. I still think I'm inspired by what I grew up on, in a way. That's a hard one to answer. I grew up as a film music fan, as a young man, way before I started scoring or even was interested in the possibility of scoring. I was a huge fan of Bernard Herrmann and Nino Rota. And I could tell, listening to an old movie, was that a Max Steiner score? Was that a Franz Waxman score? Korngold? Tiomkin? And I loved playing the game of tuning into a movie, an old movie on television, and then trying to guess who the composer was on old stuff, then seeing if I was right. I was definitely a film music nerd, but it never occurred to me to actually do it. So I liken myself to a fan that got pulled into the game, like a basketball player that suddenly gets thrown the ball.
Can you still do the guessing game with today's movies? Can you watch something on TV today or go to another movie now and guess who the composer is from today's movies as well?
Elfman: It's much, much harder today. But there are certain composers that have a real clearly defined style. I might be able to go, "Oh, that's a John Williams score. That's a Tommy Newman score." And there's certainly a lot of composers that surprise me. I go, "Wow. That's really good. I don't know who that is." And then I'll find out. But much more today than back in the old days, you've got a lot of very successful composers who really make their living by imitating other composers.
Of course.
Elfman: In that sense, it's really, really hard. Because I'll go, "Well, am I hearing — is this Jerry Goldsmith? I don't think so. I think it's somebody doing Jerry Goldsmith. But now, they're doing John Williams. And now, at this point in the movie, it seems like they're doing– oh, look at that. They're doing Danny Elfman. Hmm. Interesting." They sound a little bit like a smorgasbord of composers. So in that sense it's harder to tell. Because composers, back in the old days, they didn't freely, in the context of the same move, borrow the style of two to three other contemporaries of theirs and mimic them. But that's a big chunk of film music today.
So then how do you differentiate yourself? How do you continue to stay original and fresh and unique in the scores that you create, so that you can stand out from the others? It seems like that would be a challenge for you, at this point and time, to do that.
Elfman: Well, I mean, it's always a challenge, and I can't say, for a fact, that I do sound original or stand out from the crowd. I mean, that's for others to say. I try to just approach things the best I can. And I hope that what I'm doing is, to some extent, original. You know, nothing's totally original, of course. And believe me, it's also hard not to rip off ourselves. At a certain point, once we have a certain kind of style, there's always a temptation to fall back and do something exactly like we've done before, as well. And that's always a heavy temptation, even if a director doesn't tell us, "I want this style for this scene, and this style for this scene, and this style for this scene." Because I think the biggest difference in composing today and the old days isn't so much the composers — it's the way films are made.
When Alfred Hitchcock made a film with Bernard Herrmann, he wasn't telling Bernard Herrmann, "I really want this cue to sound like this Korngold score. And I really want this one to sound like this Alex North score. But for this cue, can you please give me that thing from, you know, whomever?" He hired Bernard Herrmann to do Bernard Herrmann. And they hired Alex North to do Alex North. The directors didn't get that involved in the music. It was a completely different system. In fact, the director frequently moved onto another film and the editor and the composers were just left to do their work. So it was just night and day completely different. And I'm not saying that that's better. It's just very different.
Now, you have directors who frequently will insist on different scenes in their moving sounding like something that they've already got in their head, or something from another movie. So I'm not really– I'm not trying to blast other composers for being derivative more than they should be or need be. It's really about the filmmaking process. Because I've been there, and every composer goes through this problem of a director's got something in their head. And it's just really hard to shake them out of it. It's the fact that directors are who they are, and their own personalities cause that. Composers, like everybody else, we have to– at a certain point you have to give them what they want. Or you have to, at a certain point, turn your back and split. It's a very difficult process.
So in terms of where it is and where it was and where it's going, it's really hard to say. But in the process of knowing that directors can be very, very picky and very difficult, I try, as all composers that are worth anything– and there's a lot of really good composers out there today. You try to keep your own voice. You try to sell it to the director from the perspective that you think makes the most sense. And sometimes you have to pick your battles. Sometimes it gets really bloody in the process. And sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's really easy.
