Tim Burton Art Exhibit Opens in Prague

Original article from PraguePost.com by Raymond Johnson: http://www.praguepost.com/night-day/38024-exhibition-the-world-of-tim-burton-opens-in-prague

The famous director was in Prague to introduce a show of his props and drawings
In what is surely to be the most popular exhibition of the year, 500 items from film director Tim Burton’s archives of more than 10,000 film-related pieces are going on display in Prague. Some 150 of them have never been shown to the public before.

The World of Tim Burton
When: March 28–Aug. 3; Tues–Sun 10 a.m.–8 p.m.
Where: House of the Stone Bell
Tickets: 190 Kč, purchased in advance from Ticketpro (recommended)
Timburton.cz

The show includes not only props and sketches relating to his famous hit movies, but also drawings for unrealized projects ranging from another Batman sequel to Little Dead Riding Hood. Parts of comics he drew before he was famous, travel sketches and large-format Polaroid pictures round out the sections of the show.

Many of the items were never meant to be seen publicly, but were just part of the creative process. “It’s a strange thing to have things that are sort of private and personal showing in public. For me, drawings have always been a way of thinking, a form of communicating. … I was never a very good speaker, talker, so I always found it was easier for me to communicate through drawing,” Burton said at a press conference. “When I worked at Disney as an animator, I used to hide in the closet for most of the day.”

All of the items have his trademark dark sense of humor, or “carnivalesque interplay between comedy and the grotesque,” as curator Jenny He told the press.

The main theme of the exhibition is the well-meaning but misunderstood outcast who rebels against conformity by creativity, Jenny He said. “We invite visitors into Tim Burton’s world and hope they discover their own personal viewpoint of Tim’s unique and singular output,” she added.

Concept art for Planet of the Apes (2001)

Burton gave Jenny He and her team free access to his archives and let them “go through everything” to pick the items for the show. He helped to identify what pieces related to what films or unrealized projects.

A different version of the show was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2009 and drew 800,000 visitors, making it that museum’s third-most popular show. “It is smaller than the other show. But … this is a unique city, so we tried to put pieces in that we felt were part of the spirit of what we feel about Prague,” Burton said. He also praised the work of the Czech designers that created the space for the show.

Concept art of Emily for Corpse Bride (2005)

He likes that the previous version of the show was popular. “Growing up in the culture I did, I didn’t go to museums a lot. The culture of art and museums was different, and not inviting. The thing that this show did was it got people that usually wouldn’t go to a museum to go to a museum and see stuff that they wouldn’t usually see in a museum,” he said.
Jenny He said that it was fitting to have the exhibition in Prague because of the city’s rich history with stop-motion animation. Burton used this technique in films like his production of Nightmare Before Christmas, which has many items in the exhibit. “At a time when we are going to infinity and beyond with CGI, Tim brought animation back to its roots,” she said.

Stop-motion puppet for Mars Attacks! (1996), which was eventually scrapped for CG creatures in the final film.

Burton cited Czech animator Karel Zeman as an influence. “[I saw] his films like [The Fabulous] Baron Munchausen, and I remember some dinosaur series. … And where I grew up in Burbank there was a documentary on Karel Zeman that showed his process. That was extremely inspirational to me. He and Ray Harryhausen were probably two inspirations in terms of wanting to remain true to doing stop-motion and [having] a handmade quality. They did that amazingly. You saw this process, and I’ll never forget that. It was very inspirational,” Burton said.

He also had praise for Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer. “He does amazing work. The history here in terms of animation, this is again why I am so happy to be here. There are so many amazing animators throughout the history of this country. As computers have taken over the world, this place still — as you walk around the city — this place has the feeling of art and handmade. It continues here; it’s incredible,” he said.

He also noted the mixture of darkness and humor in Czech art. “Without really thinking of it, I was very influenced by this place.”

Even further back in time, he was excited by children’s books. “Some of my earliest influences were [books by] Dr. Seuss. I loved his artwork and stories and his imagination. My influences came from lots of things, monster movies. Not so much art, but films were definitely an inspiration.”

The dark nature of Burton’s work is a form of therapy, he said. “For me it is getting feelings out that are sometimes trapped inside. … It’s always kept me alive,” he said. He began drawing as a child and just kept going with it, despite not being particularly good at it, in his own estimation. “It was a form of expression.” He also dabbled in filmmaking in his youth.

Stop-motion puppet of Victor from Frankenweenie (2012)

“I went to Cal Arts and worked at Disney because of the combination of film and drawing [in animation]. It made the most sense to pursue that,” he said, adding that it was a great way to learn about the entire filmmaking process.
He likes working with Johnny Depp because that actor takes risks. “He doesn’t mind looking ridiculous. It helps when an actor is willing to try to do things in different ways. He’s always been that way for me,” he said. But Burton isn’t concerned with wanting to work with particular actors. “For me it is all about the part. It really stems from what the piece is and who is the best person to play it. I always try to remain open minded. I do like people like Johnny who don’t mind looking ridiculous.”

Burton thinks all of his films are special in some way but says he likes Edward Scissorhands and Nightmare Before Christmas in particular. “Those are slightly more personal,” he said. But he likes all of his films, even though he seldom goes back to rewatch them. “They are all special in some way. Even if they are horrible films, there is something for me that in terms of making it or whatever is special,” he said.

Costumes for Deep Roy as the Oompa Loompa's in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

While Prague is known for filmmaking, Burton only filmed here once. In 2000 he made two commercials for watch company Timex. “It was fun to shoot in Prague. It was a strange experience, it was great. Our production office was in brothel. I kept walking in, going in and out doing something, and I was going, ‘Who are these girls, and what do they do sitting here?’ and I found out. This was our production office,” he said.

“Because I knew of some of the artists like Karel Zeman, I was aware of the vibe of the city, and I always wanted to visit, so working here, it is always better to do something like that than to be a tourist because you can really get to know people, you can work with them, with the artists. … So that was very special. In some ways it is a better way to get a sense of the place and the city and people, working rather than touring,” he said.

