Vincent By Tim Burton

Tim Burton is an American film producer, writer, artist as well as a film director. His first feature was made 1985 and was entitled Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Since Pee-wee’s Big Adventure some of the other films he has made have gone on to win Academy awards. He is known for his dark and off the wall themed films such as Edward Scissorhands, Beetle Juice and Nightmare before Christmas. He is also known for his blockbusters such as Batman and Planet of the apes. He works closely with John Deep and Musician Danny Elfman as well as others. His next film Alice in Wonderland is due for release on March the 5th 2010.
In 1982 Tim Created his first short called Vince. Vince was a stop motion animation that was in black and white only and lasted six minutes. The animation was voice by Vince price one of the reasons Tim wanted to go into the filming industry. The film was made by someone Burton had befriended whilst working for Disney in the concept art department. This someone was called Rick Heinrichs. Vince was shown at a film was showed and released at Chicago Film festival this was showed alongside a teen drama called Tex. After Vince Burton done his first live-action production which was Hansel and Gretel. This live action was Japanese themed and ends in a kung fu fight between Gretel and Hansel and the witch. Having aired only once On Halloween in 1938 at 10.30pm and only a limit supply of the film, a copy is extremely had to find. This adds to the rumour it doesn’t existence. It 2009 the short was shown in the Museum of Modern Art. Next was also a piece by Tim Burton and also a live action called Frankenweenie. Frankenweenie stars Barret Oliver, Daniel Stern and Shelley Duvall. Shelley Duvall was an early support of Burton’s work. Tim Burtons pieces Vincent and Frankenweenie are both on the 2-disc deluxe edition of the DVD the Nightmare before Christmas.
Even through Tim Burton’s work had made it really big yet he still started to attract attention from the film industry. He was approached by Griffin Dunne to direct a film called After Hours (made in 1985) the film was a comedy about a bored word processor who survives a crazy night in Soho. The film had been pasted over by Martin Scorsese. However when financing fell through, Burton pulled out of it out of respect for Scorsese.
Tim Burton’s themes normally consist of themes such as solitude and loneliness as well as things such as insanity and madness. Tim Burtons work is also usual done in a gothic, black humour, surreal style. The genre is also normally gothic or black comedy.

Alice in Wonderland trailer.

The Becoming of Vincent

In 1982 Tim Burton made his first short animation which was 6 minutes long called Vince. He began working to Disney but didn’t work well with what Disney wanted because Disney wanted happy animations where as Tim wanted weird and off the wall. Disney gave him a small amount of money to do his own little animation but the only reason they gave him this money is because a famous actor at the time called Vince Price said he would voice the animation. After Tim Burton had made the animation Disney soon fired him.

Topic of Vincent (what happens)

The topic of Vincent is that a little boy wishes he could be like his hero Vince Price, where as him mum wish he was more like a normal boy and would just go out and play with friends and do normally things.

Themes of Vincent (Ideas and things behind it)

It has themes of madness and insanity this showed by the part where near the end of the animation the young boy sees the room “start to sway, shiver and creak, his horrid insanity had reached his peak he saw his Amcrumby his zombie slave and heard his wife call from beyond the grave” It also has the theme of loneliness therefore why the boy imagines having a wife. Another theme it has is that of isolation, because the boy wants to be someone he is not he makes himself isolated from everything and in return gets isolated from them. It also has themes such as Identity (not fitting in) (being who you want to be) This is showed by the fact the young boy wants to live with bats not cats therefore making him not fit in to what would be classed as normal and the being who you want to be comes from the fact he wants to be like Vince Price and his mum doesn’t want him to.

Childhood is also a key theme in Vincent as shows how the child can over imaginative, innocence, ambition and naivety.

Style of Vincent

Sound

It sounds dark, gothic, the voice over is deep in tone, the words are poetic though the animation making it child like somehow still though. Tim Burton seems to do dark and gothic stuff but somehow keeps it childish therefore making the piece even creepier.

It looks also look gothic, dark and surreal but also some parts are funny.
Such as the screenshot below. This depicts the boy’s sister as the object of laughter. Vincent also is comic like/ cartoonified in its animated characters. Therefore also making it child like and adding a creep effect.

Animation Technique

This was made using Claymation and was done with 2D/drawn graphics. Some of the characters features and exaggerated to create humour and all the animations are ever really big, small or really fat, thing.


My opinion

I think the animation is weird, dark and disturbing. But also interesting and in some parts amusing. The voice over is low but the way the words rhyme make it child like. I like how surreal this film is through and think it is very good. I think this animation might have actually been some what of an autobiography of Tim Burton. An autobiography of his childhood and inner hopes and dreams.

Response from audiences and critics (what did others think of it)

These responses come from http://www.imdb.com/

Beautiful, creepy, haunting, sad. A masterpiece., 5 February 2002Author: Francisco Huerta (fjhuerta@hotmail.com) from Mexico City
35 out of 37 people found the following review useful:
Expressionistic epic..., 26 May 2002Author: poe426 from USA

Ghoulishly good fun!, 14 September 1999Author: Chris Campbell from Coventry, England

Back to me

Most the critics and audiences loved it I think Disney where very dumb not to bring this out and to let go of one of the best animates ever.

