£ Nightmare Before Christmas S

Foreword
Nightmare Before Christmas is a movie I’ve wanted to make for over
a decade, since I worked as an animator at Walt Disney Studios in tke

favorite ckildren’s autkor, Dr. Seuss. I made several drawings of tke char-
acters and tke settings and began planning it as a film.
I tkougkt at first tkat Nightmare Before Christmas would make a
good koliday special for television, altkougk I also considered otker
forms, including a ckildren's book. At tke time, I tkink, it was too weird
for Disney. I moved on to otker tilings, but I never forgot it.
‘.sketched Jack Skellington, Altkougk tke title makes tke film sound a little scary, I see Night¬
mare Before Christmas as a positive story, witkout any truly bad charac¬
ters. Tke characters arc trying to do something good and just get a little

;w up loving tke animated specials like

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and How the Crinch Stole Christmas tkat
appeared on TV every year. I wj mted to create something with tke same
kind of feeling and warmth.
Nightmare is tke story of Jack Skellington, tke Pumpkin King of
Halloweenland, who discovers Christmas and immediately wants to cel¬
ebrate this strange koliday himself. I love Jack. He has a lot of passion
and energy; he’s always looking for a feeling. That’s wkat ke finds in
Christmas Town. He is a bit misguided and his emotions take over, but
ke gets everybody excited. Tke setting may be odd and a lit¬
tle u nsettling, but there are no real villains in tke film. It's
a celebration of Halloween and Christmas—my two fav-

I decided early on tkat I wanted to tell this story

this medium, but it is challenging. One danger is tkat

»y become overwhelmed by tke technique and get dis¬
tracted from tke
Luckily, I was able to ent st Nightmare Before Chris tm*
friend Henry Selick, tke most
We have a similar sensibility, and ke was able to take my orij
ings and bring them to life. He gathered together an amaz:
San Francisco—a wonderful group of artists, all working
same vision. Everybody put their heart into it— the co
Danny Elfman, tke screenwriter Caroline Thor

* 8 ®
 A Nightmare Before Christmas a

Nightmare Before Christmas is deeper in my keart tkan any otker

film. It is more beautiful tkan I imagined it would be, tkanks to Henry
and bis talented crew of artists, animators, and designers. As I watck it,
I know I will never kave tkis feeling again. Nightmare Before Christmas is

tant, it is a film I kave always wanted to see. Now I can. It kas been wortk
ike wait. I tkink tkere are few projects like tkat in your life.
Tim Burton

« 9 ®
 4 Nightmare Before Christmas 4

Introduction
Tim Burton's sketches (above) show. Early in In every Tim Burton film there are a few elements you can count
the movie Jock wanders alone through the
ness and morbidity. The sets and costumes are heavily influenced by
German Expressionism and the Universal horror films Burton loves so.
The lead character is an outsider—"a loner... a rebel," as Pee-wee calls
himself in Pee-wee s Big Adventure (1985)—someone who longs for a
place in society that he can never fully occupy. And through the entire
enterprise runs a healthy and audacious dose of irony.
In the case of Tim Burton s Nightmare Before Christmas, the irony
exists off screen as well as on. The movie is based on a poem that Burton
wrote and illustrated over a decade ago, while he was working as an ani¬
mator at Walt Disney Studios. Although at the time the Disney Company
rejected the idea, today it is the film's enthusiastic producer.
Burton actually met the film's director Henry Selick at Disney
Studios, where Selick was also an animator. Both were disillusioned with
the work there and impatient with animating "cute little foxes." Now,
they have joined forces to make an animated film for Disney in which
there isn't a cute fox in sight. In fact, there isn’t anything cute about
Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s just funny, a little scary, and unrelent¬
ingly creative.
In his early years at Disney, Burton "did not fit into the track of the
average animator," notes Denise Di Novi, one of Nightmares producers.

« 10 &
 k Nightmare Before Christmas a.

She explains that Disney “saw very quickly that he was very creative and
had unusual ideas." Yet when he left the studio, his ideas just went in a
file somewhere.
Burton went on to become the director of such successful feature
films as Batman (1989) and Edward Scissorhands (1990). But he re¬
tained his fondness for animation. And he kept his pet project—his poem
“The Nightmare Before Christmas”—in mind.
From the start Burton wanted to produce Nightmare Before Christ-

ularity in the United States. "I love stop-motion,” Burton exclaims.

“There’s always a certain heauty to it, yet it’s unusual at the same time.
It has reality. Especially on a project like Nightmare, where the characters
are so unreal, it makes them more believable, more solid.”
Burton admits that stop-motion is a challenging medium and
points out that before doing Nightmare, "I'd never seen a stop-motion
film that completely worked for me.” But he was always convinced that
stop-motion was perfect for his story about Jack Skellington and his mis¬
guided attempt to take over Christmas.
When Burton eventually decided to return to his pet project, he
realized two things: Disney was the only studio successfully producing
animated films, and because Burton came up with Nightmare while he
was working at Disney, the studio owned it. Disney had, in the meantime,
undergone a change in regime. Under Michael Eisner and Jeffrey
Katzenkerg, the studio had made a new commitmc
drive that produced The Little Mermaid (1989), B uty and the Beast Halloweenland is full of jagged, pointed
(1991), and Aladdin (1992). shapes. The drawing below shows an early
Taking a second look at Burton’s original prop. al, Katzenberg was ""ion of the view Just outside the gate
;ver made before.”
Katzenberg says. “It is a pioneering film
effort that is very much part of Walt
Disney’s film heritage." At the same time
Katzenberg describes it as “a movie with a big
heart and a lot of emotion.”
Even though Nightmare was Burton's
pet project, he decided not to di—*
it himself, feeling that it could he
properly brought to life onl;
by a master of stop-motion
£ Nightmare Before Christmas £

® 14 ®
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

In the early Jays of the cinema,

ateJ with a hanJ crank. One complete turn of the crank exposed one
frame of film. When shooting live action, the cameraperson simply kept
a steaJy rhythm. The film, projecteJ at the same speeJ, gave the illusion
of natural motion. Films in the early twentieth century were usually shot
Every character and object in the film
The first step toward animation was the discovery that if you evolved through sketches and color studies
stopped the camera, replaced the person or object being filmed with a dif- like these before being molded and painted

formation took place. In 1895 the Edison Company illustrated this below has been turned upside down from it*
theory in a particularly grisly way. In a film called The Execution of Mary, position in the film to do its job here.
Queen of Scots, the actress who played Mary was marched to the chop¬
ping block. When the executioner raised his ax, the camera was stopped
; replaced by a dummy. Filming resumed, the ax fell,
and a head tumbled. Audiences did not detect the trickery since Mary’s
approach to the chopping block and her beheading seemed to he a con-

Once this secret got out, dozens of early filmmakers started pro-

people and objects were moved or transformed without the use

of wires or mirrors. These works were not, at first, truly stop- ^
motion films, hut simply a way to make the impossible ap¬
pear to happen.
In 1898 film pioneer J. Stuart Blackton and his partner ^
Albert E. Smith were shooting a trick film on a New York
rooftop. As they started and stopped the camera to make the sub¬

drifted across the background. When they projected the film, they
noticed that the clouds seemed to hop around the screen.
Smith later wrote, “These unplanned adventures with puffs of
steam led us to some weird effects. In A Visit to the i
tures, chairs and tables flew in and out, and characters disappeared
willy-nilly—done by stopping the camera, making changes, and „
S Nightmare Before Christmas <6

