Director Analysis: Tim Burton; An Imaginative Director, Producer and Writer

Analysis:

Elements that make Burton's film successful are his choice of script, his cast, the dark essence he likes to add to his films especially those that never had it e.g. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland, and his way of bringing imagination to life. Tim Burton has been successful in providing entertainment along with good stories and technically good films.

The reason behind the success of Tim Burton's films is that the scripts that really captivate him tend to make him imagine and from there onwards, he makes the most of his imagination. He tries to make amends in the film's script where he believes is necessary.

The dark tones that are reflected in his films are basically due to the mise en scene, costumes and make up. For this, his films have won a few awards as well e.g. Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow.

Along is journey as a director, Burton has made friends who have been with him and helped in most of his films such as Danny Elfman, who has done the music score for 5 of his films and Johnny Depp who has starred in almost every film after they first worked together in 1990. This enabled Burton to have a good team who are with him and give him what he wants for his film. This also shows Burton's reliability on these people and his willingness to work with people he knows rather than those he has never worked with.

Throughout his career, Burton has always been impressed by horror film directors and actors and has either casted them or has portrayed them in some of his films.

Burton has also worked as an animator with Disney in his early years and has made some projects in stop motion animation. His most latest "The Corpses Bride" was a film which came out in an era which is now more into digital animation, but he made the film due to his specialty in stop motion clay animation.

Sex and violence are rarely seen in his films. His films are mostly meant for families and this is good as it captivates a wide audience and families are probably the largest audience for the cinema. However due to the dark tones in his films, there is an age restriction for small children.

Application of Tim Burton’s Work  in My Short Film

Tim Burton uses dark themes in his films and my film requires a bit of that to portray the main character’s dream as a nightmare to bring the essence of melodrama. I will use the type of melodrama he arouses in films to add to the story. The way he also imagines his characters and brings them to life through defining their character as misunderstood people is also good as it helps the character to discover him/herself along the film.

Burton also uses unique set-design and an attractive mise en scene that supports his story and adds to the creative the perfect imaginative character. I need to make my mise en scene as natural as it can be. The lighting in his films is also low and this inspires me to make my film with low lighting and an attractive mise en scene.

The soundtracks for Burton have mostly been done by Danny Elfman, who makes the typical music that enhances the quality of Burton’s films. The music is mostly melodramatic and has the essence that I also want in my film.

Color correction is also used in Burton’s films and I will also use color correction in my film.

Burton also tends to create disturbing and juxtaposed scenes by increasing the contrast in his films such as those in Alice In Wonderland and Charlie And The Chocolate and I want to add that in my film especially the parts where the main character will face the height of the climax.

His Importance

Burton also has a great imagination and he does not let anything limit his imagination. This is the reason why he does fantasy and fictional films more than those relating to real life.

He also uses a strong cast to support his film. Johnny Depp is one of the finest actors in this era, and he never refuses Burton’s films. One of the reasons is that Burton helped him rise when he was depressed with the films that he was being offered at that time.

The way Burton adds darkness to his films is phenomenal and makes the film more interesting.

His interest and desire to make stop motion clay animation is also something very commendable for a person in the era of 3D digital animation.

"Ragged 2wice" - Synopsis

Working Title: Ragged 2wice

Genre: Teen Drama
Synopsis: Kamran’s first day at college turns into a disaster when he is ragged at the beginning of the day at college. The seniors rag him by painting his face black with some black paint and then demand that he wear a tutu and do a dance in it. Kamran wears the tutu, but when asked to dance he refuses because he does not like to dance. He runs away when they tell him to dance, however, they catch him and force him to do the dance or face their torture for the whole term. He agrees to dance and does so in a very miserable way. However the day turns worse when Kamran goes in the first class of the day and gets called out because some guys in the class sneak in a cigarette pack in his bag while his attention was away. The same guys call the teacher and tell on him and the teacher takes him to the principal’s office and the principal decides to expel Kamran, but as he begs the principal to change the decision, he wakes up in his mom’s car with his mom waking him up. It appears that he had been dreaming all the time. But when he enters the school gates, he starts seeing all the people from his dream really there. At that point Kamran screams from frustration. The film ends.

