Report: Nightmare Before Christmas Haunted Evening
Page 7 of 18

Panel Discussion - Page 5

The Panel
Click here for a much larger version of this picture
(1024 X 768, 75,680 bytes)

Henry remembered, "It was just one of those fortuitous things, Tim had had enormous success in live action and go back to Disney and take one of his pet projects out of mothballs and bring it to life." He recalled, "Tim was developing other projects simultaneously but always kept a strong hand in all of the phases of the film. Faxes were flying, designs being approved and disapproved, dailies sent… basically Tim and I are from the same planet, if not the same neighborhood."

Asked what his contribution to the film was, Henry answered, "We had a handful of the songs, there wasn’t really a working script, we kind of plunged into it… We needed to take sketches of ideas and grow them." Adding, "We started very small with a few people and grew a studio through the movie."

Rick was then asked his route to Nightmare, "The first time I learned about Tim’s idea for Nightmare Before Christmas was when I was basically getting off the plane from New York where we had had an opening for our short film Vincent, and I remember that Tim’s ever bubbling mind had come up with these… drawings and few words and just very brief kind of elegant poses and character studies and brief verse. He pretty much mapped out the concept of the film. And it was just so incredibly powerful that you immediately got what it was about."

Rick explained the process by which the crew and the Disney Company came together to make the movie. "It was a great deal of fun and an amazing project to be a part of and to see it from the genesis through to the execution was just amazing." Rick also explained the choice of stop motion, "There’s something to be gained by doing things in two-dimensional cell animation and there’s just something else all together different and beautiful in doing it in sculpture and three dimensions." He added, "It had this odd combination of this hand made look combined with this very fluid movement and fluid camera work and just this combination is, I think, something you could never get any other way."

Chris Sarandon - the speaking voice of Jack.
Click here for a much larger version of this picture
(1024 X 768, 135,882 bytes)

After a brief discussion of storyboarding, Frank asked Chris about his voice contribution to the film. "I had the good fortune of being able to see Jack in action and in music. The character was very clearly drawn, literally and figuratively, in song and so it was really just sort of stepping into those shoes and just opening my mouth and out it came." He remembered the length of the process, "Couple of three months would go buy and I’d get a call, I’d get on a plane, I’d fly to San Francisco, Henry and I would work for a day, I’d fly back that night, three months later I’d come back up and they’d animated the stuff I’d done. It’s an incredibly laborious process. But, great fun." Frank also mentioned that Chris had auditioned for Lock, Shock & Barrel, but was turned down.

Eric was asked about the contribution of voice actors to the film, "It makes all the difference in the world. If you’ve got a lousy voice you’ve got no scene at all. But when you get a great voice, and some of the voices we had were great, thank you Chris, we were able to pull off amazing things just because of the subtlety and the detail, every little breath they make, every little pause that makes a huge difference when your acting is completely reliant on talent like this."

Glenn recalls his inspiration for the voice of The Mayor - actress Karen Black.
Click here for a much larger version of this picture
(1024 X 768, 133,276 bytes)

Frank asked Glenn about his inspiration for the Mayor, "Well, Henry frightened me… We tried several different kinds of voices… but for some reason I kept thinking of a scene from a movie called Airport 75 (laughter) where Karen Black is having to fly the plane… she had a line ‘I can’t fly a plane’ and I swear, before each session… that was the line I would use." Frank remembered, "I was on that studio for probably two weeks while I was writing this book and all I can tell you about stop motion animation is it can’t be done. I watched you guys work and it cannot be done."