In 1898 Smith and Blackton produced what they claimed was the
very first stop-motion film in the United States, The Humpty Dumpty
Circus. As Smith described it, "I used my little daughter’s set of wood-

as the movement could he achieved only hy photographing separately

each change of position. I suggested we obtain a patent on the process.
Blackton felt it wasn't important enough. However, others quickly bor¬
rowed the technique, improving upon it greatly."
Unfortunately The Humpty Dumpty Circus seems to have van¬
ished—as have more than half the movies produced before 1950. But
within a few years, stop-motion experiments were plentiful. The Russian
animator Ladislas Starevich, for example, created some breathtaking

Other masters of stop-motion through the years include Willis

O’Brien, the brilliant animator who gave life to King Kong in 1933, and
O’Brien’s protege Ray Harryhausen, who created dazzling special effects
for such fantasy classics as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), The
Seventh Voyage ofSinhaJ (1958), and Jason and the Argonauts (1963).
George Pal was yet another stop-motion whiz. His "Puppetoons" of
the thirties and forties are direct ancestors of Tim Burton’s Nightmare
Before Christmas. Pal carved his puppets from wood and gave them dif-

• 16®
 A Nightmare Before Christmas a

Vampises 1,2,3,4 (»

VAMPIRES (little, squeaky and kigk voice

In this town, we call home,
Everyone hail to the Pumpkin Song!

In this town, Jon't we love it now [oj

Everybody’s waiting for the next sur,

Corpse Choru
'Round that
Something's

Harlequin Demon, Werewolf,

and Melting Man
—Scream! This is Halloween,
Red n black, slimy green . .
 S Nightmare Before Christmas «

The eerie Ian dscapa of Hallo weenland rise Corpse Chorus

behind the drinking well in the Town Squan This is Halloween, This is Halloween
(above). The Corpse Child (below) always
has his eyes sewn shut. Halloween Halloween! Halloween Halloween!

Child Corpse Trio

Tender Lumplings everywhere
Life's no fun without a good scare.

Parent Corpses
That's our joh, hut we ‘re not mean
In our town of Halloween.

Corpse Chorus
In this town—

Mayor (optimistic)
k Nightmare Before Christmas a

aV ®
« NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS 6
k Nightmare Iifoii Christmas a

*>29 •
k iwiJium Before Christmas k

«53 ®
S Nightmare Iiiqii Christmas «
 k Nightmare Before Christmas a

Thompson found her solution.

As she describes it, “When I which can he very helpful.
When, for example, Dr.
Finklestein attempts to re¬
strain Sally hy holding onto

h^^ilmovie Sally is the

creation of Dr. Finklestein, the
Evil Scientist. Although he entist on the head. While try¬
ing to rescue Santa Claus from
the terrible tortures that the
he built bet, he at least—even monstrous Oogie Boogie has
in mind, Sally quickly detaches
more than the recommended

The Evil Scientist also “I love the idea that when

Thompson, “she can sew her¬

part of her body, and it will self back together again. ”

Thompson stresses that

Sally “is Jack’s truest friend,

from life. They are very much

alike, hut there is one crucial
difference: while Jack’s dilem¬
ma gives Nightmare Before
Christmas its plot, Sally’s
« Nightmare Before Christmas «

* S4 •
« Nightmare Before Christmas S

®?4 •
A Nightmare Before Christmas a
 $ Nightmare Before Christmas <

Tim Burton s Nightmare Before Christmas is, in the truest sense of

the word, unique. Disney Chairman Jeffrey Katzenherg claims, “In the
eight years I’ve been at the studio, the only other movie that really set out
to do something unlike anything done before was Who Framed Roger
Rahhit? I consider this to he a sister film."
The story of Jack Skellington's ill-conceived plan to take over
Christmas delights people of every age. The weird and colorful support¬
ing characters—Sally, Oogie Boogie, Lock, Shock, Barrel, and the oth-

Nightmare Before Christmas is a rarity in that the way it was produced is

every hit as fascinating as the him itself. For audiences accustomed to
The art of drawing is critical to Nightmare. animated films, Nightmare Before Christmas offers surprises in both style
While jotting down his original poem, Tim and technique. The characters are fanciful yet solid, three-dimensional
Burton was already telling the story in his beings. They move through a world that seems genuine, but could not
sketches (opposite). For the film, the art exist in “real” life.
department’s designs for props like Jack’s Although the completed film seems as effortless as a dream, it took
bed fbe/owj emphasized the graphic look
Burton wanted. On screen, when Jack wan¬
ders through a forest (below right), the set sometimes tedious, sometimes impossible—creative effort. This is tbe
has a three-dimensional presence and yet story of how Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas was made. It is
told, to a great extent, in the words of the over 140 artists and techni¬
cians who brought the film to life.

78
 A Nightmare Before Christmas a

mas, it is difficult to separate one from the other. They grew out of each
other in a complex process of collaboration. Burton’s story ideas trig¬
gered responses in Elfman, who then wrote the songs. The songs in turn
suggested new story points to Caroline Thompson, whose revision of the
script led Burton to alter and expand the original story.
"There was a period of time when we were all trying to figure out how
to get started, ’’ says Elfman. "None of us had done a musical. Tim sent
me a whole series of color drawings of Jack Skellington, the sleigh, and
the reindeer. The drawings really got me going.”
At this point there was no script; there wasn't even a completed

feels, in retrospect, were an ideal way of working. Burton would

visit Elfman, and they would discuss the story one scene at a time,
talking about the tone and emotion. "As we were talking, I would
begin to hear the music,” Elfman recalls. “The instant Tim would
leave I’d begin composing the song. Three days later, Tim would
come over, I’d play him the song, and then we’d begin all over again

At their meetings Elfman felt like a kid at story time, waiting

ery of Christmas Town, Elfman wentoffto write “What’s This?” (see

■© 87 ®
<& Nightmari Before Christmas S
 k NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS k

place." Tken, at their next meeting, Elfman ashed, “Now what hap¬
pens?” Burton replied, "Well, Jack has to describe Christmas to Hallow¬
een Town.” Then Elfman exclaimed,“Wait, I have a great idea for that!”
And he hurried off to write "The Town Meeting Song” (pageB 42—47).
“I wouldn’t think past the next area of the story, ” Elfman recalls.
“Sometimes I’d have to say to Tim, ‘Please get out! I can hear the music
and I have to get it down before I forget it.’ What I'd get out of our con¬
versations would carry right into the song. It was really fun. Before we
knew it we had ten songs, and those ten songs told quite a hit of the story. ”
“Originally, Tim and Michael McDowell [the initial screenwriter]
were going to write the lyrics and give Danny suggestions, ” says Caroline
Thompson. She laughs. “By the third song he was so far ahead of them,
they just said, ‘Doit!'”
Elfman’s songs helped some characters express themselves and es¬
tablished the personalities of others. While Burton created the character

personality in songs like "Jack’s Lament” (see pages 30—32).

Elfman took Burton's suggestion of the villainous Oogie Boogie
and defined him through his song (performed by gravel-voiced Ken Page).
Oogie Boogie's musical number (see pages 66—71) recalls the wonderful
moments in Max and Dave Fleischer’s Betty Boop cartoons of the thir¬
ties when Cah Calloway would wail a nasty blues tune like "Minnie the

easy when you're a huge burlap creature filled with crawling hugs.
The impish trick-or-treaters Lock, Shock, and Barrel also have
their own song. So does Sally—although her song was written rather late
in the composing process, after Caroline Thompson had been brought in
to write the script. "Sally was a character that Danny took my lead on
rather than the other way around,” Thompson points out.
Not only do Elfman's songs help define the characters, hut also
no major plot point occurs without the accompaniment of music. In
the strange lands of Nightmare Before Christmas, as in the sunnier
Technicolor worlds of Hollywood’s great musicals, the characters com¬
municate to each other and to us through song.

