Corpse Bride

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (often abbreviated as Corpse Bride) is a 2005 stop-motion-animation fantasy film based loosely on a 19th century Russian-Jewish folktale version of an older Jewish story and set in a fictional Victorian era village. It was directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, and filmed at 3 Mills Studios in London. Johnny Depp led an all-star cast as the voice of Victor and Helena Bonham Carter (for whom the project was specially created) voiced Emily, the title character. The film's initial release was two weeks prior to that of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, marking the first time that a stop-motion animated film and a claymation animated one were in simultaneous wide theatrical release.

The movie exhibits Burton's trademark style and recurring themes (the complex interaction between light and darkness, and of being caught between two irreconcilable worlds). Life is portrayed as boring and dully gray tinted while death is more fun, as evidenced by the brighter colors and jaunty music. The movie can be particularly compared to The Nightmare Before Christmas, Burton's previous stop-motion feature project and Beetlejuice, especially in the scenes depicting the underworld and its deceased denizens.

The film was nominated in the 78th Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature. It lost to Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Filming techniques

Corpse Bride is the first movie to be shot with still cameras.^{[citation needed]} Previous stop-motion movies (such as Aardman Animations' Chicken Run) were shot on modified Mitchell film cameras, the same old cameras used to shoot King Kong. As confirmed by American Cinematographer (October 2005), the camera chosen for the production of Corpse Bride was Canon EOS-1D Mark II, a digital single-lens reflex camera, which also makes it the first stop-motion feature to be shot in digital. Additional work was required to develop systems to permit precise camera positioning, the mounting of Canon optical lenses, and previewing a scene in camera.

Corpse Bride was the first stop-motion animated film to use Apple's Final Cut Pro as well. To give the film the traditional look of movie film stock, each image was processed with a color profile based on a type of film used in feature length movies.

The film was the first stop-motion animated movie to use the new "gear and paddle" technique for the maquette's heads. This new system involved the maquettes being built with a complex gear system inside of the main character's heads. The various gears were attached to external paddles. A soft skin-like material, mainly made of silicone and foam, was placed over these paddles to create the head and then painted. By adjusting the gears, done by inserting an allen wrench into small holes located on the maquette's head and in the ears, the paddles would move, therefore adjusting the facial expression of the character. This allowed for a much more smooth system of emotion change and lip-sync than the old style of replacing heads. The soft "skin" also gave the characters a much more natural look.

The puppets were made in Altrincham, near Manchester, England, by the leading puppet manufacturers Mackinnon and Saunders. They were also responsible for a major contribution to another Tim Burton film (Mars Attacks!), as well as numerous British animated series like Bob the Builder (Hit Entertainment), Andy Pandy (Cosgrove Hall) and Pingu (Hit Entertainment).