Burton & "The Kids from CalArts" in Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair has written a thorough article on the leaders in American animation who studied at CalArts in the 1970s and 1980s, including Tim Burton. Click here for the online article written by Sam Kashner.

Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. From left: Steve Hillenburg, Tim Burton, Brad Bird, Mark Andrews (in ape suit), Jerry Rees, Chris Buck (with Viking helmet), John Musker, Genndy Tartakovsky, Leslie Gorin, Mike Giaimo, Brenda Chapman, Glen Keane, Kirk Wise (in beige sweater), Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter (with Lei), Rob Minkoff, Rich Moore, John Lasseter, and Henry Selick, in the famed CalArts classroom A113.

Burton's Advice to New Filmmakers

Harvey Weinstein and Tim Burton at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival (FNN).

Article originally by Chris Kensler at Fox News:

Cannes, France – “Everyone thinks I’m about death!”

That was Tim Burton’s (“Corpse Bride,” “Frankenweenie,” “Nightmare Before Christmas,” etc .,etc.) exasperated answer to why he was involved in the “Life Is Amazing” short film series presented by Lexus at the Cannes Film Festival.

Burton , Harvey Weinstein, and newcomer Ryan Coogler, whose movie ‘Fruitvale Station’ played at Cannes after winning the two biggest prizes at Sundance, sat down to talk about why short films are so, well, awesome.

“A short film, when you get it right, there’s nothing like it,” Burton said. “It’s like a song.”

“One of the first short films I ever saw was a movie by the name of ‘Vincent’ by this dude right here,” Coogler chimed in, pointing at Burton.

Weinstein said he was also a big fan of Burton’s early work.

“When Disney bought Miramax the first time they said, ‘What is the first movie you’d like to see or borrow from the company,” Weinstein said. “And I said ‘I want to see the original ‘Frankenweenie’.”

“I think they showed it at 2 a.m. on the Disney Channel,” Burton joked about one of his earliest films, which he remade into a big budget feature last year.

The “Batman” director told the six short film directors, chosen by Lexus for the series, to buckle down because their careers will never get any easier, even if they flourish.

“I’ve done a couple successful movies, so I thought, well, it will be easy to get this one done, but it never is,” Burton said. “Each film is a real challenge to get mounted no matter who you are or how much success you’ve had. It feels like the first time each time, no kidding.”
Weinstein encouraged young filmmakers to stick to their guns “and never give up.”

“Or call Harvey,” Burton laughed.

Interview: Burton on Oscars, "Frankenweenie," Critics

Vulture spoke with Tim Burton to learn about Frankenweenie and its chances at winning an Oscar this year, his balance between films that are critical successes and box office hits, his broken arm, and more:

Do all the nominations and awards help make up for the film's less-than-blockbuster box -office performance?

It's really nice, especially for a film like that. Everybody works really hard for something like this, especially the people who work in a dark room for a couple of years. The thing about stop-motion is that it's such a slow, painful process — one frame at a time. The positive side is that it helps keep the medium alive. It's not high on to-do lists for studio execs to make stop-motion, let alone black-and-white stop-motion. There's still a bit of a stigma, so any sort of positive response is meaningful.

You would think after The Artist there would be less opposition to black-and-white — especially when it comes to films about Hollywood. Argo also got a lot of awards love partly because it's about Hollywood helping to save the world. And Frankenweenie celebrates classic horror films. Hollywood loves nothing more than celebrating itself.

That's true, now that you mention that. Even last year, films like Hugo did that. But I never really thought of that. It's certainly not my perception of the world. For me, it's just what inspires me, and those monster movies stay with you on some kind of level. Those early things are still inside of me. It was just fun to play around with words and themes and memories, because you don't get to do that on every project.

Loved the shout-out to Mary Shelley with the turtle's name, by the way.

[Chuckles.] My son's turtle was named Shelley. When you have a pet as a child, that's the first pure relationship you have. It's unconditional love. And it's your first experience with death as well, so it was an easy emotional connection to make to Frankenstein and monster movies. Those first relationships are very important. And to me, the Frankenstein story is about creating things, not the business of creating things.

But you still want it to be successful.

No one wants to feel like they weren't, unless they're doing some kind of weird art-house thing: "I hope nobody sees this film! And if they see the film, I'm selling out!" You hope for success, but it's a strange phenomenon. You have a movie that gets shitty, crappy, horrible reviews but makes a lot of money; you have a movie that gets good, decent reviews, but then no one goes to see it. I've been lucky, even if a film didn't do that well [at the box office], I end up meeting people who connected with it, and that evens the score.

How do you feel about the critics who say you should stop using Johnny Depp so much?
I'm in a no-win situation. Some say I use him too often, and then others say, "How come he's not in this one?" Whatever. I'm strangely used to that from the beginning.

I don't decide to make a film because of the actors first, even though there are a lot of people I love. I don't think I've ever gone, "Oh, I want to work with that person," and then specifically found a part with that person just to work with them. For Frankenweenie, I hadn't worked with Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, or Martin Landau in a long time, so that was great. But the project drew me to them because they're all so talented.

With Catherine, not since Beetlejuice. People want a sequel for that one.

Those were fun characters, but I'd have to see what the script was like and if it was worth doing — I can't just make it because it's one of the worst ten movies of the year! The first two films I did, Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice, made the ten-worst-movies-of-the-year lists. Then, years later, people said they were my best movies. What? So if those were my best, I'm in real trouble. [Laughs.] The point is, even if I wanted to analyze it, I'm not going to make everyone happy. It's easier when you're starting out and people don't really know what you are. But then you become a thing, and that's not really what you want. I never really targeted my films for kids. It's just what I like to make. But then people were saying The Nightmare Before Christmas was too scary for kids — too much singing, too scary. And then the kids loved it. So I've had conflicting information from the beginning.

