Artistic direction in any animated film is very important! In this episode, Paislee will discuss more about this idea and how it’s shaped animation today!
Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only. JSK Stories is not affiliated nor sponsored from any of the films discussed on this channel. Ratings and parental guides for each film may be found on https://www.imdb.com.
Greetings, pals! How is everyone today? I hope you have been enjoying my episodes thus far! I LOVE MOVIES AND I AM SO HAPPY TO BE TALKING TO YOU ABOUT THEM! (eh-hem)
Anyways – speaking of episodes, I focused on artistic direction and animation the last time we spoke. Well, today we are going to be talking about a different medium of animation, and that is stop-motion animation in the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas.
First off, this movie is one of my favorite spooky holiday films! The music, the story, and the characters are so much fun! What makes this movie even more wonderful is the artistic style that is achieved through the stop-motion animation.
Stop-motion is a method where objects are manipulated or moved physically in small moments between individually photographed frames. This will make them appear to have independent motion or change when the frames are played back. Commonly used objects for stop-motion are puppets with moveable joints and clay figures. In The Nightmare Before Christmas, 109,440 frames were taken for the film.
In addition, they constructed TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVEN puppets to represent the characters in the movie! Jack Skellington, our main character, had around four hundred heads so that he could have every possible emotion. How wild is that?!
This film was directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton. Selick compared the production design to a pop-up book. He said, “When we reach Halloween Town, it’s entirely German Expressionism. When Jack enters Christmas Town, it’s an outrageous Dr. Seuss-esque set piece. Finally, when Jack is delivering presents in the ‘Real World’, everything is plain, simple and perfectly aligned.” As I’ve watched the movie back, this is absolutely true! I can see the director’s animation vision come to life on the screen!
Well, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Do you have a favorite stop-motion film? Be sure to submit on jskstories.com. Thank you and have a POP-tastic day!