Inside the mind of Tim Burton
When you watch a movie and see some beautiful aesthetics that are creepy as well, you most often know that this is a Tim Burton creation. Every movie of his channelizes specific visual influences. He makes the weird even more fascinating and engaging, earning him mainstream popularity.
His stylistic choices
Tim Burton’s stylistic choices are consistent within his line of work. If you’ve watched his movies you might be familiar with what an important role colour plays in them. Either there is an absence of colour or a monochromatic tone (mostly blue, greys and blacks) or a stark contrast in shades. You will get to see this in Corpse Bride and Vincent. The juxtaposition of colour emphasizes the tone and mood of each “world,” because they are so much different with one another. Vincent (1982) combines Burton’s burgeoning visual aesthetic with his lifelong love of the macabre and interest in stop-motion animation. In Corpse Bride, Emily feels pain because of a broken heart and Victor is an outcast and awkward when he is in the living world and the underworld.
So, when you watch any of his movies you can safely call it Burton-esque.
What is Burton-esque?
Is there a way to define the visual ingredients of a Burton film? And how did Burton develop such a unique visual style that continues to resonate so strongly with us?
Tim Burton first began his career in the industry working as an animator for Walt Disney Studios. His staple brand of quirkiness was born here! He had grown up absorbing a variety of pop art styles and cinematic influences. When other kids played ball and rode bicycles, he hung out in cemeteries and wax museums. He identified with moody iconoclasts and his interest in the dark and macabre somehow made him an alienated gothic hero.
Tim Burton’s movies display much of his trademark weirdness — like misunderstood goth kids in suburbia, and an obsession with dark subjects that manifest in unconventional ways.
A singular visionary
Burton is regarded as a singular visionary, defined entirely by his distinctive style. Here are a couple of specific visual and artistic influences that made his art and his overall production style what it is today:
Expressionism: It was a modern art movement that began to influence art in Europe in 1920s. Burton’s own aesthetic- Sets with jagged edges and alternately rounded, tilted, or visually disjointed and discombobulated spaces reflects German Expressionism more than any other style.
The Day of the Dead and Burton: In Latin America, the annual celebration of the Day of the Dead is traditionally accompanied by a host of colorful depictions of skulls and skeletons. Burton’s work is full of references to calacas and calaveras. If you’re wondering what the are, these are reanimated skulls and skeletons!
Gothic with a twist: Gothic refers to a style of medieval architecture supposed to be barbarous and uncivilized. The tone of gothic architecture and gothic art eventually expanded into Gothic Literature — a genre full of horror tropes: huge dark buildings looming up like the Grim from a foggy night; tortured heroes and antiheroes, lovelorn and meeting their doom or an unearthed secret from their past; and a sense of delight in the sinister, the grotesque, the weird, the bloody, the morbid and definitely the terrifying.
The Burton-esque style is derived from a wealth of art, cinematic, and literary genres. But if Burton’s work was just copied from his influences, it wouldn’t resonate with viewers. What Burton brings to all these ideas is his own joyous idiosyncrasy — adding a sense of whimsy to the eeriness. He may have spent his childhood in a world that wasn’t so happy, but he managed to successfully channel that into a creative style that the whole world is spell bounded by.
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