How is The Nightmare Before Christmas too scary? It's no scarier than any fairy tale ...

Exactly. When you were a child, did you ever see Disney movies? There's some scary stuff in there. That's what made Disney movies to a large degree, but as people get older, they kind of forget that. There's a new generation looking at fairy tales now, and that's what monster movies were for me. I've always been interested in those kinds of stories, the ones that have been around for ages. When I go back and reread "Red Riding Hood," it's so bizarre, so weird, so fascinating, and we forget how strange they were, even if they've stayed in our consciousness for ages. Fairy tales are amazing, intense, psychological horror stories. But if you ask most adults, they immediately think it's all princesses and happy endings, and it's so not. Obviously.

Are you still thinking about doing Pinocchio next?

It's really hard to think about doing anything when I've got a throbbing pain in my shoulder! The painkillers are not that good here. The doctors are like, "Take two aspirin."

You're in London. Codeine is over-the-counter there!

Yeah, but it's a pretty weak form of codeine, probably. But you're right. I should do that. [Laughs.] I'm hoping the pain subsides soon, but it's like when you have a toothache, and it's hard to think, hard to do things, hard to focus on what's going on when it's throbbing away.

Once the pain subsides, then you can consider Pinocchio, or perhaps a Walt Disney biopic starring Ryan Gosling. Have you seen that poster?

The story at Cal Arts was that Walt was cryogenically frozen and somewhere in the basement. We used to spend Friday nights looking for him. So that's the story. Listen, I'm open to ideas at the moment!

Video: "Frankenweenie" Cast & Crew at London Film Fest

ThisIsFakeDIY.co.uk has some highlights from the Frankenweenie cast and crew panel at the 56th BFI London Film Festival. Video provided by RedCarpetNews.

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.

Video Interview: Burton on "Frankenweenie," Disney, Michael Jackson Musical

In Yahoo!'s video interview with Tim Burton, the filmmaker discusses his relationship with Disney, why returning to Frankenweenie feels like a different project, and a movie he pitched to a studio that was described as "a musical version of 'House Of Wax' with Michael Jackson."

Interview: Burton on "Frankenweenie," Autobiography

/Film interviewed Tim Burton recently. They discuss the new stop-motion Frankenweenie, the aspects of autobiography in the film, Burton's love of science and art, and more:

/Film: I’m curious about the degree to which Frankenweenie is autobiographical. It’s easy to watch the film and assume certain things about the level of representation of your life, but I also wonder about it being a film about the perception of your life.

Tim Burton: Well, this was definitely a real memory piece, because I mean the original short was based on the kind of relation I had with my first pet, that kind of relationship, and Frankenstein films and monster movies. What made me want to go back to the material was a couple of things, one was the stop motion, which I love, and going back to the original drawings, as there was something in those drawings that you couldn’t quite get in live action which I wanted to explore. Then just beyond that initial relationship, it made me start thinking about the other kinds of kids in school, the place I grew up, the teachers… a lot of other kinds of monsters. There were lots of elements that came up that fit into that same sort of world, so all of that together made it feel like a new project to me and something very special. I tried to link almost everything up to somebody I knew, you know like kids and types of people that I remember and the types of relationships you had with other kids and stuff. So almost everything was based on something of a memory.

One line that really stuck out was when Victor’s father discusses reanimating the dead, and says it is “upsetting.” Over the course of your career you’ve played a lot with notions that are upsetting to a certain general population. I’m wondering if the notion of “what is upsetting” or what you think other people might find upsetting has changed over the years.

It’s always funny to me, because I always think… because you’re right, and then I go “Well I grew up on Disney movies” and there’s a lot of weird shit in those movies, you know? People, as they get older they forget these things I think. It’s interesting. I always found it a strange phenomenon. I mean I remember when the short came out and they were all freaked out with “It’s too weird. It’s too dark.” It was meant to go out with Pinocchio as kind of a featurette and “yeah, it’s too weird and too dark” and then they showed Pinocchio and the kids are screaming and running out of the theater, because there’s some scary stuff in it. I just remember them like on Batman Returns, “It’s so much darker than the first one.” Or “It’s so much lighter.” Like half the people would say it was “darker” and half the people said it was “lighter.” It’s like “How can something be lighter and then half of you say…” So I’ve always had a strange kind of… So at the end of the day it’s a mystery to me. (Laughs) It just kind of makes me laugh now, because I still to this day don’t understand it.

Are there things that are upsetting to you? Are there concepts that you think “Okay, no. That’s just something that shouldn’t be explored.”

A lot of movies now are just such torture, I mean there are things that are hard for me to watch, certain violence, even though I grew up watching Hammer Horror films and I loved… My level of torture porn is probably like Dr. Phibes or Theater of Blood, you know? (Laughs) That’s about my level.

How did you work with John August on the script? Was that a very close collaboration?

Yeah. I showed him the original thing and we started riffing. I wanted to expand it and go like… “Remember what they did in the original? This was like later with Universal when they did like House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula where they brought in other monsters or Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” There’s something about those that I always loved, the idea, so that was a sort of framework, but then it was just trying to be about, for me, as personal, like “This kind of kid, that kind of kid” and finding the right… I gave him kids and monsters and talked about the framework of it all and he’s quite good and he knows me, so he got it pretty quickly.

Among the characters, you’ve got the kids who are clued into what’s going on, and you’ve got their teacher, who’s two generations up. In the middle are the parents who are just flailing around. Is that consistent with your own experiences growing up?

Yeah, I would say so. I tried to treat all of the emotions as real as possible and also just the weird kid politics. Also, with Victor, it’s like he’s a loner in a certain way, but at the same time he is the most normal one in a certain way and that to me felt like it was an accurate feeling. I remember feeling like an outsider, but I also felt quite normal, and I also felt like everybody else was weird, and that dynamic of how kids are with each other and how there are certain teachers where you don’t really know what they are talking about and have a certain power to them. So all of those kind of things were based on real people and real feelings.