SCRIPT
An initial, uncompleted version of the Bcript for Nightmare Before
Christmas was written by Michael McDowell, who had previously worked

® 89 ®
S Nightmare Before Christmas <$

with Tim Burton on the ingenious, hilariously macahre Beetlejuice

(1988). “The original draft had some good ideas,” Selicksays, “butitwas
not completely successful. We actually started the movie without a
screenplay.” Fortunately, Danny Elfman had already written the lyrics
for the songs. As Selick explains, “The songs had a lot of storytelling
within them so we tackled them first. We figured we could rework mate-

"When I came in,” she says, “Danny Elfman’s songs were about eighty

together. To fill out characters who weren’t otherwise filled out.”

me Danny’s lyrics. I remember saying to Tim, 'Just let me take it away

for a week and I’ll see what I can bring back.’ So I went up north for a
S Nightmare Before Christmas S
6 Nightmare Before Christmas £

94
k Nightmare iffSif Christmas k
 « Nightmare Before Christmas S

artist simply paints a background. But in this hind of animation, the crew

his vision, incorporating our ideas, ” Cachuela notes. “We give him a vari-

in a scene. The storyboard department is basically Henry Selick's draw-

ill preparing storyboards for scenes like the Once the storyboard is complete, it is photographed by a movie cam-

doors) or opposite (where Lock, Shock, and

Barrel appear at Santa’s door), the artists porary dialogue soundtrack and gradually transformed into a real movie.
do much more than simply draw a picture. As each scene is animated, it is cut into the story reel in place of the
“We're really writing with our drawings,’’
explains Jorgen Klubien. The panels not only sketches. Thus the filmmakers always have a reasonable facsimile of their
tell the story, but give information about
staging, props, and camera angles. pleted animation. As Selick puts it, “You kind of make the film twice.”
S Nightmare Before Christmas 4

®l0 0s>
a Nightmare Before Christmas a

«102®
$ Nightmare Before Christmas S

®104®
k Nightmare Before Christmas k

®10S%
 $ Nightmari Before Christmas £

There are several drawings for every set In

post-Halloween celebration (right) to the
Real World interiors on Christmas Eve (op-
a single prop (like the stocks below) in line
first, using the medium-point felt-tip pen
that Tim Burton favors. If the line drawing
is approved by Henry Selick, it is photo¬
copied, and the artist works with markers

To force himself into drawing things in surprising ways, Asbury,

who is right-handed, started drawing with his left hand. “That’s when I
started getting it,” he recalls. “It made everything just a little unsound.”
“So we all started drawing with our left hands,” Cronhhite inter¬
jects, laughing. “It worked completely. Tt was strange because it's more
tentative and you do end up with things off-balance.” Boes adds that he

tellanyhody!” 7 " ’ ^^ ^
Although the art department devoted considerable attention to in-

tash. By far the most complex aspect of their job was the creation of the

“There’s Christmas Town," says Cronhhite, “which is soft and slop¬

py. It’s Dr. Scuss and bright colors, like candy. And then there’s Hallow-
eenland, which is German Expressionist, odd angles, on-edge, off-kilter. ’’
Ashury adds that while Selick wanted Christmas Town to look soft
and fluffy as if it were made of candy, “he wanted Halloweenland to he
something that, if you ran your hand over it, it would cut you.”
Cronhhite continues, “The Real Wnld is a little hit Bauhaus, as
well as 1950s to ’60s, very rigid, designed isometrically. ” As Asbury puts
it, "With its pastel primary colors, its rigidness and right angles, the Real
World iB almost weirder than Halloweenland.”

®106®
S Nightmare Before Christmas 4
k Nightmari Bjioii Christmas k
 S Nightmare Before Christmas £

ric drawing pads in designing the Real World, the artists made sure that

hind of forced and squat.” Because the artists were formal about the de¬
sign approach, Taylor notes, “the Real World ended up looking weird hy

Boes feels that designing Oogie Boogie's lair was the weirdest expe¬
rience. Selick wanted it to look one way under regular light and a differ¬
ent way under ultraviolet light. To accomplish this dual look, the artists
conducted a series of tests, using mockups huilt hy Boes and painting
Tbis preliminary drawing leads giddily in to them with ultraviolet paints.
the Halloweenland cemetery. The off-beat
monuments jutting at odd angles contrast “ In Oogie Boogie's lair, when the lights are on, you see all these tor¬
ture devices, heavy steel and jagged edges," says Cronkhite. “But when
Real World cemetery (see page 19). the lights go off and the hlack light comes on, it's more naive, sort of

*110*
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

gave the art department the basic style and feeling for Halloweenland and
Christmas Town, hut they had to imagine the Real Wnid and Oogie’s lair
horn the ground up. Still, the odd rigidity of the Real World seems direct-

Adventure, the gothic suhurhia of frankenweenie, the multihued cul-de-

all the nuts and holts, ” comments Taylor, “hut he’s right in there in beep¬
ing an overall look, an overall feel. He’s quite involved in the story, hut
with the day-to-day things, the hands-on stuff, he seems to he confident
i Nightmare Before Christmas 6

®112®
A Nightmare Before Christmas a

The thonging noture of Oogie's loir con be

overview in noturol light (left), to on eorly
idee for block light (of polite, middle left),
to color designs for the snoke ond spider
stew (top) ond o rendering of the “crusher"
in block light (obove). The other drawings
(opposite) show Oogie's fight with jock—
the supersoturoted red-o nd-oronge lighting
« Nightmare Before Christmas £

*114*
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

SET AND PROP DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION ^

jtory, and tke directives of Tim Burton and Henry Selick, tke artists are

tastical set, tkey send tkeir vision down to Bo Henry, tke set construc¬
tion supervisor, and ke gets it kuilt.
Visit a live-action movie set and, ckances are, everytking will seem
flimsy and temporary. Buildings tkat look perfectly sokd on screen may
be only tkin fronts of plaster or canvas. Tke opposite is true on tke Night¬
mare set—presenting a ckallenge to tke set construction department.
“You kuild tkese incredikly detailed, kigkly sculptural, fanciful
sets,” Bo Henry says, “kut undemeatk tkey re screwed and cross-kraced
and ugly—kecause tke sets are literally akused and misused ky animators
and camerapeople. ” Tke sets kave to ke strong enougk to kang ligkts on Even a relatively simple set, like the one for
and to support tke weigkt of animators, wko may kave to crawl onto a set sturdy, heavily braced wooden framework
to move tke puppets. Moreover, every set kas to ke rock solid, kecause if
anytking were to jiggle, slip, move, or kreak, tke skot would ke lost. If tke of high-density particleboard, so the choroc-
set doesn't kold up, Henry underlines, "it may ke twelve or fourteen ters eon be screwed tightly in place.
kours’ work for tke animator down tke drain."
To tke okserver it seems surprising tkat in many instances tkis
dauntingly kigk-teck work is done witkout intricate klueprints. General¬
ly, Henry receives a drawing from tke art department. After consulting
witk Selick and supervising animator Brie Leigkton to find out precise¬
ly kow tke set will ke used, set designer Gregg Olsson kuilds a model.
Henry and Olsson determine wkere tke camera needs to go, wkere tke set