So you never know what to expect. Every movie is like walking out onto this landscape. This is the best way I can describe it. Each film you start, as a composer, you're walking out onto this huge landscape. And you can talk about music until your blue in the face with a director. It doesn't mean shit. Because when you start actually playing stuff for them, it's never going to be what they're expecting. Because there actually is no way to describe music. And you can't show a picture of it. You're going to talk about it in an abstract level. At a certain point they'll hear it. And they're going to respond the way they're going to respond. And often, they don't even know why they're responding the way they respond. It's just how they're emotionally responding to the music. And that landscape, sometimes, is like this lovely bucolic stroll, where it's like being on a boat and gliding down a river. And sometimes that landscape, you find yourself in the middle of World War I. The army's tanks are coming from every which direction and gas grenades are getting thrown. And there's shells coming from everywhere. And you really put out your energy and try to keep your head down and not get hit.
So the crazy thing about it is that you often just never know what– you open a door, and you start into this landscape. And you take a few steps, and you really have no idea what that landscape's going to become. So that's really the best metaphor I can describe for what it's like starting a new film. Sometimes, you finish a film, and you go, "Man, I was expecting that was going to be so difficult. And it was just so smooth, such a lovely experience. And it was such a nice, straight, easy path." And then, sometimes, you know, you get to the other side really feeling like you just survived a war. And that can feel good, too, by the way.
Yeah. With Alice, you've, obviously, worked with Tim Burton I think more than any other director. And that must–
Elfman: Well, yeah. Yeah, 13th time, and I have to say I can't predict him any more now than on Pee-wee's Big Adventure.
So he's just as unpredictable?
Elfman: Yea, completely unpredictable. People think we have some kind of shorthand, that I know what he's going to be looking for. And he knows what to expect. He really isn't that way, at all. I appreciate and understand his sensibility. But how he's going to react to a particular piece of music, I have no way of predicting.
Does he want something new from you in every film he does? Or does he even reference his own films and say, "Oh, I want the sound from this one, or I want the sound from this other one?"
Elfman: No. He'll never say from anything. He'll really just say, "This music makes me feel this way." And I don't know why, but it does. And then, I have to sit there and go, "Okay. What is it? Is the orchestration? Is it the melody?" And so I'll, then, do a lot of trial and error. I'll take the same piece– sometimes, I'll write something completely different. Sometimes I'll take the same piece and just change a few things. Change the tempo and change the orchestration. And suddenly, he really likes it.
So there's a very tricky intuitive process of what's making the director feel this way. Is it this instrument? Is it the sound of the trumpet? Is it the sound of the clarinet? Or, really, is it just the melody? Or is it just this turn in a melody? And if I take this turn and change it, suddenly, it's feeling completely different. And so very often, there's a lot of experimentation, changing it, rearranging it, re-orchestrating it. And if it's still not working, at a certain point, you have to abandon it completely, and just go somewhere else. But sometimes, it's also surprising what an impact a small adjustment can make to a piece of music and in the actual orchestration of it.
What are you working on at the moment. Do you have anything else coming up? I think you're on The Green Hornet, right?
Elfman: Not quite yet. I'm doing Restless, for Gus Van Sant. And then, we move on to The Green Hornet with Michel Gondry.
How are those two going? I mean, I look forward to hearing all of your scores, but it's always exciting to know so early out how they're coming along.
Elfman: I don't know. I've really just written a little bit of music for Gus. I haven't presented him anything, yet. I know Gus well enough to know that we'll take a journey together. And I'll try lots of different things. Gus will encourage me to try lots of really radically different things. You know, approach it from completely different angles. And it'll be interesting. I've never worked with Michel, and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm a big fan of his. So I have no idea to expect from that.
I think that's a perfect place to wrap up.
Elfman: Well, great.
Thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Elfman: My pleasure, totally. I'll talk to you again some day.
Ain't It Cool News caught Don Hahn down at the SXSW festival during a Q&A for his new documentary, Waking Sleeping Beauty (which looks at the Disney renaissance of the 1980s and early 1990s, and features Tim Burton as a young animator). Hahn will be an executive producer for Tim Burton's forthcoming Frankenweenie, and mentioned the animated film.
Harry Knowles paraphrases Don Hahn, who said that "the puppets are ready, the script is done and now that Tim Burton is clear of Alice in Wonderland... he's set to helm Frankenweenie in 3D."
Tim Burton has been wanting to adapt his live-action short film Frankenweenie for over 25 years. The stop-motion version will be released in either 2011 or 2012. Filming will take place in London.
FilmShaft's Martyn Conterio has an exclusive interview with legendary producer Richard D. Zanuck. Zanuck, who has produced all of Tim Burton's live-action features since 2001, talked about Alice in Wonderland, the upcoming adaptation of Dark Shadows, and more. Here's the entire interview:
MC: How did you get involved with this project?
