Effect Of Tim Burton On The Film Industry Research Paper Samples

Research paper on Tim Burton

Introduction
Timothy Walter “Tim” Burton sets high standards in film industry and his thinking and presentation have impacted hugely on the movie industry. In this research paper the description of this great film maker’s life and success have been presented followed by his ideas and invention in the film sector. The style of his film making and the quality of exhibition has been thoroughly discussed in this research paper based on a number of reviews from other expertise people belong to the same industry. The paper is highly valuable to understand the impact Burton’s films has made in the film industry and how the film makers belong to the current era have been inspired from his style and vision in developing films which are generally preferred hugely by the maximum numbers of the community. The research paper is also developed by ensuring that the quality of Burton’s film making must have presented at its highest level to find out how much creativity Tim Burton has brought to the film industry to be followed by rest of the film makers of the same field. The approach of Burton’s film making is so vital to be analyzed in the paper to find out a number of questions to be answered.

Biography of Tim Burton

Tim Burton, born on August 25, 1958 in Burbank, California in the United States of America, is basically a versatile American film director, writer, film producer, animator and artist. He is immensely renowned for his versatile types of film making. There are many styles of films such as gothic, horror comedy, musical thriller-fantasy, macabre, adventure fantasy, animated fantasy movies, dark romantic fantasy, musical horror films and many more which are very much supportive for the talent, skills and creativity of the man possesses. Since his teenage Burton has engaged in making short animation films without sound using animation techniques of that time. For instance “The Island of Doctor Agor” is one of the oldest juvenile films made by Burton at his age of 13. After finishing his high school he engaged himself with the California Institute of the Arts situated in California to devote himself in the study of character animation. As a student of the same institution he directed two short films named “Stalk of the Celery Monster” and “King and Octopus”. In 1982 working with Disney Burton directed his first stop motion based black and white movie “Vincent”.
Vincent directed by Burton was featured in Chicago Film Festival and the movie was also released for the public in Los Angeles cinema theatres for a couple of weeks. After the movie “Hansel and Gretel”, Burton’s initial live action production based on a Japanese fairy tale was released for Disney Channel (Fariss). This short film was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 2009 publicly and again in 2011 at Burton’s Art exhibition. In 1984, “Frankenweenie”, a short live action, was released that filmed in black and white tells. Unfortunately Burton was fired from his job by Disney after finishing Frankenweenie as it was too dark and scary for the children to watch. Followed to this incident Burton has found opportunities to direct full length movies as he was approached for a number of movies. In 1985 Burton got his first movie deal as he worked on “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” inspired from a TV personality named Pee Wee Herman (Weinstock). The movie in general received poor reviews though it has enough comedy elements to make the public laugh and captured a good amount of money. The specific commercial success of the movie provided Burton a liberty to make selection of screenplays. In 1988 he selected a black comedy movie named “Beetlejuice”. Though the reviews and response was not at its extreme, the film was a hit of 1988. As a social satire the movie was appreciated by the audience enough to prove it a success.
In the following year Burton directed Batman taking influence from the comic book named “Batman: the Dark Night Returns”. The film was a huge success as it adds gothic mystery and dark energy. The representation of Batman was creatively done to be appreciated. To be logical the movie is a mix of Burton’s skills and techniques as well as his power of vision. In 1992 Batman Returns hit the theater with better response than its previous installment. Though it scripted successful reviews, the movie was criticized for excessive use of dark atmosphere. In 1993 Burton’s realism and skills of animation for his own freedom of ideas had been pictured in “Tim Burtons The Nightmare Before Christmas” (Weinstock). In 1990 “Scissorhands” was become a movie with an example of Burton’s distinctive vision and creativity. The movie was truly appreciated by the audience. The visual design and the screen play of this movie were outstanding to say the least. Symbolically it can be stated that Scissorhands is an autobiography of Tim Burton and the character was none other than himself. Many critics criticized Burton’s film works as in case of Scissorhands they thought the seminal piece of Burton had been considered to make the character (Weinstock). For instance they showed contrasting visuals to clear out how the society and the outer world created by Burton (Fariss). Many of the critics believe that the resultant special effects shown in the movie was literary accidental to say the least. American critic Robert Ebert stated in a review:
“Burton uses special effects and visual tricks to create sights that have never been seen before. The movie takes place in an entirely artificial world, where a haunting gothic castle crouches on a mountain-top high above a storybook suburb, a goofy sitcom neighbourhood where all of the houses are shades of pastels and all of the inhabitants seem to be emotional clones of the Jetsons.”(Bernstein)
“Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” was fully produced by Disney and it was highly interesting for both the adults and the children. But according to critics the film being a successful one have an unfinished quality of representation as well as a rough edge. According to Henry Selick:
“Even with their story flaws and rhythm flaws, what’s good in his films is so brilliant that the audience always responds.” (Burton)
The next assignment for Burton was “Ed Wood”, a movie based on the life of “Worst Director of All Time,” Edward D. Wood Jr. The movie scripted on truthful ground basis and based on historical reality. In this movie the effectiveness of Burton’s direction can be seen. Many of the critics commented on the similarity of characters such as Wood’s accord with Lugosi and Tim Burton’s with Vincent Price, the mentor of Burton. In a review made by critic Kim Newman on Ed Wood stated:
“Burton shares with Wood a lack of interest in conventional Hollywood notions of construction and character, compensating for the waywardness of his films with a bizarre, unreplicable flavour. It is ironic that for all its anecdotal and elliptical approach, Ed Wood is Burton’s most successful piece of proper storytelling, its visuals never overwhelming its emotions.” (Burton and Walsh)
In 1996 “Mars Attacks” was come into the public scripted on alien invasion. The movie threw direct challenges to high budget science fiction movies of 1990’s. Apart from that there are many animation based movies which have distinctly featured the success of Burton. “Planet of the Apes” is a movie that can be considered more visually colliding than original.

