Nightmare Before Christmas
Who was the pumpkin king
"The Nightmare Before Christmas" should be one of the most appropriate family film of all times. The movie is about the acts of Jack Skellington, called as the pumpkin king in the Halloween Town.
Jack Skellington is bore in doing monotonous thing year by year for Halloween and one day in the woods he stumbles upon a door that leads to Christmas Town. Christmas brings cheer to him and his bored life gets into action and happiness. He is now trying to have the resident bats, ghouls, and goblins in Halloween Town to help him celebrate Christmas in their own style in place of the Halloween. Unfortunate as Jack Skellington is on Christmas that he has all troubles wrote to his fate book.
Thats this
"The Nightmare Before Christmas" is the first full-length animation film that is produced, in stop motion. Santa Claus has about fifty, may be more than fifty parts that are in motion and, Sally has ten separate faces those can be interchanged each one with eleven differing face expressions also here Jack has more than four hundred or so different changeable heads each one crafted by hand and that is with a separate face expression. As this was not sufficient problem at the peak of production, animators took a whole week to create a mere seventy seconds long film time. There is no adult face shown in the film, as mark of respect or homage to the comics and cartoons of Charlie Brown.
Character of BEHEMOTH
Mr. Tor Johnson, the B-Movie actor and Swedish wrestler, was the inspiration for modeling and creating the character Behemoth. Mr. Tor Johnson had worked earlier with Ed Wood Jr. and was pasteurized in the "The Nightmare before Christmas" as "Ed Wood" that was directed by Mr. Tim Burton.
The undertaking
It is a very common belief, myth that many people naturally have that Mr. Tim Burton has directed,
"The Nightmare Before Christmas" but the fact is Mr. Henry Selick was director who took over the control, Yes Mr. Burton was the writer and producer of this great work of art. Mr. Selick then directed the stop motion animation picture, named as "James and the Giant Peach". The next film he made was, "Coraline" that was written by famous and well known fight master Mr. Neil Gaiman.
Whit is so halloween about it:
The film has memorable lyrics composed by Danny Elfman during the days of his association with his famous band, Oingo Boingo. The song "This is Halloween" refers to the tender Lumplings, again composed by Danny Elfman.
The show time
Jack Skellington has made a small cameo appearance at the top of Beetle-juices carousel clad hat during the end part of the film, "Beetle-juice". Snake appearing in the film is assumed to be the same as Saturn Sandworm that was seen in Beetle-juice. In order to create the distinctive feature of the Halloween Town as twisted appearance, movie artists have used quite often the sketches and their designs with non-drawing hands.
A Crunch
Tim Burton was basically inspired to write the original poem of the film inspired by what he saw on a Halloween merchandise display that was being removed and replaced by a Christmas setup, he said it somewhere. The juxtaposition of the deep black skeletons, ghouls and goblins along with the glitter bright cheerful Santa and the reindeer inspired his own creative process and from here began the movement of wheels in motion.
Ful top motion or a commotion:
The business of Stop motion animation is a very tactful business and the two problematic areas are in production, a light that is failing to come on and the stupid puppet whose breaking would break the whole production to immediate halt. Necessity is the mother of all inventions, the film crew here invented the "light alarm" that could go on to warn animators whenever a stage lights fails to come over and they also developed a process that would make a puppeteer to immediately switchover to the replacement of that puppet when ever a puppet broke in a shot.
Sticky web of the spider
It is a real terribly difficult process, and there are no surprises that ultimately smaller issues might get by. It was always a big problem to maintain continuity from one shot to next shot for most films and this film is no different. A distinction can be observed at the time of Jack shows Lock, Stock and Barrel the Nightmare Before Christmas. In the beginning frosting side of that cookie was facing towards them, in the ensuing shot it is in reverse position and while the frosting side was facing in other direction away of them.
Master or jack of all trades:
The background voice for Jack Skellington was that of the famous actor Mr. Chris Sarandon. But Mr. Danny Elfman, composer of the music and recordings of this animation film who was a long time friend and had collaborated with Mr. Tim Burton, gave Jack his singing back ground voice. Elfman has also given his voice to character of Barrel while the Clown having a Tear-away Face. In this animated movie, the "naughty or nice" list of Santa has been made by two thin layers of paper and a thin layer of aluminum foil is sandwiched in the middle of them. This has kept the list on paper from moving here and there in between the shots. And you know it is there in twenty four frames of shots, though it made only one single second of film.
The nation in collaboration:
Mr. Catherine O'Hara, of the fame of Burtons "Beetlejuice" has lend her voice to the Jacks girlfriend, Sally, and also to the character of Shock. Paul Reubens, called as Pee-Wee Herman, has ably spoken as voice of the Lock character. Tim Burton has directed earlier and in this movie as well to both the Pee-Wee Herman big screen films.
Some more
ON the occasion of the first release of the movie during the marketing campaign they used the Burger King for company. The Burger King with the Pumpkin King displayed a selection of digital watches in respect and recognition of this great film. Some persons still have their original in boxes. The celebrities promoted the movie in theatres including Actress Samantha Mathis with boyfriend, River Phoenix. It was great experience to know that they also liked the film as much as other persons liked the film.