Do you ever go back to those memories and start to wonder “are these memories actually legit?”

Well yeah, it’s true. I think, especially as time goes on, how you remember something isn’t necessarily the way it was. Also, even though you might grow up feeling like you are completely alone, if you asked any other kid they would probably feel the same way. So I think that you can only use your own experience and for me it wasn’t so much… Memory, you try to treat it as such. A memory can remain very powerful and there’s validity to that and as long as your not trying to say “That’s exactly it,” because obviously with this it’s not a historical piece. So there’s a bit of looseness to that.

Do you have any artifacts of your own childhood that you can go back to to say, “Oh, I can pinpoint how I was feeling at this point.”

I can go to Burbank and look at all of the houses I grew up in and all of that stuff and get a weird vibe, yeah. So there’s that, which somewhat has remained kind of the same. It’s a strange place. It hasn’t really changed that much.

I was really struck by some of the attitudes towards science in the film. [Ed: there's a thing about science needing to be tempered by love.] Was that you, or was that John?

For me, well again I grew up with Dr. Frankenstein and all of those mad scientist characters. I mean I always loved that and I link that to science and art and creativity and how I remember growing up there was a real kind… There was a suppressing of those emotions in people and trying to suppress creative thinking or science and thinking about things in a different way. It seems like even more so now there’s a kind of suppression of those kinds of feelings. So that was an important message with science, art, or anything where people are thinking, to let that flourish and not let that be suppressed.

So those impulses are closely connected for you, artistic and scientific?

Yeah.

"Frankenweenie" Science Fair Winners

October 8, 2012
'Frankenweenie' Science Fair Winners Announced by Walt Disney Studios and Discovery Science Center
By Janelle Tipton, The Walt Disney Studios

The Walt Disney Studios recently teamed up with Southern California’s Discovery Science Center for the Frankenweenie Science Fair, putting the spotlight on young innovators from across the country in celebration of our latest movie collaboration with creative genius Tim Burton.

Like our Frankenweenie hero Victor, participants from grades 5-12 were encouraged to unleash their imaginations to create their own inventive science experiments!

On Friday, Frankenweenie’s opening day, we held a special ceremony to announce the winners before a screening of the film at Disney’s El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Judges Don Hahn ([executive] producer of Frankenweenie), Patrick Soon-Shiong (CEO and President, Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation), and Janet Yamaguchi (VP, Education, Discovery Science Center) had a hard time choosing the Grand Prize winners, which were awarded in three categories: Science, Creative, and Traditional Science Fair.

First place went to Science winner Colin Takeda of California, who built a microbial fuel cell that produced sustained electricity, generating almost 1/3 the power an AA battery for up to 90 minutes. This subject is currently being studied in Patrick Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks Institute at UCLA, and Patrick has invited Colin to spend a full day with scientists at the Institute!

Second place Creative winner Delaney Rice of Alabama impressed the judges with her imaginative three-dimensional model of a Disney-themed treehouse built on engineering principles. Delaney hopes to become an Imagineer when she grows up, and it looks like she’s well on her way.

Third place wound up with a tie in Traditional Science Fair category. Tre Risk of California experimented with reducing aquifer depletion through increased recycled water consumption, testing the best algae-resistant water source for golf courses and similar businesses. He went above and beyond the experiment itself, and now two Palm Springs golf courses are implementing strategies based on Tre’s results! Daniel Vitenson of California researched how tides and other natural factors affect the endangered clapper rail, turning over his detailed findings to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to further their investigation of why these birds are becoming extinct so quickly.

Each of the Grand Prize winners was awarded a behind-the-scenes tour of The Walt Disney Studios, and all six finalists received four Disneyland tickets each! You can see all of these young scientists’ work on display at the El Capitan throughout the month of October.

Burton on "Frankenweenie" Comic-Con Panel

Comic-Con has announced that Tim Burton will be on a panel to discuss his forthcoming film, Frankenweenie, at the massive San Diego convention this year. The filmmaker will be present on Thursday, July 12th, 2:05-3:05 PM, in Hall H. He will be joined by Sam Raimi, Rich Moore, Sarah Silverman, and John C. Reilly to talk about other upcoming Disney films in this Q&A.

Explore the Film with Interactive "Frankenweenie" 360

Disney has provided an exciting opportunity to explore the making of the new stop-motion animated film, Frankenweenie, with "Frankenweenie360." Producer Allison Abbate is your guide through this interactive tour of the making of the movie at film set 23. Watch videos with words from animators, camera operators, art directors, and other artists, and see new and previously unseen concept artwork. Click here to explore now!

Video: Burton on "Vampire Hunter," "Frankenweenie," Old and New Projects

Collider recently had a conversation with Tim Burton. In the interview, the filmmaker discussed a range of topics, from how Disney let him make his stop-motion Frankenweenie, his involvement with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, what he thinks of the test-screening process, whether there are deleted scenes from older films like Ed Wood, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and Beetlejuice, and his criteria in picking future projects.

8 "Frankenweenie" Character Banners, Descriptions

Empire Online and Disney have released eight brand-new character banners and descriptions profiling the cast of Frankenweenie. Click the images below to enlarge them (UPDATE: You can get extremely high resolution versions of these images in this link):


First up, there's Victor Frankenstein, voiced by Charlie Tahan. Here's what we learn about him:
"Victor Frankenstein is a clever, industrious 10-year-old. He lives with his parents and dog, Sparky, and immerses himself in making films and inventing in his attic workshop. When Sparky dies in a car accident, Victor uses scientific ingenuity to bring him back to life."


Next, Sparky himself:
"Sparky is a playful bull terrier whose sense of curiosity is matched only by his owner, Victor. Sparky enjoys chasing after balls and starring in Victor’s homemade movies. He exudes tons of energy and enthusiasm, which even his untimely death doesn’t diminish."