*113*
i Nightmare Before Christmas S
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

can break apart For various camera angles witkin tke skot, wkere ligkts
Lave to kang, and wkere trap doors (For access) can ke kidden.
“Tke camera is five or six times kigger tkan tke characters,” Henry
points out, “so tke set has to ke kuilt specifically to allow tke camera to

bide a ligkt kekind a column or place it overkead. Here, a ligkt is kigger

tkan tke entire set, so we kave to plan on tkat from tke keginning.”
Once Henry and Olsson kave figured out tke logistics, a detailed
model and some relatively simple construction drawings are sent to tke
shop. Tke working drawings are little more tkan floor plans; tke skop
technicians pull most of tke detail From Olsson’s model and tke art de¬
partment's illustrations.
“Tkis is a young crew," Henry says, “wkick is great since tkey don’t
kave tke normal expectations tkat a more senior crew migkt kave. Tkey
don't ask, ‘Wkere are tke drawings?’ Tkey just take tkis stuff and kuild

it out of tkeir own keads, using just some fairly open-ended information.
In a project filled witk ckallenges, Bo Henry remembers one set tkat
seemed kotk unusual and impossible. Early in tke film, wken Jack
Skellington is wandering in tke forest, ke discovers a group of kokday
trees. He is drawn to one witk a brigktly colored Ckristmas tree door.
As ke reackes for tke skiny doorknob, we see tke forest kekind kim re¬
flected in its surface. Tke doorknok and its reflection are on screen for
only a second; few in tke audience suspect kow muck lakor was involved
in attaining tke skot.
“Tke crew kad to work inside an eigkt-by-eigkt-by-eigkt-foot box
for two weeks, creating a forced perspective image of wkat Jack sees in tke

• 11J*
k Nightmare Before Christmas k

>119'
£ Nightmare Before Christmas i
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

epoxy ptitty. To create pie pans in volume, one was molded in plastic, and
tke rest were vacuum-formed from this original. The crust was also
sculpted from epoxy putty, then a mold was made so that multiples would
he available.
Santa's long “naughty-or-nice” list looks like paper, hut that would
he impractical in stop-motion animation, where nothing can move even
slightly between shots. Instead, Romanauski sandwiched a sheet of alu¬
minum foil between two very thin sheets of paper. The list looks like pa¬
per, hut it remains flexible and stays exactly where the animator wants it.
Again and again Romanauski is challenged by the task of making
6ure the props are both beautiful and durable. "A lot of the props are spi¬
dery, tall, thin kinds of things,” Romanauski explains. "They're beau¬
tiful, hut they may not he practical. We have to make sure they're
animator-proof, if Santa is sitting on a chair with toothpick-sized legs,
it’s obviously not going to last very long.”
Romanauski relishes some of the really odd props that Nightmare
has given him the chance to make. "In one proposed scene, the Evil Sci¬
entist is disappointed in his creation, Sally,” notes Romanauski. “He
decides that he wants a new creation, one that works better. He uses a
machine that's a kind of head selector. It’s a spider machine with eight
legs, and on the end of each one is a cup that holds a skull. It rotates and
drops a skull into position. It's a weird rig.”

larly W^eriTIcenes-are provided'by painter B. J. Fredrickson and

her crew. “They are responsible for the textural finishes that are applied
to these surfaces,” Bo Henry explains. “For example, they have painted

*111*
 « Nightmare Before Christmas S

(.WXftMj)
« Nightmare Before Christmas S

®134®
4 Nightmare Before Christmas S

•126®
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

1- E

®127®
 S Nightmare Before Christmas S

maker Blair Clark. “The designers usually give us a sculpture or, tetter
yet, a full-scale sketck of the front and side views. And they tell us what
it has to do. There are a lot of characters in this show that have to do a lot
e thing
for an armature is that it must he able to
hold whatever pose the character is put in without falling over or moving.

sudden jumps. "You want to make the puppet as easy to animate as pos¬
sible,” indicates Clark.
After detailed blueprints are drawn up, the machine shop makes the
joints and parts needed to build high-tech, movable skeletons. Multiple
copies are made of some of the most-used joints so that the armature
department can uBe them like incredibly intricate and expensive Tinker-

readily oxidizing foam and the whole thing is baked in an oven. The
armature would rust if it wasn’t plated," he says.

in the business,” according to Clark. St. Amand faced unusual chal¬

lenges with the Nightmare armatures, especially in building Jack’s skel¬
eton. Director Henry Selick has nothing but praise for St. Amand’s
of a puppet like the Harlequin Demon (be- work: “He was able to make the smallest ankles, the smallest feet that
were still able to support Jack’s height. Any lesser armature maker would
not have been able to pull it off; Jack would have been much thicker,
joints gets loosened, so it is constantly sent much clunkier-looking.”
back for retightening (below right). Oogie Boogie presented almost the opposite type of challenge. “He's

•128*
 k Nightmare Before Christmas a

bo tig,” exclaims Clark, “one of tke kiggest armatures I've ever seen.” Chris Rand (top left) measures parts with a
And tig means strong. In tke words of sculptor Norm DeCarlo, “You micrometer to find out exactly how much to
could tow a truck witk Oogie’s armature. ” machine off the metal, while Blair Clark
turns the lathe. The armature for Jack (top
At tke same time Oogie kad to ke akle to sknk and slide for kis
dance around Santa Claus. To get Oogie to undulate in tkis way, Clark not much thicker. Unlike Santa and Oogie,
made “puskers” (little metal rods witk klunted ends).

“We made a total of eigkt Jacks, ” says Clark. “Most were regular size, kut

memkers—Clark, Ckeney, St. Amand, Ckris Rand, Eken Stromquist,

made for tkis skow," marvels Clark, not quite kekeving it kimself. "I
worked on Robocop II and we kad nine armatures for tke kad guy and four
for Rokocop and tkat was a kig skow. Tkis is just insane!”

®12 9®
$ Nightmare Before Christmas S

>130®'
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

jock’* expressions range from downcast to

delighted to furious. To capture the variety
of emotions in the drawing (top left), as well
TWcn jn tke tones. But tiling as the lip movements for his speaking and
orderly on a stop-motion film. For Jokn Reed, tke mold-making su singing, Jack is outfitted with about ISO
replaceable heads. Shelley Daniels (top
planned, and an armature made. Tke character would ke sculpted over tke right) sculpts the stitches end slight varia¬
armature, tken molded, cast, and painted. Tke animator would animate tions in one of the mouths. The process is
it, tke film would ke developed, and tke movie skown. “In reality/ Reed repeated for each head, before multiples
admits, “it doesn’t work tkat way at all. All tkese steps kave to kappen Jeff Brewer (above) drills holes to hold the
more or less simultaneously, if people don’t communicate well witk eack
otker, tken it’s like tke game of Ckinese Wkispers, wkere everykody
interprets sometking differently all tke way down tke line.”
For Nightmare ’ s ckaracter designers, tke original inspiration and tke
biggest ckallenge came from tke same source: Tim Burton. Tke drawings
ke kad made at Disney were kigkly evocative: spooky, funny, creepy, weird
—wondrously imaginative. But wken it came to translating kis drawings
into real, tkree-dimensional ckaracters, tkere was sometimes troukle.