"Ragged 2wice" - Concept

Working Title: Ragged 2wice
Genre: Teen Drama
Concept: Kamran is having a very bad first day at college. He was ragged at the start of his college day, had to dance in a pink Tutu and then nearly got expelled from college because he was found in possession of a cigarette pack, till he wakes up in his car to find that he was dreaming. However, as he enters the college gates, he finds all the people from his dream actually in the school.

Suggestions: 

1. We are finding it hard to choose actors for the film. 

2. We think that the story has some gaps that need to be filled. 

Change of Plans

We have had a few changes in our media project. First and foremost, our media practical teacher has now changed and our new teacher has a little different style of teaching. However, we have become more organised now in our pre-production work. Every person has to make their individual file and have all the their work in it. This is helping me to become more organised and sophisticated with my production work.
We have changed the genre of our short film to "Teen Drama", and the Working Title of our project is "Ragged 2wice" (Ragged Twice).
We changed the genre because we realized that it would be difficult to produce a Comedy short film because for comedy, good actors are needed, and the script has to be perfect. We also noticed that the story supported the Drama genre rather than the Comedy genre.
We took some advice from our new teacher for the title of our short film, and she like "Ragged 2wice" (Ragged Twice).
We have now started working on our film from the beginning as the teacher has told us and we are working in a more organised way now.

Focus Group Feedback

This is the feedback that our small focus group audience gave us.

The feedback that our peers gave us was very useful and helpful for our short film. We came to know that our  target audience did not want to be bored when they saw a short film, they wanted the short film to be exciting and fast paced, as was the last one that we played, which was "The Exam". They also noticed that in some short films, the dialogues were unclear because of the sound quality and the shots that were taken in those short films were technically bad. We learned a lot from this focus group and have taken some of the feedback into account and applied it to our current story.

Focus Group

Thursday, 3rd November, was the day we had our focus group. There were around ten people who came to our focus group. Saad and I had planned it to take place a day or two earlier, but due to some reasons, we were unable to have it earlier. However, on the day of our focus group there was a slight change of events. Saad got injured that day and had to be rushed to the hospital. I facilitated the focus group myself, which went better than I had expected it to be. The people who came to the focus group gave us some really goo feedback. I had taken my HD camera to school and took some footage of the people watching the films, and also their reactions at certain points of the films such as "That's School, That's Life" and "The Exam", which were pretty vibrant.
I also asked some friends to help me in taking shots from different angles. After showing them all the short films, I asked them some questions like: Which film did you like? Why didn't you like the others? Do you like enigmatic films or predictable films?
They liked "The Exam" the most, partly because of the way it was made and partly because it was funny and unexpected. Their feedback ad comments are in Urdu and so Saad and I will be adding subtitles to them before we upload them in the next post. 

Ancillary Drafts

I made some drafts for our Ancillary projects, so here they are.


This is the draft for the poster for our shot film. It is a bit vague at the moment but it will be clear once it is produced on Photoshop. My drawing skills have also declined over the years, so it is also one of the reasons why this draft may be unclear.
It consists of the key characters in our short film, that are, the main newcomer student, the students who rag the newcomer and  the teacher who takes the newcomer to the principal's office.
The teacher will stand in the middle with the students who rag the newcomer, two on each side, and the newcomer will sit with a desk in front of him, with his face painted and the typical ragged condition we want him to be in.
There will be a tag line at the top and the title of the film will be at the bottom right above the credits etc.

The magazine review page draft also has the outline of how we want our magazine film review page to be like.  There will be a title of the review or article at the top, and beneath it a big snapshot from the film will be placed (with a caption describing it), which will cover the whole page horizontally. The main article will start from the left side of the page, where the big snapshot will end. The article will nearly cover the rest of the page along with a behind the scenes photograph from the film and a line to capture the attention of readers (in the conventional colored and large font). 

The drafts may be subject to change. This is not the final draft, but this is the ideal format that we are interested to follow for our short film.