Allison Abbate - producer
Mike Johnson - animation director
Tim Burton (in massive shades with blue lenses) - director
Helena Bonham Carter - the voice of Corpse Bride
Carlos Grangel - character designer.
At either end of the table stand the stars of the film like midget guardians - Corpse Bride on one side and Victor on the other. During the interview neither puppet chooses to contribute.
How difficult is it to obtain the shots you need?
MJ: 'Uh, well that would depend on the complexity of the shot but our goal was to have each animator deliver six seconds of usable footage a week. And if we hit that goal - we're doing well! I think the biggest difference with Corpse Bride would be that we used digital cameras to capture the images. That shouldn't be confused with digital animation - it's still the same process: animated single frame by hand but... we could just turn the shots over much more quickly using digital cameras.'
What's it like working with your real life partner, and how does it differ from working with those who are not immediate family?
HBC: 'Horrible. (Giggles) Bonham Carter. 'I don't think we'll ever work again,'
TB: 'I'm surprised we're sitting next to each other,'.
HBC: 'I think Big Fish was the first thing we did together, when we - in fact I was pregnant with his child. And, er, the first day he just completely ignored me. And Ewan was on set. For small talk he would talk to Ewan, y'know? And Ewan got all the direction and I got, like, 'Well let's move on' type thing.
TB: 'I didn't want to show favouritism,' says Burton .
HBC :'I said to him you can talk to me,' (laughs) Bonham Carter. 'And Tim said he just didn't want to make me seem like a favourite and I said 'Well - I think Ewan wouldn't mind'. And so the next day he was a different person...
TB: 'When you're with somebody you actually want to be more objective,'
Your films always seem to have a thematic relationship with death. Can you tell us about that?
TB: 'Growing up in a sort of culture where death is looked upon as a dark subject - these feelings which create a climate of fear in your life. You look at other cultures like the Mexican Day of the Dead ceremonies where it's dancing skeletons... it just seems like a lot more appropriate way of dealing with that. You know, it's a more positive approach which I think is - for me - a much better way of dealing with life, so you don't go through your life fearful, you can go with a positive feeling all the way up to the end, whatever that is.'
How are the facial features of the models achieved?
TB: 'In Nightmare we used a lot of replacement heads for expression change. In this, all the mechanics are built into the head. You stick a wrench in her ear to make her mouth move and so there's a subtlety and a beauty to these puppets.
What is it about stop motion animation?
TB: 'There's something beautiful about seeing people move these frame by frame and there's something emotional about the medium. And therefore - we're trying to make a kind of more emotional kind of animated film [so it] seemed like the right medium for the project. And I think whether audiences consciously realise it or not they are aware that they're seeing objects moving through space. It just has a presence that CG animation hasn't been able to replicate yet.
And you were working with Johnny Depp once more. Tell us about your working relationship.
TB: 'I think we both treat it like - you know, if it's right and all... you never want to get into a place where you get so complacent with somebody or something that you loose that sort of energy. With him - or her - or anybody that I work with I always try to make it seem, feel like it's the right thing to do.
'The one good thing about doing both [ Willy Wonka and Corpse Bride] at the same time was that he could be Willy Wonka by day and then walk over to the recording studio and be Victor in the evening so... there was a certain convenience to it. It was strange because people think that we made the puppet end up looking - you know, we made the puppet to look like him but we designed this years before so it just is kind of a weird coincidence that it ended up being kind of... that way...'
Mike, how is it for you as animation director to work with Tim?
MJ: 'My job was to interact with the crew and the animators on a daily basis and then bring that to Tim, and then he would steer it in the direction that he wanted it to go.
TB: A lot of it has to do with getting the right group of people together and that's meaning the right group of animators,the people to make the puppets and - y'know - because it's all moved on to that other world. It's harder to find that core group of people so things sort of take on a life of their own that way.
I have lots of projects and sometimes, y'know... it's a lot to do with timing.'
Have you ever thought of doing a musical?
TB: I remember being offered a few things, like a few years ago they wanted to do Batman as a musical, and - I don't know, something about him jumping around on stage just doesn't feel quite right. I think there's a new trend now where studios will take movies and want to make them into like musicals, and I would love to something but, y'know, I'm not necessarily interested in making Stealth: The Musical, y'know.? Whatever. But you know what I mean? So you gotta be careful I think... But I would like to.'
How about the forthcoming dance production Edward Scissorhands? Were you involved?
TB: No. I said [to] Matthew Bourne who's doing it, I just - when he first talked to me about it I just thought well, you know what? I would just get in the way of this and I just thought, well, it's probably better to have someone else do their interpretation of it than me sticking my (pause) fingers into it. Scissors into it. So... I thought it would be more interesting to see another artist's interpretation than me messing around with it.'
Did the team worry about Corpse Bride being too scary for children?
MJ: 'From my point of view, Tim was very clear on the tone that we were after from the beginning and, again, it just goes back to the storyboard process. We could experiment with how these scenes were playing out and develop it that way before we had to finally shoot those scenes. So there was time to develop the story that way.'
