Film: The Nightmare Before Christmas
Director: Henry Selick
Country: USA
Released: October 1993
Runtime: 76 minutes
Genre: Fantasy
Studio: Touchstone Pictures / Walt Disney
Influenced: Nick Park, Gore Verbinski, Nina Paley, Wes Anderson, Travis Knight
While he was working as an animator for Disney in the 1980s, Tim Burton developed the concept for The Nightmare Before Christmas, which started out as a poem. Burton initially wanted to make the movie as a short film or TV special, but Disney showed interest in turning it into a full-length feature, choosing Henry Selick to direct the film with Burton remaining heavily involved in its development. From the start of pre-production to the film's release, The Nightmare Before Christmas took approximately 7-8 years to complete, with the painstaking stop-motion animation process involving creating physical puppets, sets and props, which animators adjusted frame by frame to create the illusion of movement. Selick shot the film at 24 frames per second, with each frame a separate photograph taken by animators. A single minute of film at this frame rate required 1,440 individual frames, and – on average – the team completed about one minute of the movie per week.
Once shooting stopped in 1992, post-production took about another year, including editing and the addition of sound effects and music, notably Danny Elfman's incredible score and songs, which were recorded with a full orchestra. The Nightmare Before Christmas is a firm family favourite in our house and a movie we watch every Halloween, and more generally it has developed a cult following for its unique blend of dark and whimsical humour, jaw-dropping animation and wonderful music. The film follows the story of Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon), the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, who becomes tired of celebrating Halloween year after year. He stumbles upon Christmas Town and becomes fascinated with the yuletide tradition. Jack decides to take over Christmas and kidnaps Santa Claus, attempting to put his own spin on the festive season, which leads to chaos and confusion.
Composed of over 109,000 individual frames across its 76-minute runtime, The Nightmare Before Christmas was one of the first feature-length movies to feature stop-motion animation, but the film is also part of a long cinematic legacy going back nearly a century now. Selick has spoken about how he was "influenced by Ray Harryhausen and Lotte Reiniger, with her twitchy, cutout animation, which I happened to see at a very young age, but also by the Warner Bros cartoons, Tom and Jerry and of course Disney. And also by Fellini's Giulietta degli Spiriti and Kurosawa's Ran." Tim Burton has also said that the character Sally (voiced by Catherine O'Hara), a stitched-together rag doll, was inspired by Burton's love for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Disney released the film under the Touchstone Pictures banner because they felt it was too dark for their main brand.
As well as being the score's composer, Elfman also provided the singing voice for Jack Skellington, including opening song, This Is Halloween, which sets the tone for the film. For me, the film's standout moment is the song, What's This?, performed when Jack first discovers Christmas Town. The Nightmare Before Christmas received widespread critical acclaim for its animation and music, including a Grammy for Best Musical Album for Children, a BAFTA for Best Visual Effects and an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, becoming the first stop-motion animated film to receive such recognition. The film also launched the careers of Burton and Selick, with the latter going on to direct a number of classic animated films, including James & the Giant Peach (1996), Coraline (2009) and Wendell & Wild (2022).
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