Victor's parents are voiced by Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short.
"Mr. Frankenstein is a travel agent, who likes to dispense roundabout advice to his son. He is proud of Victor’s accomplishments, but is concerned he doesn’t have any friends other than Sparky. He encourages him to join the baseball team. Mr. Frankenstein has a playful and loving relationship with his wife, Victor’s mom, who encourages her son’s scientific pursuits, even when her kitchen appliances end up in his attic lab."


Then Elsa Van Helsing, voiced by Winona Ryder
"Elsa Van Helsing is a soulful and somber classmate of Victor. She lives next door with her tyrant uncle, Mayor Burgemeister, who forces her to be this year’s “Little Dutch Girl” at the town’s celebration of Dutch Day. Elsa also has a beloved pet, her poodle Persephone, and truly empathizes with Victor when he loses Sparky."


Persephone is Elsa's dog.
"Persephone is a perfectly groomed black poodle. She is fiercely loyal to Elsa, her owner. When Persephone and Sparky first meet in the backyard, the attraction is instantaneous and electrifying."


Then there's Toshiaki (James Hiroyuki Liao)
"Toshiaki is over-achieving and mega-competitive. He delights in beating Victor at his own game and like a power-hungry mad scientist, Toshiaki will stop at nothing to win the top prize in the school’s science fair—even if it means stealing Victor’s ideas to do it."


Robert Capron is Bob.
"Bob is a momma’s boy, the brawn to Toshiaki’s brains. He is never mean-spirited, but he’s easily led and gullible. Bob follows Toshiaki everywhere, but is the first one to run to Victor for help when he gets in over his head."


And Bob's mum is voiced by Conchata Ferrell.
"Bob’s Mom is a plump, suburban housewife who is prone to panic and hysteria when things go awry. She has very simple, stereotypical views on life. She dotes on her son Bob and believes her actions, though often misguided, are in his best interest."

"Frankenweenie" Sweepstakes: Meet Tim Burton at Comic-Con

Disney is offering a sweepstakes for Frankenweenie. Here are the details below:

"ENTER NOW for a chance to win a trip to San Diego and two tickets to Comic Con 2012 plus VIP passes to the Frankenweenie Exhibit where you will have a chance to meet Tim Burton! July 11 - July 14, 2012*"

Click here to enter for your chance to win.

San Diego's Comic-Con will be hosting the touring exhibition, "The Art of Frankenweenie," from July 11-15. Puppets, sets, artwork, and much more from the forthcoming animated film will be on display.

"Frankeweenie" Art Exhibition Touring Worldwide

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.

Burton Talks "Frankenweenie," Childhood, Disney

Entertainment Weekly spoke with Tim Burton recently. Even after releasing Dark Shadows, the filmmaker has plenty on his plate for 2012, including another feature that he has directed, Frankenweenie. In the interview, Burton discussed returning to this personal source material, why he is adapting his original live-action short into animation, his childhood and how that has informed the new film, and working again with Disney:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What is it about stop-motion animation that appeals so much to you?

TIM BURTON: It goes back to Ray Harryhausen. You look at his stuff, and you see the fur move! As a child, I recognized this artist. And there was something about stop-motion that felt more like a personal medium, especially because there were so few people doing it. Also, you go back to those kinds of stories, like Frankenstein or Pinocchio, about bringing an inanimate object to life. So here you have a process that does just that! It takes an inanimate object and you bring it to life. As hard of a medium as it is, there’s something so beautiful about that and the fact that it goes back to the beginning of film. The technique hasn’t changed — it’s still animating one frame at a time for 24 frames [to create a single second of film].

Is there anything that stop-motion allowed you to do this time around that you couldn’t have done back in 1984?

Actually, no. On Corpse Bride, our puppets were so sophisticated that people thought they were [animated] in the computer. It sort of undermined the beauty of the stop-motion technique. So, with Frankenweenie, we have a smaller budget and decided that the puppets are going to have to be a bit cruder. But that’s okay, because that’s part of the charm of stop-motion. I wouldn’t go back to the original King Kong and smooth down the fur.

But what has stop-motion allowed you to do with Frankenweenie that you couldn’t have done in live-action?

With my background in animation, I wanted to make the characters look more like my original drawings. There’s just more of a weird kind of energy in those drawings, and there are certain acting things that you can’t do with a real dog, you know? We wanted real dog emotions, and it’s a little easier to try to get that in animation.

In the original, you had the young actor Barret Oliver and all these normal-looking kids. But in this animated Frankenweenie, I was happy to see that many of the kids now look a little… off.

Well, I remember the school politics, and not only how weird you felt as a kid, but how weird everybody else was, too. It was easy to link those memories to old horror movies. I mean, there was a kid back in school that would remind me of Boris Karloff. And there was a weird girl.

Even though he brings a dog back to life, your main character, Victor, seems like the most normal kid around.

That’s how I felt as a kid. I felt very weird, isolated, and lonely, but at the same time I didn’t feel that way as a person. I didn’t feel like a weirdo. So you’re kind of in between a rock and a hard place — you’re treated one way, and yet you don’t really feel that way at all.

How much of Victor is a representation of your childhood? There’s a scene in the movie in which Victor’s dad encourages him to play baseball, and I know your dad was a minor-league player.

My dad was a sports guy, but he was never like one of those Great Santini dads where you either play sports or you’re going to go to hell and burn. I played sports, but I also liked making my little super-8 films, and I liked experimenting. I tried to capture that with Victor. He’s part of the quiet loner category. We weren’t overly demonstrative; we were just kind of like the quiet rebels.

When you finished the original short, Disney didn’t like it initially.

I don’t know if they didn’t like it, but they didn’t know what to do about it.

But they didn’t ask you to return to work afterward.
Yeah, yeah.

So do you get some sort of satisfaction out of the fact that, nearly 30 years later, here you are making Frankenweenie for Disney?

