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<\/a>Burton and Johnson during production.<\/p>\nMike Johnson: Corpse Bride actually originated right after Nightmare Before Christmas. This project was first pitched to Tim Burton by storyboard artist Joe Ranft \u2013 he went to CalArts with Tim, and he was a key player in the early days of Pixar. He was the voice of the caterpillar in A Bug\u2019s Life. He\u2019s just an all-around creative guy. He brought that story, the original folktale, to Tim. But it didn\u2019t get the green light for whatever reason. Other projects were going on, and it just sort of went away for about ten years.<\/p>\n
When it resurfaced, I had done some short films, and I was directing a television series for Will Vinton Studios, which is now Laika. A producer there brought the project to Tim\u2019s attention again, and they put me forward as a director. There were other candidates, but I think because of my short films and having that Tim Burton DNA of working in a small capacity on Nightmare and things like that, after meeting with him and talking about ideas for the film, he chose me for the job.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s interesting because in those intervening years, you took on projects such as the music video for Primus\u2019 \u201cThe Devil Went Down to Georgia,\u201d which has a similar DNA to Corpse Bride, in that an underworld inhabitant invades the land of the living. Was the Corpse Bride idea circling in your mind when you took on projects like that one?<\/p>\n Obviously, there\u2019s a big Tim Burton influence and inspiration in my short films, but I hadn\u2019t really been thinking about Corpse Bride. Everyone who was in the stop-mo scene, as far as my group of people I worked with at that time, had sort of forgotten about that idea. They thought it had just gone away. When I made \u201cThe Devil Went Down to Georgia,\u201d it wasn\u2019t with the intention of getting involved in Corpse Bride \u2013 but I do think maybe when Tim saw that film, that also helped me. I think he understood that I understood the aesthetic that he was after.<\/p>\n Past quotes from you suggest that your work on Corpse Bride was as the practically-facilitating half of a creative duo, where Burton would bring the ideas. Is that an accurate assessment of how you worked together?<\/p>\n I guess so. When we got the green light, it was based on this short folktale, so the story itself hadn\u2019t been developed that much \u2013 but we had to move forward into production. There were several drafts of the script, and most of the story concepts were resolved in the storyboard process while we were in production.<\/p>\n There was a lot of story work that I was responsible for. My job was basically to manifest this vision under Tim\u2019s supervision. I would meet with him and he would give me sketches, notes, and directions to feed back to the crew and implement. He was very busy during the production of Corpse Bride, making Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It\u2019s obviously his world, his style, his concept, but it was my job to carry that forward and manifest it.<\/p>\n The animation in this film is very fluid and smooth. I expect fewer people are aware that it\u2019s stop-motion than they are with Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. Were you trying to hide the film\u2019s stop-motion nature, or was it more to chart new heights of what you could achieve in stop-motion?<\/p>\n It was more to chart new heights. At that time, the Pixar films were the dominant art form as far as feature animation. It was less about creating a funky stop-mo aesthetic \u2013 it hadn\u2019t really turned that way yet \u2013 it was more about proving that stop-motion could be as smooth and as fluid as computer animation and still be emotive, still have texture. You know, at that point, I considered chattery stop-motion, pops, and things like that as flaws. Of course, since Corpse Bride, it\u2019s come around the other way \u2013 Wes Anderson and all these films that embrace the texture of stop-motion to set themselves apart. I can see the value of that now that, like you said, audiences might not know the difference between stop-motion and CG. I think the Laika films now do take it too far, where it really doesn\u2019t matter \u2013 if they had made those films in CG instead of stop-motion, no one would know the difference, because it\u2019s such a hybrid. Back then, it was a different world. It was about advancing the techniques but still embracing them. That was the idea behind the fluidity of the animation.