®131®
k Nightmare Beroii Christmas k

®13 3®
« Nightmare Before Christmas S

■al 3 4 ®)
k Nightmare Before Christmas k

®13S®
 S Nightmare Before Christmas $

be molded and tested again before I could put all the texture on it. All this
was very time-consuming" (and in the end the shot was cut from the film).
Once the characters have been sculpted, a mold is created so mul¬
tiple puppets can he cast. The armature is placed in the mold and foam
latex is injected, surrounding the armature and filling out the structure
inside. The result is a replica of the character with a steel “skeleton” inside.
Solly's armature is pot inside the mold (top The puppet then moves up to the character fabrication department
left), so the foam latex coven it. Her hands for its final grooming and dressing. The first step is to remove waste ma¬
(top right) ore all cast separately, so they terial left over from the casting process and correct imperfections in the
can easily be replaced. When the Sally pup¬ foam surface. Called seaming, this requires laying a delicate patch of fine
pet Is first removed from the mold, there is a latex over the mold lines and any imperfections. The surface of each pup¬
pet is cleaned with alcohol to prepare it for painting. Some puppets are
“flashing"—and this waste material has to
be cut off (bottom left). The next step is to painted with a urethane-based paint that forms a flexible shin on the pup¬
take wet latex and seal any imperfections, pet. Others are treated with a rubber cement and solvent mixture that
especially along the seams, as Lauren Vogt temporarily opens the surface of the foam, so the pigment adheres firmly.
is doing with the Behemoth (bottom right). “Our paints have to be very sturdy," emphasizes Bonita DeCarlo,
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

c Water fakricaKon superior. "Tke process of animation is very rougk Based on tke color study (top left) ond tke
“sculpt” (tap right), the completed elf (bot¬
on the puppets, so the stronger we raahe the paint joh, the better the pup- tom right) Is one piece of foom latex (except
pets will kold up tkrougk a numker of skots. for tke legs), with a wire armature inride.
Tke lakricatora also use a variety of materials wken finisking tke Members af the fabrication department,
ckaracters. Tkey kave a large selection of clotk fakrics, natural and syn- including Mike Wick, Groce Murphy, ond
tketic furs, and fakric markers. “We also use pigmented powders,” says Fueundo Robaudi (bottom left, left to right),
DeCarlo, “to ackieve tke grapkic look tkat Nightmare strives for.” repairing old ones.
Some of the Nightmare characters have their clothes merely painted
on, kut tke major puppets kave tkeir own wardrokes. Yet nolking is pre¬
cisely wkat it seems in tkis stop-motion world. Just kecause clotkes look
like tkey're made of clotk is no reason to assume tkey are.

«1H»
 e Nightmare Before Christmas $

Following the plan in front of her, Chrystene

Ells (top) stuffs cotton balls into Oogie
Boogie, providing padding between the
armature and the skin. Later (above right),
Jennings works behind her. Using a needle,
Jennings (above) pushes hair into the Wolf-
man (also called the Werewolf). Sally fright)

®13 8®
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

“When it was decided that Sally needed a dress," Bonita DeCarlo

mentions, "we had to plan out the stages of the creation of that dress very

the dress onto. The dress itself is made up of a silkscreened pattern that

pet and her movements. “When Sally walks or lifts her leg," DeCarlo says,
“the dress moves with her. It even has a hit of memory. It remembers
where it was and falls hack into that place so the animator doesn't have

Hair presents a challenge. DeCarlo notes, "Sally’s hair is made of

Santa Claus, on the other hand, has a heard made with a wired foam core
Sally’! faces (top left), while Elise Robertson
called punching, which requires pushing individual hairs into the surface tightens a screw on the head that Sally’s
of the foam with a special needle device. We’ve used a number of differ- face pops onto (bottom /eft). Sally also has
motors can change to increase her range of
While the armature lets a puppet’s body and limbs he articulated for expression. Using a toothpick, Mike Wick
carefullyglues strands of hair into Santa’s
beard (blow).

®139®
£ Nightmare Before ChristmasS

lias eleven expressions. “They're like masks," says John Reed. ‘‘Her eyes

Faces aren’t tke puppets’ only replaceable parts. Bonita DeCarlo

arms, which can he quickly exchanged for damaged or broken pieces. We

also have replacement eyelids with delicate lashes. We have thousands of
those. One person spends a lot of time making sure we never run low."
Fabricating the puppets is only half the joh. After each character

break, replacement faces chip, foam wears out (particularly around the
joints), and fabric tears. Light-colored puppets like Sally or the Evil Sci¬
entist get dirty quickly and can he used only for a shot or two before they
must he returned to the mold department for recasting.
“There are approximately sixty puppets on the sets every week,"

that will he up the next week. There are 227 puppets in this Mm. That's
k Nightmare Shore Christmas a
S Nightmare Before Christmas $

®142®
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

ANIMATION AND CAMERAWORK

All the wort of creating storyboards and sketches and designing sets
and characters leads to the cramped, underlit cubicles that serve as anima¬
tion stages. While all the departments continue to have input, the anima-

and never notice the slightest progress. Every new position the puppet is
placed in is so libe the one before that the sequence barely registers to the
human eye. Stop-motion animators are miracle workers: technicians,
artists, actors, engineers, all rolled into one. They have to bring original¬
ity and ingenuity to their work but at the same time make sure that their
The storyboard (below) guides Owen Klatte
Many different animators worked with Jack Skellington. For exam¬
ple, Loyd Price did an early scene where Jack tosses a coin to some musi¬ quence in which Jack instructs Lock, Shock,
and Barrel to kidnap Sandy Claws. But, as
cians, while Tim Hittle animated most of Jack’s next appearance, when K/otte explains, while working on a shot, the
be sings his lament. Yet in the final film, Jack appears as a single person¬ on/mator fleshes out the storyboard, often
ality. “Every character has its own unique repertoire that each animator "adding gags to make it fun."

®143
 « Nightmare Before Christmas S

Oogie’s lair is seen from different angles in

both normal and block (ultraviolet) light
Before animating Oogie for the camera, Eric
Leighton (above and right) rehearses the
himself to get a feel for how the body should
move. On another set (opposite bottom),
Santa under ultraviolet light. And on yet
another stage (opposite, top), Rich Lehmann
wires some lights for a shot of Jack and
Oogie’s fight

3144®
k Nightmare Before Christmas k

®14S&
S Nightmare Before Christmas $

“Not only must they all perform it, hut they must make it believable that
it’s the same guy throughout, regardless of their personal styles.”

spend a week bringing it to life. Each second of action must be broken

ably easier than it really is.

Glocka. "Something happens where you start looking at time in a dif¬

ferent way. You automatically start breaking action down in a slower time
frame. It’s like acting but in slow motion. You get into a rhythm and are
kind of performing it but very slowly. Concentration is really important. ”
To get an idea off 1
at the end of products
tors working simultaneously. Yet their co
only seventy seconds of finished 61m per week.
Leighton notes, “On a standard Disney animated feature, the ave