Sure, why not? But I’ve been back and forth to Disney a few times, so it’s kind of an open revolving-door policy. I’ve been around enough to know how absurd everything is. Any project that gets made is a miracle, and I’m grateful to each one, and each one is surreal. So I’m used to it. It’s okay. [Laughs]

Well, of course you’re part of a great group of people, including Brad Bird and John Lasseter, who were let go by Disney, only to return years later.

Those guys could have been making Pixar movies 10 years earlier! They had the talent. It was there!

Production Designer Rick Heinrichs on "Frankenweenie"

Collider recently caught up with Rick Heinrichs, production designer on Frankenweenie. The production designer has worked with Burton on numerous films in different capacities: Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Dark Shadows, and their first black and white, stop-motion animated film, the short Vincent (back in 1982), as well as the original live-action Frankenweenie short in 1984, to name a few. Heinrichs discussed his role on the new black and white, stop-motion animated film which will be released in theaters on October 5th, as well as his working relationship and friendship with Tim Burton, which dates back to over thirty years ago when they were film students:

Question: How did you get involved with this project?

RICK HEINRICHS: Let’s see, 30 years ago, we did the live-action Frankenweenie, and it was a fruition of a certain period of development that Tim [Burton] and I had gone through from CalArts to Disney. That was the last thing we did at Disney, at that time. In fact, we did Frankenweenie after we developing another little TV show that we were trying to sell, called The Nightmare Before Christmas, and that ended up happening later, as well. I was actually surprised to find out that a stop-motion version of Frankenweenie was going to happen, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought, “What a great idea!” I loved the live action version, and there was something great about doing all of the design sets on stage, in addition to the location and the interiors, and it got my own wheels turning about doing live-action films, in the future, which I have continued to do. But then the idea of looking at this again, as much as I love it, there’s things that I wish we could have fixed about it. How often do you get to redo things like that? Doing it as a stop-motion animated film is appealing because that’s my passion. And, Tim and I did Vincent together, many years ago, as a kick-off for those. I think when you see the film, you can see how sophisticated it’s become. What I love about it is that it still feels handmade. You can still see the hand of the animator in there, and all of the passion that they’re putting into the character. You don’t necessarily think about it when you’re watching it, which is great. It does feel like the actors are really acting. Those animators are just amazing, the way they act through these puppets. In terms of design, it’s amazing to see it in black and white again, and really play with the tonal values in a much more controlled way, this time. When you’re doing a live-action film, you’re dealing with a lot more people and, as much as you want to control the sets and control the lighting, it’s like wearing boxing gloves to try to do something delicate. With stop-motion animation, the cinematographer is lighting the set, and the set decorators and the model makers and the animators are all people you’re talking directly to. You can fix things. It’s on a scale where it’s all fixable, and you can continue to manipulate things until it shoots. It’s a longer process of prep and production as well, so you can really bring more, continuity to bear, on the whole process.

What’s the most complex set in the film?

HEINRICHS: Well, the town is probably our most complex set. For any number of reasons of efficiencies, we really tried to restrict how that was going to get shot and be reasonable and, at the same time, give the sense of the character of the town, as a background of the people. Whenever we prepare for these things, we always design much more than we end up doing, so we have lots and lots of stores that we designed. It lives in this pseudo-Burbank world, which is where Tim grew up, coincidentally, but not exactly. It’s post-war Southwestern America. It shares a little bit of design similarity to Edward Scissorhands, in the scene of a neighborhood or a flat sense of normal with this one aberration, sticking up in the background, which is very much of a signature motif for Tim. A lot of what he tries to do is to establish a sense of what’s normal and show how that can be somewhat monstrous, in its own way. The idea of bringing your dog back to life is a nominally horrific idea, but it gets played out in this lovely way, and it ends up being a love story, really.

Did you use photo reference for it?

HEINRICHS: Yeah, we did what I would normally do on any film that’s live-action or animation. We did a lot of research. We pulled together a lot of that mid-century modern look of suburbia, that’s not really high-end stuff. It’s really more of the tract housing of the post-war era. It created its own rhythm and feel to it, and now I think it’s beautiful. It’s so flat and says so much about the people who live there. And then, the black and white just looks beautiful.

How did the New Holland idea come up?

HEINRICHS: New Holland occurred with Tim and John August, at the story stage. It was all about having Dutch day, and also about how American communities really take these Old World elements and they turn it into this flat, suburban thing. They knock down all the maple trees and they call it Maple Street. It’s this absconding of things out in the world, and making it your own thing. There was something characteristically American and charming about that, like Solvang. To be honest with you, I really think that it establishes a purpose for the windmill. Since we’re not making it part of a miniature golf course, as we did in the live-action film, we had to find another reason for it to be. But, that’s just my assumption.

Was there a reason why you made the sets were in color and the characters in black and white?

HEINRICHS: Yes, because the grass came that way. The reason why they’re in color is partly because we were replacing skies and set extending and using backgrounds, so there is a lot of digital work going on in the background. What I love is the fact that you don’t really think about that. All the stuff in the foreground is appropriately handmade and hand-animated. The look and feel of that, from the excellent visual effects people who did all the work on it, it’s part of their job to make it all work as one world, to make sure what they do is not photo realistically, which would be their normal bent. They’re actually matching a look and feel that’s already there. We were chromocene, so there were green screens behind elements. And, all of the black and white gets timed and sweetened in post-production. But, all the dailies were shown in black and white. As far as everybody was concerned, they were living in a black and white world. This is a much smaller range of graphic elements. We’re dealing with tone and shape and form and light, instead of color, and all the other stuff that comes with color. It’s out of that, that we’re trying to feeling and support the story. I think it looks beautiful. I think it does evoke a certain period of horror/science fiction films. It works in a dual way, and I know that Tim loves that stuff, as well.

Is that more liberating for you, or more challenging?

HEINRICHS: It’s both liberating and challenging. The challenge is that you have to pay much more attention to that specific stuff because you don’t have the other stuff to make it look great. Once you learn that and figure that out, then you realize that you are really dealing with elements. The tool kit is then atmospheric perspective, one foreground shape against another, lighting, texture and form. Originally, I was a sculptor, so that’s appealing to me, as well.

