Tim Burton: Film Techniques

A film director, fundamentally, is the one with the most control over the creative aspects of a film’s production, but they are also much more than that - they are most often the driving force behind a film, with command over the cast members and production design, and are tasked with the most difficult endeavor of making their stories come to life. They take little pieces of their heart, soul and mind and put them in their films, and because of this, diminutive pieces of the director are permanently strewn throughout their films, and this creates a collective signature that is a legacy for the director to leave behind. Whether a director is known for their side-splitting comedies, or their dark psycho-thrillers, a director will almost always
Burtonesque is used to describe people, objects, actions or a kind of atmosphere/tone, which bare a resemblance in nature and in style to the films to the director himself. It is an adjective to describe the films which are encapsulated by imaginative and fantastical worlds and characters, reminiscent of horror films, folktales and fairytales, which all bare influence from him. These films are characteristically surreal, avant-garde and expressionistic, and are more commonly described as ‘dark’ or ‘gothic’, all owing to Burton’s romanticism and fascination with the macabre. Burton has affected his films by approaching uncomfortable topics to most with great wit and humour, simply as if he were laughing at the world for taking itself too seriously, which oftentimes, he does. Burton uses satire, irony and the ‘anti-hero’ as tools for social commentary, which is magnified by his juxtaposition of the absurd and the cliche. He is an incredible director, producer, artist, writer and animator, who is noted for his dark, gothic, eccentric and quirky fantasy films, and it is quite common for people nowadays to see a film and immediately know it belongs to the director, simply because it was just a bit absurd or