®146fc
 A Nightmare Before Christmas a

five and a kalf to six seconds. We kave even done ten-, fifteen-, twenty-
second skots onNightmare Before Christmas, wkick is a pretty risky tking

for each frame on a twelve-day-longshot

se of MTV—to make tkings very quick and
fast. But Henry Selick wanted to get more of a feeling of a kve-action
musical into tkis film, to get long, elegant skots into it."
Nightmare demands longer skots kecause tke camera is always on

akout intwenty-fourtk-of-a-second increments, filming tkem witk fluid

dustrial rokot tkat revolutionized tke auto industry! Tke lengtk of tke skot
and direction and speed of tke camera movement are programmed into a

sis ketween left krain and rigkt krain," claims director of pkotograpky

®147®
S Nightmare Before Christmas S

■a!48®
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

Pete Kozackik. “You Have to know wkat tke kits and kytcs are doing, kut
you also kave to kave a feel for tke quality of tke skot. Tke mocon is used
to enkance tke image ratker tkan impress witk tecknical acumen.
Some camera movement, kowever, is still done tke old-faskioned
way. Wken tke lengtk of tke skot kas keen determined, tke numker of
frames to ke exposed is figured out and a long piece of tape is placed along
tke route of tke camera movement. A mark is made on tke tape, and as
eack frame is exposed, tke camera is moved forward one notck. “It’s a kit
more limiting, ” says Kozackik “You can’t ke quite as sculptural or as spe-
cite about tke feel of tke camera movement.
Tke tape method is used mainly for camera pans or tilts. “When we

more expeditious to let the robot do it. It’s just not as likely to screw up." Antiton, Scott (helow) odjusts lock's posi¬
One reason each shot takes so long to complete on this film is that tion ofter he kot fallen into the arms of on
angel in the Real World cemetery (tee the
the animators make extensive tests before shooting the “hero” shot (the tel at left end storyboard for the tong “Poor
actual take). “We may shoot four or five tests on a shot," Eric Leighton Jock” on bottom). This complicated se¬
indicates. “We wait untd the camera crew's done with tke lighting for the quence took months to complete (os Scott
day, and if we have an hour we 11 shoot a fast test on tens or twenties. describes on page 153).
 S Nightmare Before Christmas 4

In animating the scene where Jack asks Sally Skooting on “tens or twenties” means tkat eack major pose of tke
to sew his Santa outfit (above left and right), puppet is keld for ten or twenty frames—wkat tke animators call a “pop
Owen Klatte tries to convey, through the
tkrougk.” Tke idea is to test out tke Mocking of tke scene, ckeck out tke
ligkting, and anticipate proklems for tke kero skot, wkick is “skot on
ones," witk one movement for eack frame of film exposed.
any "pops” or sudden jumps, Klatte refers to “Since we’re not doing a cel-animated film," stresses Leigkton, "we
a video screen (at far left above), which can t go kack and correct a drawing. We start on frame one and end up at
shows the previous frame. tke end of tke skot. We can only go tkrougk it forward. You just don’t
know wkat you ’re going to run into until you’ve worked your way tkrougk
tke skot a few times.”
Most of tke animators agree tkat tke extensive testing is one of tke
kest tkings akout working on tke film. It is one of tke elements tkat
makes Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas a masterpiece of stop-

“Ive never keen allowed to do tests like I do kere," says animator

Antkony Scott. “Usually tkey give you your kit and say, ‘Just go for it.
Do your kest. And tkere’s no time to go kack and reskoot or test tkings
you’re not sure akout. Tkis project gives us tke freedom to do tkat.”

age device witk a video screen to kelp keep track of tkings. “Witk tkis sys¬
tem,” explains Owen Klatte, "I can fkp ketween tke previous two frames
I skot and tke current frame I’m working on. I can ckeck kow far a ckar-

tke rigkt direction. Sometimes I draw knes directly on tke video screen,
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

an outline of the character, so I can see over a course of, say, twenty
frames, bow the increments have changed.”
A particularly tricky problem on this project is making sure that one
scene flows easily into the next. Animator Mike Belzer points out, “If you

tke woods, those might be shot six months apart because those are two
totally different sets.”

Pat Sweeney peers through the camera

six months to do that. So we had two identical sets built and used two to check the scene where Jack returns to
Jack puppets. Angie Glocka animated the first half of the song, and I
animated the second half. But it appears to be one continuous sequence covering Christmas. He not only makes sure
the framing is right, but also looks for any
The sequence in which Jack awakens in a cemetery after being shot to the set, such as touching up the paint on

•1S1»
4 Nightmare Before Christmas 4

®1S2®>
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

cept for some Zero skots, which Richard Zimmerman animated). Al¬
though it’s only about three minutes long, it took months to complete.
“I hegan work on it in October 1992 and continued through the end of
March 1993," Scott says.
In this scene, the only characters are Jack and his ghost dog Zero.
To make Zero look transparent, he is sometimes double-exposed onto the

shot with a “beam splitter," a two-way mirror that is set in front of the
camera lens at a forty-five-degree angle. With the beam splitter; Zero is
animated away from the main set and shot against a black background,

Confusing? It gets worse. While animating a scene with Zero and

“Because we were using the beam splitter,” Scott recalls, “I had to ani¬
mate Zero on the blacked-out set and Jack on the cemetery set. Zero was
actually several feet away, but through the camera he appeared in the
cemetery. We had a video monitor right next to the camera so I could
Anything can change once the first tests of
acters relate well." a shot are reviewed. After the filming of
“At one point," Scott continues, “Jack grabs a hat out of the dog’s Santa reading his list got underway (below),
it was decided that Mrs. Claus (who is only
mouth. Now the dog is transparent and the hat is real, and there’s a frame glimpsed in the background) looked too elf-
where the hat has to switch over from Zero’s mouth into Jack’s hand. like. Fabrication was called in to snip away
That was the toughest shot I’ve done. It took five days. Five long days.” and change the shape of the puppet

®1S3®
£ Nightmare Before Christmas S

®1S4®
 A Nightmare Before Christmas a

Nightmare's weird characters offered many challenges to the ani¬ Mike Johnson (left) helps jet up the shot
mators. Trey Thomas describes the huge Oogie Boogie, for example, as thot leads into "Sally’s Song as Justin Kohn
“like no other puppet I have ever worked with." Yet one character every¬
body thought would he trouble was anything but: Jack Skellington. A she walks through the crowd in this scene,
device that moves the puppet). For her ac
balance. Jack is impossibly tall and thin, with tiny feet, thin ankles, and
outrageously long arms. A puppet, in short, to give any animator pause.
Owen Klatte reflects, ‘‘Jack is definitely not as bad as I thought he
was going to he. He’s very tall and you have certain problems with him,
but overall he has a lot of movement, a lot of freedom. ”

Skellington,” claims Mike Belzer. “He is this beautiful, thin armature

that has virtually no foam binding.”
“He’s the easiest puppet in the world,” agrees Angie Glocka. “He’s
like a walking armature. He's the best, most fun character, which is real¬
ly lucky for us because he’s the star of the show.”
To make sure Jack and everything else look just right, the animators
and camera crew constantly review their shots with Selick and Stan Webb,

©155®
i Nightmare Before Christmas S

the film s editor. Each morning Wfebb cuts the previous day’s footage into
the rough cut" of the film, replacing earlier shots or storyboards, so the
new take can he seen in context, with what comes before and after
Although every scene is carefully storyboarded beforehand, there
are still changes once shooting begins. “The timing may not be right,”
notes Webb, “or something may not he clear.” One example he gives is
the scene where Sally picks up a bottle of fog juice: "We thought in the
storyboard that tfas just one shot. But once we filmed it, it was hard to
read. We used a long shot and cut to a closeup of the bottle, so you can
read the words ‘fog juice.' But mostly it’s the other way; usually we over¬
storyboard and then find we need less animation to make the point.”
volved at the filming stage, the process is one of con-
me together.