Video of Vincent

Websites used

http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.imdb.com/

Harvie Krumpet

Harvie Krumpet is a claymation. All the sets that are used are wooden ones. The house, the fire, the school and the boat are all wooden sets. The narrator is the one that reads the script and it fills in the gaps. They have used Geoffery Rush, they have used him because he has a good voice and is australia and everyone involved in it was australia. The characters in Harvie Krumpet all have problems and are all different because not only does it make it more interesting but it also makes it more like real life. The characters are also the height of a wine bottle because the animator Adam Elliot has a tick.

The style of Harvie Krumpet is that of a gothic and also comedy. This is to make it like the real world and show that everyone has good times and bad.

Harvie Krumpet provokes emotion in the audience and makes them feel like they are there. This is done by the way the characters stare out at the audience, the use of the sets and the colour of them, the way it is nattared and includes information such as the way the characters spell.

Harvie Krumpet also won a Oscar for best Animated Short in 2003, I believe it won this award because it deals with problems such as tourettes and it also shows theproblem of the war. Also it is original

The animator which we have seen which is similar is Vincent, both these animations are claymation both also both involve people who are lonely, outcast and alone. The difference is that Vincent is more disturbing because it doesn't have as much of a humor edge to it. Other claymations I have seen have been Wallace and Gromit and Pingu but these show just the good side to things and are very happy and dont deal with problems.

The websites I have used for this have been http://www.wikipedia.org/ and http://www.melodramapictures.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/

White board animation

The white board animation we watched was created by Kristofer storm, the name was of the animation was Minilogue and was made with still images that were created on the whiteboard and live action that also took place on the white board it also had metamorphosis in it. The still images were drawn 2d graphics on the whiteboard so therefore the animation techique was 2d graphics animation.

The media which was used was the whiteboard. The fact the whiteboard was used gave the animation a surreal and dream like effect.

The style of the animation was that of a postive tone and it was very upbeat and happy, it also flowed very well. The look of the animation was also very postive, happy and upbeat and the pictures flowed well. The music that was also introduced to the animation was that of a positive and upbeat tone.

The effect the animation was trying to achieve was surrealism and to make it dream like and they done that very well. My own interpretation of the animation was it was also trying to get the point across of how we should love one another and how sometimes all we need to feel is love, as well as that I also believe it tried to show that we should be kind to one another and be hapy.

I very much liked this animation because of the happy, postive and upbeat tone it was giving out and I also liked how creative and imagiative it was.

It was similar to the other animations in the way it was surreal and stood out but as the other animations which were surreal done it in negative ways and tried to show the bad side to people, this one does has a postive tone and tries to show postive emotions such as love. It was also different in the way used live action and must other whiteboard animations are not as long.

Strom also has done animations for adverts, such as this picture

You can't see the picture that well but it is a advert for The carphone warehouse, it was shown when x factor was on advertising new phones through animations.

The websites I used for this information were www.wikipedia.org and www.youtube.com

and this is where the photo comes from http://www.pixel-lee.tv/images_09/xfactor08_sc1.jpg

Metamorphosis and Zoetrope

We went to the Norwich University College of Creative Arts.

We started of are animation workshop there, doing metamorphosis, the tutro who lead the workshop was Jodie Wick. We all got a word to start with and we had to draw that word. We also all had numbers. The picture we had we had to change to the person's who number was infront of us, for example say if I was 6 I had to turn my picture into the picture that number 7 had drawn.

We done this by drawing frames for various stages of what we believe would be the transformation process from the item we had to the next item. After we had drawed these pictures we took pictures of them on a rostrum.

The rostrum took two shots of each of the frames we draw. The reason two frames where shot is so in the animation it look more clear and runs more smoothly.

To the draw the pictures we used layout paper to draw on. We done it in pencil first incase we weren't happy with them and then when we are we went other them in pen so we could see them through the layout papere. Layout paper is another item of equpiment we used, it is half way between normal paper and tracing paper. Another item of equpiment we used was also the peg bar. This is so are pictures were lined up and we could make sure they were always central to the middle of the papper.

The skills we had to use were: drawing skills, and tracing skills. We also had to have patients as the process seemed to take quite a while and drag on a bit, but the end result was really good. Another skill we had to use was we had to visualise the transformation in are minds.



After we had done the Metamorphosis, we all done are own zoetrope (also know as light box)animations. This involved us drawing eighteen pictures and setting them out in a comic book lay out. The picture we had to draw had to be not to do detailed and the change had to be distinctive and simplistic, for example someone waving their hand or something distinctive like that.

We then had to put the pictures into a zoetrope.





You then sping round the zoetrope and you look through the slots in the side and it gives the pictures the illusion of movement.

To make it more effective it helps if you go over the outline in black pen and also colour in the pictures.

These are the pictures I done on the workshop. The top set were for the Metamorphosis animation and the bottom set of picturse were for my zoetrope animation.