Burton’s Design
“I am not a dark person and I don’t consider myself dark.”
Tim Burton
From previous study I had come to the conclusion that Burton isolates his main characters using the camera to create a more distant feeling. Burton shows the main character often by themselves using a one shot and does not include other characters into that space. I used three films from different parts of his career to collect this data, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hallow and more recent film , Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. With each film I used three different scenes to analyze.
I created pie charts to show percent of individual shots of the main character, individual shots of the secondary character and two shots that include both the main and secondary character. Each film proved that the main character is shown by themselves more than 50% of the time.
The Nightmare Before Christmas:
Jack Skellington 58%
Sally 24%
Two 18%
Sleepy Hallow:
Ichabod 57%
Katrina 21%
Two 22%
Sweeney Todd:
Sweeney 51 %
Mrs. Lovett 34 %
Two 15 %
Burton Sleeping With Johnny Again?
“I would do anything Tim wanted me to. You know – have sex with an aardvark… I would do it.”
Johnny Depp
Depp has signed on yet another film with Burton called Dark Shadows. If you are a Tim Burton fan you certainly must be a Johnny Depp fan because he’s in almost every Burton film as of late. Though he is not the only actor that has been used again and again. Wikipedia created a chart of how many times each actor has been in his films and Helena Bonham Carter is gathering up points as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Burton
I am not sure of why Burton reuses actors but I will give him, Depp and Bonham Carter credit for creating new characters for each film. When Depp first came on the scene it was as Edward Scissorhands, a softspoken man with scissors for hands, then forward through time a bit to the fainthearted Icabod Crane who curiosity in Sleepy Hallow almost gets him beheaded, then to Sweeney Todd, the hard hearted man who will stop at nothing to cut the throat of the man who ruined his life, to our most recent the Mad Hatter who is obviously different in appearance with red hair, green eyes and gapped teeth, and of course, well mad. Each character provides a new voice, accent, tone, posture, NEW CHARACTER.
Both men are brilliant but let us not forget Miss. Bonham Carter, the women with say in Burton’s world. Not only in appearance starting out with Burton in a full ape costume in Planet of the Apes but presence as well. Gentle and welcoming mother in Charlie in the Chocolate Factory to the demanding and frightening Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. There is no stopping this women, she was an ape, then a big headed queen, she will transform herself into her character.
I assume it is easy for Burton to work with the same actors because they are comfortable with each other and know how they work, know what to expect and know that it will be brilliant.
Burton's View 