•s>lS6&
k Nightmare Shore Christmas k

®157<&
e Nightmare Before Christmas 6
 A Nightmare Before Christmas A

ADDING SOUND AND SCORING

Creating tke soundtrack for Nightmare Before Christmas and blend¬
ing it with the him was a complicated process. To make the puppets seem
to actually speak and sing, all the dialogue had to be recorded before film¬
ing began. This waB especially important for Jack and Sally, who had
numerous replacement heads, each with the mouth articulating a differ¬
ent sound. The animators had to know which head to use for each frame.
Here the computer helped. Dan Mason, the track reader, analyzed
every frame of a character’s speech on the soundtrack and matched it
with a picture of the puppet’s head from a menu of possibilties on his
computer. He then printed out a “head” script for the animators.
During filming, the script continued to evolve, so sometimes dia¬
logue had to be rerecorded later. Or there might be changes in a charac¬
ter’s style. Chris Lebenzon, who helped with sound dubbing, cites Jack's
speaking voice, some of which was rerecorded to make Jack livelier.
Finishing the music was one of the last stages of film production.
Although music editor Bob Badami created a temporary soundtrack for

cal score, the “incidental” or “background” music, until the very end.

an animated film, so the score can be composed while the animation is

in the works. But in stop-motion animation, Elfman explains, “There’s
either finished footage or there's no footage. There’s no temporary foot-

result, I couldn’t score the movie until all the animation was done.”
£ Nightmare Before Christmas £

Although it was an “intense pressure” joh, Elfman had a head start.

He had already composed some thirty minutes of songs for the seventy-
minute movie, cutting his joh almost in half. Moreover, the main musi¬
cal themes already existed in song form, so he could adapt those themes to
the dramatic needs of the underscore. “There was so much thematic ma¬
terial already there,” he recalls, “that creating significant new thematic
material would have heen a detriment to the film. The main problem was
choosing which material I wanted to rely on most heavily for the score.
Many of Elfman’s most beautiful and powerful scores were com¬
posed for and recorded by huge orchestras with nearly 100 instruments.
The dark grandeur of Batman (1989), the melancholy loveliness of Ed-
ward Scissorhands (1990), and the Gershwinesque lushness oiDick Tracy
(1990)—all Elfman scoreB—recall the majesty of the great film com¬
posers of the past he most admires: Bernard 1 Ierrmann, Alfred Newman,
and Miklos Rozsa. The score for Nightmare, however, is smaller and more

very punchy, old-fashioned sound on this,” Elfman says. "I wanted it to

sound (even though it’s in stereo) as if it were recorded in 1951."
While working with the orchestra, Boh Badami notes, it was impor¬
tant to keep the music in close synch with the picture. So a computer was
used to develop a sophisticated metronome the musicians could follow,
creating the illusion that the sound and images were made together.

$16 0®
* Nightmare Beeore Christmas S

Scientist brings the reindeer skeletons to life, Baker animated the elec¬
tricity coming out of the electrodes, “zapping the reindeer into life."
For these kinds of effects, the drawn animation has to interact with

into drawings. “I have to wait until they’re finished shooting their pup¬
pet animation,” Baker explains. “Then I get a work print from them,
which has to he projected onto an animation stand and rotoscoped—
traced, frame by frame—-so I can animate around the character.”

The drawing is then projected directly onto the set. “They shoot the pup¬
pet doing its action,” Baker says, “then they hack-wind the film and set

the postproduction process. For example, after Baker drew a series of

snowflakes in hlack ink on white paper, they were photographed in nega¬
tive and combined with the scene, where the snowflakes are seen as white.

from a tower;” Baker notes. “Most of the things I’ve done are in black-
and-white; then they add color later with gels or an optical process."
The effects animators’ work is not meant to he noticed by the audi¬
ence. Take the dramatic sequence in which Jack, dressed as a scarecrow,

^162®
 k Nightmare Before Christmas &

catches fire. Here the three-dimensional and two-dimensional elements

hlend seamlessly. The part where Jack lights the torch was filmed with real
flames. But when he brings the torch to his mouth, effects animation
came into play. The flames that dance across his body as he somersaults
into the fountain are drawings added to the picture in postproduction.
Yet, because everything else is three-dimensional, the flames seem equal¬
ly real. That is the power of this kind of effects animation.

^163^
S Nightmare Before Christmas $

®164®
 k Nightmare Beeore Christmas k

THE FINISHED PRODUCT

Nightmare Before Christmas took well over a decade to grow from
Tim Burton's original poem and sketches to tke groundbreaking feature
film. But for everyone wko kad a kand in its production, tke wait was def¬
initely wortkwkile.
"It’s a very rick film,” emphasizes sculptor Norm DeCarlo, “tkere's
so muck going on. Tim and Henry not only asked for but demanded a
kigk level of acuity in detail and design. irking on tkis picture kas been
notking but fun. Tkere’s nothing better than to be able to stretch your
imagination and challenge your abilities.”
Animator Angie Glocka adds, "I think people will really like tkis
movie, particularly if they are Tim Burton fans. It’s a really sweet film.
It looks a little scary, but it isn’t forbidding. I think it's a good kid’s film.

For Tim Burton, tkis fdm represents tke satisfaction of realizing a

dream that kas occupied kirn for a third of his life. "You have to care

characters are very personal to me. Sometimes you're sitting there draw-

your subconscious. Tkis film kas all tke elements I wanted for it: tke hol¬
idays (I love kotk Halloween and Christmas), beautiful but misunder¬
stood characters, drama, sadness, optimism. When I watch it now, after
having kad it in me for so long,” he Bighs deeply, “I love it.”

•165*
4 Nightmari Before Christmas 4

®168®
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

TIM BURTON
Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas represents an unusual
collaboration. It definitely reflects Burton’s initial vision and skows tke

Tke two men first formed a bond out of tbeir frustration while work¬
ing at Disney Studios in tke early eighties. “ Neither Henry nor I was real¬
ly in our element at Disney,” Burton says. “I did some design work for
The Black Cauldron (1985) that never got used and worked on about ten
projects that never got off the ground. Henry was also working on a lot of
projects that never got made. He couldn’t take it there anymore. So we
struck up a friendship." Burton laughs, “A ‘Where the hell are we?’ sort
of thing.”
“In the art and film world, ” Selick explains, “you find out that there
are five people out there who are very much like yourself, and you’re either

another. Fortunately, Tim Burton and I get along well; we share a lot of Burton’s vision may be unusual, but it Is the
opposite of chilling. When, for example,
borhood—in our sensibilities.” lack wanders alone in despair through the
Although little of Burton's early work made it into Disney feature forest (below), he seems all too human.

point of view. The first, Vincent (1982), is a stop-motion film about a lit¬
tle boy (who strongly resembles Burton) who is obsessed with horror sto¬
ries. Vincent is narrated by Burton's hero, Vincent Price.
“It was a weird time at Disney, and some things slipped through the
cracks,” Burton notes. “I think Vincent was just something they let slide.”

room and draw whatever you wanted. ” It gave him a chance to explore and
play with some of his ideas. But, he adds, “After a period of time it felt
like I was locked in the room.”
Before Burton left Disney, he made a second film, Franken weenie
(1984), which was intended to accompany a re-release of Disney's clas¬
sic Pinocchio (1940). Frankenweenie is about a little boy whose dog is hit
by a car and killed. The hoy revives the dog, Frankenstein-style. Like
Vincent, Frankenweenie was designed by Burton's friend Rick Heinrichs,
who has worked as a visual consultant on all of Burton's movies except
Batman. Filmed in black-and-white, this live-action short is both won¬
derfully funny and oddly disturbing—something that can be said of
most, if not all, of Burton’s subsequent films.
<6 Nibhtmare Before Christmas £

“When Disney saw Frankenweenie," Burton laughs, “they freaked

out. The company was at a real transitional stage, and everybody was
more afraid than usual. That's when I left."
A wide grin spreads across Burton’s face. "So now,” he says, "over
ten years later, Frankenweenie gets released on video and Nightmare
Before Christmas—which the studio originally rejected—gets made.”
From Vincent and.Re-wee's Big Adventure, through Edward Scis-
sorhands and Batman, to Nightmare Before Christmas, the leading char¬
acters in Burton’s films are outsiders, misfits who live in worlds of their
own. “There are things about me you can never know,” Pee-wee Herman
tells his would-he girlfriend Dottie. "Things you wouldn’t understand.
Things you couldn’t understand. Things you shouldn’t understand. I’m
a loner, Dottie. A rebel.”
Some of Burton's characters, like Pee-wee, are happy in the bizarre

«170®
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

Whether he is marveling at a snowflake In

Christmas Town (opposite) or trying to get
ducting experiments in his tower (left). Jack
Skellington has a boyish charm—“a lot of
possion and energy,” as Burton puts It
Burton's many drawings of Jack (such as

little worlds they inhabit. Others, like Nightmare's Jack Skellington, are
consumed with a longing for something different, something better.
Edward Scissorhands longs to embrace the girl he loves, hut can never do
so because of the razor-sharp shears at the ends of his arms. Bruce Wayne
is driven by his own dark obsessions to dress in a bat suit and roam the
forbidding streets of Gotham City, doling out vigilante justice. Even

greater community, in the end they have only themselves.