What was the process of taking Tim’s original drawings and translating them into these three-dimensional figures and creating a whole world from his sketches like?

HEINRICHS: I would have to go back to our early days of Disney when they were regenerating the studio. We were all working on The Fox and the Hound. It was initially exciting to be working on a Disney film, but then it just sagged in the middle, a little bit, although my kids like it. It’s a good movie. You’ve got to imagine this place with all these young animators, all of whom have been told that they’re special and are going to be amazing someday, and realize what it’s like to do the work of a big, corporate animated film. And, we would just do stuff on the outside. We’d make Super 8 movies, and do anything we could to keep our blood going. I’d always been a fan of Tim’s own work. I’m sure you’ve seen his sketches. What was appealing about them was the sense of character and beautiful line. I wanted to make it three-dimensional because I thought that his work was very three-dimensional, even though a lot of people at Disney thought it was very linear. Apparently, the hallmark of a Disney film is that they look very three-dimensional, back in those days. So, I just took it upon myself to make sculptures of his work, and there was just something different that happened. It was his intent and his look, but it was in light with form. It was just a very natural progression, to try to do those in a stop-motion animated film.

Has your job changed with like the advent of higher grade visuals and 3D?

HEINRICHS: Yes, it’s much harder to do our job because you see every pore. I think that it is an incredibly appropriate use of digital technology. It was amazing to see all of the improvements and progressions that had happened, by the time we did Nightmare in the early ‘90s with motion control, but that was with old film technology. Now, with digital cameras, which are much smaller, the ability to completely restructure the entire process using computers, you still end up with a very believably handmade product, but you’ve just helped yourself enormously with all the other things that happened. So, I’m a fan of technology. I’m not a Luddite. My problem has been with purely digital films. I feel the danger there is that the kind of short-cuts you end up having to take are the ones that are most telling in the main characters. I don’t feel that that’s the case with what we’ve been doing on Frankenweenie.

What were the discussions like, to differentiate the look of this film from everything else that Tim’s done?

HEINRICHS: There wasn’t a conscious effort to differentiate it. My feeling is that, if you do your due process and go back to the well, grab the original inspiration and just develop it from the ground up, it is just, by its own nature, going to be different. It wasn’t really intentional. With Tim, all of his films live in a Burton world, and there are different parts of that world that look a bit different. The point is never to intentionally make it not look like something else. The intent is always to go back to the source and figure out how that is informing this project.

Tim made the original Frankenweenie when he was a 25-year-old kid. Is it surreal to be revisiting it, this many years later, and to what degree are you trying to recreate what you did before?

HEINRICHS: You gain wisdom and you don’t make the same mistakes. When you’re that age, there’s a kind of energy to what you do. Because you don’t know enough not to make mistakes, there is something that is very infectious about the work. In the original Frankenweenie, there are a couple of things that are cringe worthy for me, like how we engineered the burning of the windmill. That’s always been a problem for me. But, it was a live-action film, and you’re on that rock, rolling down the hill. I do think back to that time with a lot of fondness about the young guys who were doing that stuff. It is so surreal to be able to go back and re-work something in a different way and, really, in a new way. Yes, it’s the same story, but it really is different and it has a different feel to it, as well.

What made you and Tim hit it off, all those, all those years ago, and how has your personal chemistry been, through all these films that you’ve done together?

HEINRICHS: It started because his talents and mine intermeshed, rather than competed. Probably a lot of it is that I just really dug what he was doing and wanted to see it develop. And, with any relationship over years, it evolves. We’ve gone our separate ways and done different things. I’ve worked with Tim for the last two and a half or three years, pretty consistently, and it feels great to be able to pick that up again. There’s a friendship there, and there’s been an evolution over the years, as well.

Did you meet working at Disney, or at CalArts?

HEINRICHS: Well, actually, he was at CalArts. I’d already gone through four years of art school, and I was the oldest guy in the first year there because I wanted to do animation. All these guys, who were years younger than me, including, you know, John Lasseter and Brad Bird, and other people like that, were in a grade level above me, so we didn’t actually start really working together until the studio.

A Visit to the "Frankenweenie" Set

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!:

