To kick off the 56th annual London Film Festival, who better to start the show than animation legend Tim Burton and his brand new offering of FRANKENWEENIE. With the film’s premiere (and the official opening ceremony) held on Wednesday evening, LFF press were invited along to a day-time conference, where Burton and his crew discussed 3D technology, Disney and everything ‘dark’…
Flanked by his voice actors Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara (Mr and Mrs Frankenstein) and Martin Landau (Mr Rzykruski, or affectionately known as ‘Mr Rice Krispies’), producer Allison Abbate and executive producer Don Hahn, Burton sat down to the first question: what does it feel like to be opening the London Film Festival. He simply said, ‘It’s amazing!’ and swung right into the next 30 minutes of questioning.
If you don’t know by now, FRANKENWEENIE is actually an animation remake of Burton’s original 1984 live-action short film of the same name. When asked why he decided to almost reverse by 30 years and attempt to revive his original FRANKENWEENIE project, Burton said,
‘Looking at some of the original drawings…At some point Don had mentioned the idea…since it was such a memory piece, the drawings and doing stop-motion and black and white and 3D, and thinking about other kids you remember from school and weird teachers…It just became a real memory piece. The idea of seeing black and white in 3D and stop-motion was an exciting prospect. Obviously, being able to work with people that I’ve worked with in the past and love; it just made it more special.’
However, when asked why does he think there are so many animated films looking towards ‘dark’ themes (currently PARANORMAN and HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA) much like his work, Tim said,
‘I don’t know…It’s so funny, from the very beginning all of my films have been labelled as ‘dark’. But I’ve never felt that way, you know, about them at all, so it’s hard for me to even comment on myself, let alone anybody else.’
Moving on to questions surrounding Tim’s past work (and the first embodiment of FRANKENWEENIE), Don Hahn says that it was an ‘odd time at the studio’ [Disney] as they didn’t know what to do with Tim. He went on to say that they gave him some budget money to make two shorts (including VINCENT) but that they:
‘…didn’t really know what to do with those shorts, never knew how to release them, didn’t want to put the Disney name on them, and to come around full circle now a few years later and to be able to revisit that and to have the studio support and celebrate what Tim’s tried to do is really odd in a way.’
As for the legend that says that Burton was fired from Disney, Tim says that it was ‘Disney-friendly’, while Short stepped in with a brilliant impression of Mickey Mouse shouting ‘You’re fired!’, Alan Sugar-style.
With such a small cast (considering it’s a voice-led animation) what was it like for Short and O’Hara to lend their vocal talents to 2, maybe 3 characters each? Short said,
‘Tim really had a specific, very specific idea of what he wanted from those characters. [On his other two characters in the film, Nassor and Mr Bergermeister]…[they]were just experiments.’
O’Hara added onto the end that she was ‘so proud to be their voices’.
After some discussion over why the team chose to use black and white (‘made it more emotional’) and a stellar impression of Alfred Hitchcock, courtesy of Landau, the last question focused on Tim’s fascination with bringing things back to life. And in his own wacky way, Burton managed to wrap-up what was a very exciting, eventful half hour!
‘When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a mad scientist – regular scientist was no fun….It’s not about bringing dead things back to life; I actually find that a bit creepy. It’s more about creation and doing things and making things. It’s not so much of a business, or about getting box-office or reviews. It’s about actually making something…It’s a pure version of why you like making movies’.
You can read our review of FRANKENWEENIE here. The Art Of Frankenweenie exhibition runs at the South Bank Centre from 17th-21st October.