RZ: I’ve produced the last five Tim Burton movies and so I’m part of that team. When Disney approached Tim about doing this, that was about three years ago, I came on board. I’m a very hands-on producer…I’m there every day and I’ve been on this from the very beginning.
Did you know Alice in Wonderland well before you took on the film?
I can’t pinpoint when I first read the books or may have even been read to me as a young person or maybe as a student. I can’t remember exactly when, but when we decided to make the movie I went back and read them and I was amazed that most of the characters were very familiar to me. It was like they’d been implanted in my subconscious because I felt I knew all these characters and know the setting and all of that…it all came back to life. And that’s an example of why this book has endured throughout one hundred and thirty-five years because we’re all familiar with it. It’s permeated culture.
The production wasn’t a typical Hollywood endeavour – it was all green-screen. Had you experienced anything like that before?
No, nor had Tim. We started the picture with live action down in Plymouth. We shot ten days there for the beginning and end of the picture…you know, before she goes down the rabbit hole and after she comes out. We went back to Los Angeles, at Culver Studios, to do all of the green-screen. It was only forty days of shooting, actually, but almost two years of computer generated animation work, there’s some mo-cap work. It was very tricky technically. I think it’s the first time that all three elements: computer generated, mo-cap and live actors all worked into the same scenes. Also Alice’s size goes from six inches to seven feet tall and her regular size and so the actors playing with her had to be adjusted. Matt Lucas had to work on stilts! It was very tricky, especially when they weren’t together. The eye lines had to match up. We had all kinds of charts where everybody’s size was measured very carefully.
Did you ever think while making it, “Is this going to work?”
I always felt it would work because Tim’s a genius and nobody has that imagination. He hadn’t done anything this complicated before we had Ken Ralston who has won four Academy Awards and nominated a dozen times. He actually started and helped invent a lot of the process. I think his best work is with Alice. He was supervising even the green-screen stuff. Between he and Tim, he would imagine it, but it was Ken and about four hundred people behind him on computers putting what Tim imagined – frame by frame – onto the film. It was very labour intensive and tricky to co-ordinate all that. Tim had a good team behind him…he’s an artist…a real artist.
Tell me how you cast Mia Wasikowska as Alice?
Alice was a part that everybody wanted to play, regardless of their age. We had stars who were totally wrong…everybody thought they should play Alice. So we had a whole slue of volunteers. Tim and myself, from the very beginning, wanted to go with a fresh face. We didn’t want a Hollywood starlet or somebody that would we’d seen before. We went on a massive campaign with the casting people in Australia, casting was done in this country and in the United States. Throughout the world really…and kept narrowing and narrowing it down and finally brought twenty people to the UK. We tested them and got that down to eight. Mia was one of them. She came over three times in total. We did a full scale, studio screen test with our crew and the wardrobe people…make-up…a complete test and Mia came out on top. Have you any more plans to work with Burton since you’re on a roll?
Yes, I’m going to be doing Dark Shadows with Johnny (Depp) and Tim later towards the end of the year. He’s got to do another Pirates movie. But we’re shooting over here (London) even though the movie is set in Portland, Maine. We’ve got the stages at Pinewood lined up.
Obviously you’re a legendary film producer…
That sounds like age…(laughs)
You’ve made classic after classic, do you find films easier to make now than back then?
It depends on what kind of film you’re talking about. My wife and I made Driving Miss Daisy and that was a very difficult movie to get financed. An old Jewish lady and a black chauffeur…nobody was interested in that subject. We spent more time on bended knee…over a year of begging people. If you have a picture like Alice in Wonderland which is a famous title, add Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, 3D, Disney – which is a big selling point…it’s a slam dunk! You don’t have to beg people to do that kind of film. It all depends on what story you’re doing to tell. The bigger, wide canvas ones are easier than the small ones. But they’re much, much more expensive to make…but that’s how it is.
Out of all your films, do you have a personal favourite?
I probably do…but you’d have to kill me to get it out of me (laughs). I hate to use the phrase, “they’re all my children” because it’s so over-used, but it’s true. Each one is an experience and a very unique experience and different. The box office can be different too…so maybe my favourite one is considered a failure. I made Steven Spielberg’s first two pictures – Sugarland Express and Jaws. I must say Sugerland Express and that whole experience of working with Steven on his first film is one I’d have to rank very highly in terms of gratification.