TB: Also, I remember this from Nightmare, people saying that it was too scary for the kids and then over the years it's little kids, even their kids dogs and things, y'know, like the movie. This one we felt was even softer in some ways. It's more of a love story that just, y'know, happens to have skeletons and corpses in, which is just sort of secondary to really - it's just more of a hopeful kind of slightly bittersweet love story - that's what I always got from monster movies, it's like from the classics from the very beginning, the monster was always misunderstood. Everybody was afraid of Frankenstein but he wasn't really that bad. He wasn't an evil character, so the same goes for these kinds of works. I think people get a misconception about it by the way they think it is or what they think it looks like.'
HBC: ' Yah, and I don't think - I really don't think it's that scary.'
MJ: 'We had an in-house test study inside our seven-year-old son. He would come and watch weeklies every week so if it played well with him I think any seven-year-old could handle it.'
TB: 'Well, I mean, we have a two-year-old and he's already watched When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth , he's watched Dawn of the Dead . It's an interesting point because the funny thing to me - and I think all kids are like adults and they either can take something or they can't - but I find a lot of what kids' fear comes from is their parents... if you just sort of allow them, they seem to have their own sort of barometers of what they can take. And a good animated film for kids should be scary to some degree too, y'know, all the Disney classics left deep scars on the minds of many kids.'
HBC: 'But as long as you make them laugh. I think I watched something by Roal Dahl and he said you can frighten them a bit - they love being frightened - but as long as you make them laugh at the same time... I asked my mum, who's very clever - she's a psychotherapist too - and she said kids love death. They need it. And they need to have stories which explain it - and all their fears and a place to put their fears. And actually it's a beautiful and very proper thing, and joyous, y'know, portrayal of what might be - beyond.'
Tim, which other directors inspire you?
TB: 'Well, I mean to be honest, I haven't seen anything - working on two things I haven't really, y'know - at the end of .whatever . sixteen hours of looking at your own movies, you don't go "let's go out to the movies now". But I do admire anybody who's able to sort of put their stamp on it. I mean, if you see somebody and you can recognise them in their work that's real - you know. I think there's a sort of relatively new trend of [studios] hiring more interesting directors - like [Warners] hiring Alfonso Cuaron to do Harry Potter . That's a good sign. It's something that seems relatively new and not something that happened in the recent past. It seems like there are some cases trying to kind of enthuse things that might get stale and boring with some new life and I do think that's one positive trend that maybe is happening. I don't know.
Having just completed two films at the same time, will it be a while before we see Burton again?
TB: 'Yeah. I'll be like the Yeti or Big Foot,' laughs Burton . 'Rare sightings. Maybe.'
And will you miss the characters from Corpse Bride ?
TB: 'I really grew to love all these puppets as real characters so I really like them. Technically the Corpse Bride was a nightmare for the animators to manipulate, and I think she was the most challenging character to bring to life but no - I think I'll miss them.'
Michael, you've talked of how hard the Corpse Bride was to animate. Why was this?
MJ: 'Well, she had her hair, she had her veil and she had her flowing dress. Each element is as complicated as a puppet in itself. The animators would say it's like animating three puppets at once to do her. Some of these veil shots with the veil flowing in the wind - it would take weeks to achieve that, there are just so many details on her that had to be animated. That was really why it took so long.'
TB: 'In reality the animation process was done in a year. It sounds . six seconds a week . and we didn't have that many... I mean, it's just how hard they worked. Just a year really, in production.'
MJ: 'Yeah, that's true. We did this faster than Nightmare was done and I think faster than Wallace and Gromit . But who's counting?!
TB: 'We win!' cries Burton . 'We did it faster!'
Helena , is it disconcerting to see a puppet with your own voice?
HBC: ' Well it was a lot less painful than watching myself - I hate watching myself. It's kind of a relief to watch Corpse Bride do it. In fact, maybe she can every other part and I'll just phone the voice in. I can't really recognise myself - but I do recognise the eyebrows! I've got sort of hyperactive, expressive eyebrows and I think maybe she got the legacy. I don't really know what she inherited. But Richard E Grant - he's an old friend - he phoned me up and said "Well, she's you. She's so obviously you." I said "Oh. Thanks".'
And can we expect a sequel?
TB: 'I think I've come to the point where sequels for me are probably not a very good idea, unless something really hits me strongly I think I'm gonna try to avoid it. As much as I possibly can unless it's something that really hits me strongly.'
Were there really no digital effects at all?
TB: 'It's 99.9 percent stop motion. All the characters are in stop motion. Occasionally, for a butterfly shot or crows flying, we used digital effects and once in a while for the veil some digital effects, but probably out of 400 shots of the Corpse Bride - what, only 14 or so are digital... the point for us was to keep it as pure as possible. That was the reason that we all wanted to do this movie. For me, I'm personally proud of it because of - every movie you work on you like to think you're working with artists but this is such a consolidated work where every single person is an artist. That's why the movie is special to me .'
Will Davis
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