In this section the real visible impact of Burton in Hollywood has been discussed with critics’ statements. Tim Burton has his own margin of freedom than any other director of the industry to say the least. According to the experts Burton is a contradiction. Burton is a filmmaker who has possessed his own medicine of success with a unique and uncompromising style. In spite of his success his feet are grounded. In the words of J. Hoberman:
“More insolently pop than David Lynch and less eager for approval that Steven Spielberg. Burton has repeatedly twisted studio resources to his own dank and gibbering expressionistic purposes.” (Langley and Farrall)
Burton has set new trends to follow for the rest of the professional of the same filed. His own unique success methods and selling point have been commercialized significantly in Hollywood film industry. Burton is visually and thematically unchallenging and therefore his prescribed techniques and issues can be highly recommended for the rest of others. Significantly in order to be successful in current era filmmakers have followed the ways dictated by Burton. The skills and creativity of Burton have its own impact to say the least. At the same time he has left a lot of examples to be followed by the rests. On Burton, Taylor L. White stated:
“Burton has proved himself a maverick visionary bent on pushing the boundaries of weirdness, whose appeal has stemmed from his keen ability to make the cheap and cheesy appealing. Now that his patented strangeness has received that all-important ‘commercial’ imprimatur, it will be interesting to see what path he follows. Will it be more popular, less personal, high-flying, high budgeted fare like Batman? Or will he get back to major weirdness.” ('The Films Of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action In Contemporary Hollywood')
But in some cases Burton’s decision in narratives and character makings has to face challenges as Mark R. Leeper mentioned:
“Tim Burton has been emblematic of what has been going wrong with popular films since Star Wars. Burton has a very strong visual sense, but a weak story-telling ability. His Batman had a beautiful vision of a dark and mordant Gotham City, but the story itself was weak and even then there were gaps in the telling. His earlier Beetlejuice had a less developed visual sense but even worse story-telling. One moment characters would find themselves floating around the room or compelled to sing calypso, and a moment later they would be apparently overlooking the incident.” (Welsh)
Basically it can be stated Tim Burton has an influential impact in Hollywood though for many reasons he has been criticized too.

Conclusion

Conclusively it can be mentioned that Tim Burton is an asset to the filmmaker industry. There are a lot of positive and negative factors associated with Burton. Though a number of charges are thrown at Burton it can be stated Burton has his own method to dictate terms in case of achieving success. He is a trendsetter basically. In did not fear to implement something new out of the orthodox methods to make something extravagant far away from the others preferences. His styles and methods were extremely criticized as he has tried several unorthodox techniques in filmmaking. His dedication to his work, his potentiality, fearless attitude and most importantly his creative stances have made himself vividly distinct from rest of the others. His success story was influenced with a lot of challenges he has to deal with for his unorthodox methods that eventually earned his a huge amount of appreciation in the critic community to say the least.

References

Fariss, Stephanie. 'Tim Burton: The Monster And The Crowd: A Post-Jungian Perspective By Bassil-Morozow, H.'. Journal of Analytical Psychology 56.3 (2011): 426-428. Web.
Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. The Works Of Tim Burton. Print.
Bernstein, Matthew. 'Movie Time: A Chronology Of Hollywood And The Movie Industry From Its Beginnings To The Present Gene Brown'. Film Quarterly 51.3 (1998): 66-66. Web.
Burton, Tim, and David Walsh. 'The Role Of Personnel In Change Processes: Introducing The ‘Charabanc Of Change’ Typology'. Strat. Change 7.7 (1998): 407-420. Web.
Burton, Tim. 'Therapeutic Aspects Of Medication Management'. New Directions for Mental Health Services 1983.19 (1983): 85-93. Web.
Langley, Dorothy, and Mark Farrall. 'Book Reviwes'. Dramatherapy 26.1 (2004): 21-23. Web.
'The Films Of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action In Contemporary Hollywood'. Choice Reviews Online 43.05 (2006): 43-2710-43-2710. Web.
Welsh, Jim. 'Celebrity Biography: Two Who Shaped Hollywood, Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master By Michael Sragow And Joseph P. Kennedy Presents His Hollywood Years By Cari Beauchamp'. The Journal of American Culture 32.4 (2009): 346-347. Web.