<\/p>\n CG is used a little in this film, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n There\u2019s a little bit of CG in there. A tiny amount. Twenty years ago, it wasn\u2019t as accessible, and the tools weren\u2019t advanced. So we had a little bit of green-screen backgrounds, things like that. There was no CG character animation, but the Bride\u2019s veil was CG. Only in a few shots \u2013 so we could create that flowing, transparent, sort of underwater effect through stop-motion. But it took the animators days to pull that off. The solution to that, because we were under scheduling pressure, was to have three shots that had a CG veil. And then we also had her take her veil off at a certain point, when she throws it on the ground \u2013 that released us from having to animate her veil in a handful of shots. Even just that handful of shots made a huge difference in the schedule. So there is that little bit of CG in there, but as far as real character animation, it\u2019s all pure stop-motion.<\/p>\n In regard to that feel, the stop-motion nature of the characters is more apparent for the viewer once we reach the afterlife \u2013 there\u2019s a tactility to the character models there. The tactility and thumbprints of stop-motion characters always make me think of them as being very alive somehow. And so, the land of the dead ends up feeling more alive than the land of the living. Was that an intentional duality?<\/p>\n That was intentional in the design of the characters, the lighting, the stages, all of that. I hadn\u2019t really thought about how that carries through in the animation until you mentioned it, but I guess that\u2019s true. Some of that might be due to the fact that we didn\u2019t start shooting the land of the dead sequences until later in production. So maybe we were able to let it be a little more fast and loose due to scheduling. I guess it does give it a tactile quality that helps reinforce the difference in tone that we\u2019re trying to achieve between both worlds.<\/p>\n What was it like directing and animating in a greyscale palette for the land of the living sequences? That must have been an interesting challenge.<\/p>\n It was interesting, and I really liked it. I feel the land of the living \u2013 for all its monochromatic palette \u2013 was more successful to me than what we ended up with for the land of the dead. I wish that we\u2019d had a little more time to play around with the atmospheric elements there. Some of the concept art was just a bit more ambitious. But I was really happy with the land of the living stuff \u2013 and we did it the hard way. We didn\u2019t just dial out the color; everything was painted in a limited palette. We were trying to make it look like old tintypes and daguerreotypes. Even with the rigid formality of the staging of the shots, I was very pleased with the way that came through. I like the subtlety of that palette, seeing the little bits of purple and things that still come through and give it some life.<\/p>\n Are the dour, less expressive faces of the characters in the world of the living easier to animate than the more expressive ones in the land of the dead?<\/p>\n Yes and no. For the land of the dead characters, we could have a less complex mechanism for those puppets. If it\u2019s a skull with a hinged jaw, that\u2019s easier for an animator to work with than the mechanisms behind the silicone masks of the living characters \u2013 those were much more challenging for the animators to work with. Victor\u2019s parents had a very limited range, but Victor himself had to have a wide range of expression, and obviously, the Corpse Bride had a very complicated facial mechanism as well.<\/p>\n Similarly, I\u2019m curious as to whether the skinny, long-limbed characters are easier for you to articulate \u2013 and whether that might be part of the reason for Nightmare and Corpse Bride\u2019s aesthetic direction.<\/p>\n When Corpse Bride was first pitched as an idea, it was Joe Ranft\u2019s write-up of that folktale, but also a handful of drawings that he and Tim Burton had done. The tradition of Jack Skellington and Sally was very much baked into the initial designs of Corpse Bride.<\/p>\n Those skinny, long-limbed characters \u2013 I guess maybe it\u2019s easier to get clear, expressive poses with designs like that, but animating them \u2013 especially back then \u2013 rigging was more complicated. We couldn\u2019t digitally erase rigs as easily, so the rigs had to be hidden in the shot. That made it much more challenging to animate.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Johnson\u2019s sketch for Elder Gutnecht\u2019s character design.<\/p>\n<\/a>Johnson\u2019s sketch for a wedding cake design.<\/p>\n<\/a>Johnson and Anthony Elworthy on Set.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Johnson on set with animator Peter Dodd.<\/p>\n