Burton indicates that be is saddened by “society's tendency to cat¬
egorize everyone.” In part that’s why he loves movie monsters like King

feel for these characters,” he confesses. “They’re not bad; people are tor¬
turing them, attacking them.”
Jack Skellington is Burton’s way of reversing the movie monster

always looking for something. That’s why I love him; he’s looking for

*171*
£ Nightmare Before Christmas £

HENRY SELICK
Altkougk tke very title of tke Him-—Tim Burton s Nightmare Before

mains a key creative voice. “Tim Burton gave us a great story, great ckar-
acters, a mood, a look, and we were akle to turn it into a film,” S ekek says.
“I frkink Burtons influence is okvious,” states supervising anima¬
tor Eric Leigkton. “But tkerc s a lot more of Ilenry Selick s vision in tkis
movie. To me, it looks more similar to some of tke films I ve worked on
witk Henry tkan to Batman."
In tke eyes of co-producer Katkleen Gavin, Nightmare is decidedly
a joint effort. Ske points out tkat even tkougk tkis was a very special pro¬
ject for Burton, ke entrusted it to anotker artist, fkat in itself is a strong
trikute to Selick’s akikties.
Sekck’s name is already familiar to many stop-motion connois¬
seurs. Nightmare is only tke latest in a long kne of keautiful, sometimes
surreal, sometimes downrigkt peculiar, films tkat ke kas directed. Most
notakle is a strange and intriguing skort called Slow Boh in the Lower
Dimensions (1990). Included in tke Twenty-tliird InternationalTournee
of Animation, tkis film was a major step forward creatively for Sekck.
Selick explains, “I worked muck more kands-on on all my films ke-
fore Slow Boh. Tkey were skort films (Seepage, witk life-size stop-motion

©1 ? J*
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

at every stage, Selick was at the studio every

day overseeing work on the film: approving
sketches (like the one for a Halloween toy
opposite, far left), checking finished pup¬
pets (like the Mayor, below), and—most

hen Jack reappears after they thought he

figures; Phases, on animal metamorpkosis exercise) and pieces for MTV

(Haircut M, Mask M, Xerox M, etc.), on wkick I would write, produce,
direct, storykoard, edit, kuild sets and puppets, and often animate, design,
ligkt, and make tke coffee. On Slow Boh I took a kig step up in tke art
of delegating."
Slow Boh is, in a way, a direct ancestor of Nightmare Before Christ¬
mas. Tkey skare an eerie keauty, an eccentric point of view, and a kigk
level of tecknical excellence. Tkis isn’t surprising since, as Selick notes,
“Tke core group tkat did Slow Boh is tke group tkat’s doing tkis movie.”
Supervising animator Eric Leigkton, set supervisor Bo Henry, director
of pkotograpky Pete Kozackik, editor Stan Wekk, mold-making super¬
visor Jokn Reed, animators Trey Tkomas and Owen Klatte, and model
makers Bill Boes and Merrick Ckeney worked on kotk films.
Selick recalls kis first impression of Nightmare, wken Burton was
developing tke idea at tke Disney Studios. “It was one of tke most inter¬
esting projects I’d ever seen,” ke says. “Tim drew a sequence of Jack
Skellington walking in tke forest, discovering tke secret doors to tke kol-
iday worlds, and Rick Heinricks designed some sculptures of Jack and kis
dog Zero, wkick were just keautiful. So tke keginnings of tke film were

5173®
6 Nightmare Before Christmas 6

In 1990 Selick was approached by Heinrichs and told that, after a

decade in cold storage, Nightmare was going to he produced. According
to Burton, Selich was “the only person I could think of who could pull
this thing together. He is an artist, a wonderful animator."
Directing a stop-motion animated film is very different from di-

never gets to yell, “Action" or “Cut.” For another the stop-motion direc¬
tor doesn’t work directly with the actors—only with the artists who make

In the initial months of production, Selick spent his days going

over the script with the story department, translating the script into sto¬
ryboards, and discussing with various artists every aspect of the film’s
drama and design. “Very often,” he says, “I’d have people do fifty or a
hundred drawings of a sequence. Then I’d go hack, rework it, pull shots,
shift them around. When I agreed on the sequence we’d shoot the draw¬
ings on him and edit those. Then we’d redraw and rework the sequence
and start all over again.”
At the same time the characters were being designed, and the sets,
props, color, and lighting were being developed. Selick’s job involved

most minute detail. Throughout, Selick constantly referred to Burton’s

original drawings, which influenced any new characters being designed.

U)174<&
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

He also worked closely with Heinrichs on the visual design of the film.
As design turned into production, Selick’s joh got far more com¬
plex. Every morning he screened “dailies” (the previous day’s output),

pleted shots. “There were so many camera stages going at this point,” he
explains, “that I would spend the entire morning looking at shots and
working on various stages of shot development."
In the afternoons Selick initiated discussions of new shots, going
over every facet with the animators, as well as the camera, light, and prop
people. He also made the rounds of every department, offering sugges¬
tions, making decisions, giving orders, asking questions.
“My days were packed," Selick reflects. “The main thing is, I had
my fingers on everything, hut not constantly. My supervisors were so
good that they could carry the hall for a long time. But it was important
that I was at dailies every day, approving or influencing every shot."
The result of Selick's hard work is a brilliant, one-of-a-kind film
that catapults the art of stop-motion animation to a new level. As Selick
puts it, “This is hy far the most ambitious stop-motion animated film
ever done. It has the best budget, the highest caliber of talent, and it’s by
far the most artistically beautiful and interesting. This isn't just puppets;
it’s a whole world. After five minutes the audience will believe in that
world, in the relationships and the story we’re telling.”

^17S ^
£ Nightmare Before Christmas £

®180®
 k Nightmare Before Christmas k

Production
Production Manager: Pkil Lofaro

Production Coordinators: Jill Ruzicka, George Young

Artistic Coordinator: Allison Akkate
Stage Coordinator: Alia Agka
Stage Manager: Rokert Anderson
Assistant to Producer/Director: Gisela Hermeling
Assistant Auditor: Jenny Spamer
Assistant Production Coordinator: Kat Miller
Assistant Artistic Coordinator: Skane Francis
Production Assistants: Susan Alegria, Jon Angle, Tkomas
Buckanan, David Burke, Daniel Campbell, Anne Etkeridge,
David Janssen, Denise Rottina, Betk Sckneider, Kirk Scott,
Arianne Sutnen David Teller

S>189<&