Tim Burton Cinematic Techniques Essay

540 Words3 Pages

When you sit down to watch a movie , the focus is on the plot. There’s a lot more into making a movie and creating a mood for the audience. Using lighting, camera angles, sounds or music and many more. Tim Burton uses lowkey lighting, close ups, to make a film friendly for children but have things hidden in the shadows for adults to enjoy. Tim Burton loves to use tons of low key lighting in a lot of his films. For example, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory there are many moments in the shadows. When the children and the adults first get inside the factory, the first room they walk into is the ‘Edible Room’. Right when they walk in all the audience sees are bright, vibrant, neon like colors. The audience's eyes go straight to the bright colors and don’t pay attention to the dark neutral colors in the background. This technique shows a lot and creates a mysterious tone for the film. It shows that what you’re seeing isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Something is hiding, but though you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. …show more content…

In addition to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Nightmare Before Christmas uses music almost constantly. The music choice in this film is very dark and creepy, using a lot of low toned voices or really scratchy. Although, the lyrics and tone of the characters voices had a sinister feel to it, the music had a cheerful, joyful sound to it to hide the messages in the lyrics to make it seem kid friendly. Tim Burton uses this in his films to create music for kids to enjoy and sing along to ignore the dark lyrics but also for the adults to enjoy. It educates the audience on Tim Burton’s style and how the rest of the movie will be. It also gives new audiences of Tim Burton taste of what the rest of his films are