LONDON - It's an undistinguished low-slung building on Sugar House Lane, a dingy street whose picturesque name belies the cheerlessness of this East London neighbourhood. Yet if you penetrate its drab exterior, you enter a wonderland -- the wonderland of filmmaker Tim Burton's spooky imagination.
This is where Burning Windmills Productions has taken up residence -- an appropriate name for the company behind Burton's upcoming animated feature, Frankenweenie. Both the company name and the film's title evoke memories of the legendary 1931 film, Frankenstein, and the scene where the townsfolk react in frenzy to the rampaging monster in their midst.
"Remember the scene where they run up to a burning windmill at the end?" producer Allison Abbate asks. "That's why we're calling our company that. And we definitely have a burning windmill in our movie!"
That, and a lot more. Frankenweenie, which Disney has set for autumn release with a high-powered vocal cast that includes Winona Ryder, Martin Short and Martin Landau, is Burton's much-anticipated full-length reworking of his 1984 animated short of the same name. Then, as now, with this tale of a boy named Victor who restores his dead dog Sparky to life, Burton was rendering affectionate homage to the horror films that enchanted him in his childhood.
That enchantment permeates the labyrinthine corridors of this astonishing studio. You arrive at the homemade laboratory where the young Victor, the kid who loves monster movies, goes to work on Sparky in the aftermath of his pet's fatal collision with a car -- and if you're reminded of the creepy setting in which Boris Karloff creaked into life in the original Frankenstein, Burton will be delighted.
Move on and you'll find the gloomy pet cemetery, which plays such a crucial role in the story.
"Of course, there's a graveyard, since this is a Tim Burton movie," Abbate says cheerfully.
Then you're suddenly in the midst of the actual filming of a dramatic moment. A dedicated science teacher has lost his job, condemned by the community for encouraging a spirit of inquiry among Victor and his fellow students. You watch the kids' beloved Mr. Rzykruski leaving a hostile PTA meeting, moving sadly down the aisle of the auditorium while a sea of faces watches his humiliation.
This sequence has a live-action intensity that surges out at you in playback. But of course, it's not live action at all -- and this is the miracle being wrought during every second of filming.
The scene is being shot in a tiny playing area maybe half the size of an average living room. As with all the production's 35 shooting units, Burton's artistic team is working in a toy-sized setting, where every prop is reduced to scale. And while Mr. Rzykruski and his tormentors will loom large on the big screen, just as the diminutive King Kong did nearly 80 years ago, they are, in actuality, small and brilliantly engineered puppets whose movements -- right down to the flicker of an eyelash or twitch of the lip -- are being meticulously created frame by frame by the tiniest of adjustments and manipulations.
Animator Mark Waring towers over his miniature performers as he sets up the shot. Remote-control cameras are in place, but that's only the beginning.
"There are 40 characters who've got to move, and I'll be right in the middle, trying to duck up and down out of the way of a shot," Waring says. "Rzykruski's going to be walking down this pathway, and all the other characters are watching him go, and will be turning as he passes. So I'm doing this literally frame by frame. All these heads turn a tiny degree. And I do it again and again."
Mr. Rzykruski's shifting facial expressions help heighten the drama of the moment -- which is why another animator, Danail Kreve, is available with a choice of 36 different miniature mouths to slot into the embattled teacher's jaw.
Welcome to the old-fashioned world of stop-motion animation. Its distinguished antecedents include: the 1933 King Kong; Ray Harryhausen's science-fiction adventures of the 1950s; Wallace and Gromit; and the groundbreaking contributions of Canada's National Film Board.
Burton brought the process into an eerie new dimension in 1993, when he produced The Nightmare Before Christmas, and then explored it further with The Corpse Bride.
The original Frankenweenie lasted only 28 minutes, but Burton is convinced there's an audience out there for a full-length version.
"We've added more to the beginning, so you get more of a sense of the relationship that the kid has with his dog," Abbate says. "We also added to the ending, so that now, it's not just about Sparky and whether the townspeople accept and embrace him.
"Here, the secret gets . . . out, and other people try to do the same thing, with disastrous results. So you set up that nice conflict of Sparky being different from other creations, because he was created out of love, not out of competition or power."
Burton also has a screen version of Dark Shadows currently in the works, so he isn't on hand today. But his inventive spirit is present everywhere. The puppetry, including an intriguing collection of Burtonesque monsters, is a prime example.
"They're all out of Tim's imagination," Abbate notes. "He's personally created them. He did the character designs, and they've been transferred directly from his drawings to sculpted puppets. Not since Nightmare Before Christmas has there been something which has spun so purely from the mind of Tim as this one."
The Victor puppet is a little over 15 inches tall. Sparky is 4.2 inches long, and there's one small puppet which is only five-eighths of an inch in size.
Burton's credits -- Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd, a controversial Alice In Wonderland, Beetlejuice, to name only a few -- reveal a filmmaker who shuns the conventional. Frankenweenie is no exception. Yes, there will be a 3-D release, but it's being shot in old-fashioned black and white -- and that, Abbate acknowledges, "makes it both controversial and exciting at the same time.
"This particular story hearkens back to a movie Tim was inspired by. He got excited about making movies by seeing those old black-and-white horror films. And he really feels that black and white underlines the emotional quality of the movies and the bereft feeling that Victor experiences when Sparky passes. He felt it was the only way he could tell the story."
Abbate is the award-winning producer of some of the most innovative animated movies of recent years - among them, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Corpse Bride. She's a huge fan of the stop-motion process.
"It's not just that it's fun, but that it's so old-school. Yet it still works. Everything that people do here is so creative. Everyone here is an artist, down to the tiniest prop."
And those props are tiny. Many can be held in the palm of the hand. "This is Victor's chair," Abbate says, passing over a miniature chair. "Feel how heavy this thing is." She's now holding a weighty thumb-sized book and lets it fall with a thump. Every tiny prop is meticulously crafted. Yet they aren't fragile. "That's because everything has to be so stable."
As with all classic horror movies, events start going horrifically wrong, as Victor's friends try to repeat his experiments using their own pets, often with hilariously creepy results. Abbate is mum on details, but she does drop tantalizing hints about a "mummy" hamster, a ferocious werecat, a Godzilla turtle, and monkeys who become something out of Gremlins.
So what is Burton creating here? An animated horror movie? A dark comedy? Not exactly.
"Most of the time, it's a heartfelt love story between a boy and a dog," Abbate says matter-of-factly. "But it's done with real affection for the old movies of that genre that inspired Tim."
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Ashford to Direct "Alice" Stage Musical

Variety reports that Rob Ashford has been tapped by Disney Theatrical Prods. to direct and choreograph the stage musical version of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

A timeline has not be set for the production, but there is talk of the musical having its premiere in London, before it eventually appears on Broadway.

Also on board for the project are Linda Woolverton, who wrote the screenplay for the film and will be writing the book, and Richard D. Zanuck, one of the producers of the film and an exec producer of the legit tuner.

Burton on White House Halloween Controversy

Tim Burton responds to an exaggerated media story about his surprise Halloween 2009 visit to the White House on his official Facebook page:

"Setting the record straight:
Recent reports about the 2009 Halloween event have it all wrong. The White House contacted me about helping decorate a Halloween event being held for children of military personnel. I turned to Disney who graciously donated props from my films Alice in Wonderland and The Nightmare Before Christmas. I asked Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska to attend in character from Alice in Wonderland and Deep Roy to appear in his Oompa-Loompa costume [from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory] as a way to surprise the children. It's unfortunate that this event has been twisted and exaggerated into something negative when it was held for children and came from such a positive place.
Sincerely,
Tim"