Tim Burton (1980) Vincent

Tim Burton (1980) Vincent

Watch it at http://tinyurl.com/TBurtonVincent [ Link last active 30/1/09]

Tim Burton was born in Burbank California in late August 1958. He grew up in a typical suburban street with a traditional nuclear family, but he always broke these convetions.
Burton would obsessively study old horror movies any chance he got and was always trying to re-create these, -and a few of his own creation.
When he left school he enrolled at California School of Arts and studied a course of part illustation, part animation. Unfortunately he failed to shine and lost his Scholarship; this prompted him to work round-the clock to make his first animation "Stalk Of The Cellary" this created such a stir amongst his peers and mentors that he was taken back on, and even noticed by Disney. He left Cal Arts with a top class degree and was swallowed up, as promised, by Disney.
In the Disney labs the animators sat on brightly coloured bean-bags at communal desks drawing typical Disney characters.

Initially Burton have been brought in to work on The Fox and the Hound.
Soon the head animator recognised Burton, once again, didn't fit in with these people. He was "too weird"
Burton was hauled into the manager's office and presented with the following statement:
"Tim, I don't want you sitting with these people, they're going to change you"
So with that he was placed in a cupboard with a light box and some paper and became a character artist. In here he was to contribute to his first big film The Black Cauldron; but again his work didn't fit in and it wasn't used.

Instead Burton was set loose on his own projects, here he produced the initial art-work and poems that later became The Nightmare Before Christmas, his first live action short Frankenweenie, and Disney commissioned him to make his pies du resistance for his short stay with them. Vincent.

[Here I must mention, that despite popular belief, Burton is forever indebted to Disney as the company who gave him his big break, he still often collaborates with them, and the merchandising rites to most of his major releases are given to Disney].

*WARNING THIS TEXT CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Vincent is the story of a little boy with a big imagination. It has often been described by its creator as an autobiographical work.
Burton himself, as an avid horror movie fan was completely enthralled by Vincent Price; and he felt that if he met him, the pair would click completely; so imagine his delight when Disney employed Price himself to narrate the piece!

"Vincent Malloy is seven years old, he's always polite and does what he's told. For a boy his age he's considerate and nice.... But he wants to be just like Vincent Price"

Our protagonist Vincent Malloy is a tortured soul [or so he believes], supposedly autobiographical the protagonist lives in his imagination. He likes to adapt his situation to fit his imaginings.

The pace of the narrative is very fast, the scene is set within the first few seconds with some very clever narration. We simply see that Vincent Malloy is a nice boy, but he longs to be like Vincent Price. This is confirmed by a visual transformation from Malloy to Price. Simple, neat and highly effective story telling. This paves the way for the rest of the piece to be as strange as Burton liked without blurring the narrative.

The majority of the narrative revolves around Burton's strange fantasy world, where the protagonist imagines a situation and the visuals transform to see it acted out. For example,

"Vincent is nice when his aunt comes to see him, But imagines dipping her in wax for his wax museum."

The film's binary opposition of Vincent's normal childhood and Vincent's darker obsessions proceed as the first sentence is read:
We see Vincent Malloy's aunt (in Tom & Jerry style, only visible from waste down -also emphasizing the size and age of Vincent) come to visit.
In the same shot as the second sentence finishes the screen cross-disolves to show Vinvent "Price" ghoulishly dipping his auntie in a bubbling cauldron filled with wax.

Alone in his "tower of doom," Vincent's romanticized hallucinations become more kinetic and distorted.
Mother bursts into his room and tries to get him to see reality and "get outside and have some real fun."

As Vincent's "horrid insanity" peaks melodramatically, lightning flashes and his visions begin to swirl around him.
As the checkerboard walls sway and bend, Burton animates a series of relief sculptures of skeleton hands, his "dead wife" and his dog Abacrombie in limbo light and superimposes them over a sweying Vincent, a montage of spatial representation systems which interact on a number of levels.

Over all this is a beautifully well thought-out and original short film.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

(Own Knowlege)

Book:

Author: Tim Burton
Title: Burton on Burton
Date: (1998)
Publisher: Author's Own

INTERNET:

Author: Arran Mcdermott
Date: 2005
Date Link was last proved Active: 01/02/09
URL: http://www.timburtoncollective.com/earlymovies.html