RW

So, how did this all come about?

DH

Well, shortly after the debut of Chicken Little I got a call from our head of worldwide distribution saying “Hey we’ve got this great technology, let’s do something with it that’s never been done before.�? He asked me if I thought this would work with The Nightmare Before Christmas, and what I thought of the idea, and I said, “well, sure, let me make some calls and see if it’s possible.�? So I went to some of our friends at Industrial Light and Magic, and they were very excited. We did some tests and we showed them to Tim (Burton) and got his approval to go ahead with it. There were some very strict ground rules from the beginning, including the participation of Tim and Henry (Selick).

RW

And what Henry Selick’s response?

DH

Henry was fairly skeptical at first. But, once saw some tests both he and Tim were on board. When I showed him (Henry) about ten minutes of the finished film recently he was very excited. What was even more exciting was that I screened the completed product for Tim in London just this week and he said he actually thought it was an improvement.

RW

That’s high praise indeed. Did you do any restoration in the process?

DH

Yes, we dust-busted it, going in an taking out all the scratches and dust and dirt, and we restored the color back to its original condition. But something that I want to emphasize that it was very important for us not to erase the hand-made feel. If there was a light that went out or a string was showing, we didn’t clean that up, we left it exactly as it was because that’s part of the charm of a stop-motion film, and it was very important not to take that away.

RW

So what’s the easiest way to explain exactly how the transfer from flat to 3-D was accomplished?

DH

The simple answer is that it’s a lot like the Madame Leota effect at the Haunted Mansion, that is that if you project a flat film, such as a talking head, onto a three-dimensional mannequin you have the effect of a fully dimensional person. That’s more or less what we did. The left lens is the original film – so if you shut your right eye and look out of your left eye you’ll see the original film exactly as it was shot. Then we projected the film – essentially – onto three-dimensional models of the characters, backgrounds, lighting and props that were created in the computer.

Here again, we went back to Peter Kozachik, the original cinematographer, and he worked with ILM in creating the lighting for the rigs. He was closely involved in this process and that was invaluable to us.

Now, you have to remember that we shift the camera over, so when we shoot it on the rigs we’re shooting a lot of negative space. Jack’s head is essentially a basketball, and when you shift to the right there isn’t anything on the back of that basketball, so you have to render that. You have to do the same with props, and lighting, and backgrounds, and we had an amazing and gifted crew of artists who went in an meticulously painted in the negative space.

For me it was the back-breaking hard work and commitment of the guys who really made this happen. In particular Joel Aron who was the digital production supervisor and Phil McNally who supervised the 3-D opticals. They believed in the film and in this project and they went out of their way to make it happen.

RW

And how long did this all take?

DH

This was all done inside of six months.

RW

Six months?!

DH

Yup. Shortly after Chicken Little debuted we started the initial investigations and early tests. We then took those tests to Tim and to Henry. I thought that this is their film, and we have to have their approval and their blessing if this is going to work.

What really excites me is that this is truly groundbreaking. 3-D isn’t new, it’s been around since the 1920’s, but taking an existing flat-film and turning it into a 3-D film is completely new. It’s an immersive experience. You feel the shafts of light, the snow, you’re really in there living it with these puppets – these characters.

RW

Is it a safer choice, doing this with Nightmare as opposed to another film? When applied to almost any other existing film that I can think of it would simply be a novelty and probably more of a distraction – that is to say that with a film with a more complicated story and lots of subtle little turns and complicated nuances you’d be much more likely to lose track of the story because you would be too caught up with the “experience�? of the 3-D, whereas with Nightmare Before Christmas you have such relatively simple and straightforward narrative and a clear, uncomplicated through-line of action. Plus, the literal world in which it was created was in fact three-dimensional. It’s an easy story to follow and easy to understand so that you can enjoy the “experience�? as a part of a larger whole, and it may not be actually cheating the intent, since it was purposefully created in a dimensional vs a flat (or drawn or rendered) world to begin with.

DH

Well you have to remember that this film is a true classic. It was made between Aladdin and The Lion King and so it’s part of that second “golden age�? we experienced during this time. It’s a very unique film, and the music is entirely different as well. Danny (Elfman) did something completely different than what we were doing with our other musicals at the time. It’s almost an opera.

RW

Well it’s certainly an operetta. It has almost no long passages of dialogue.

DH

And it’s popularity only seems to grow. Look at how many people flock to see the Haunted Mansion make-over with the characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas. You can walk into virtually any mall this Halloween and see Jack Skellington.

RW

The anticipation in Japan and China must be enormous!

DH

Well it’s opening right away in Japan. You have to experience that to truly understand how passionate those fans are about this movie. It’s practically a religion!

I just hope that audiences everywhere can really enjoy the film in a completely different way. It’s that same story, the same film, only now you can actually step into the world and are immersed in the story.

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