Corpse Bride - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Corpse Bride or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Corpse Bride

[mathew]

Composer Danny Elfman originally wrote the part of Bonejangles, looking for another musician to sing it, but after failing to find a voice that fit, director Tim Burton asked Elfman if he would sing it. The result was so brutal on his vocal chords that Elfman was left hoarse whenever he had to voice the character.

[wallace]

The first of two stop-motion movies of 2005 to feature Helena Bonham Carter. The other being Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) by Aardman Studios and DreamWorks Animation.

[nina]

This is the only Warner Bros.' stop-motion animated film.

[oscar]

The first stop-motion feature to be edited using Apple's Final Cut Pro.

[sara]

The movie had a 55-week shoot and included 109,440 individually animated frames set up and filmed.

[jessica]

In the special features section, Johnny Depp said that stop-motion animation is a dying art. Actually, that is not true. There never has been that much done with this art form, and even the great Ray Harryhausen never got to do a complete movie in stop-motion animation, like this one.

[edgar]

At the beginning, Victor lets go of a butterfly. At the end, when Victor lets Emily go, she becomes a swarm of butterflies, this symbolizes Victor giving the butterfly and Emily their freedom.

[richard]

Mr. Bonejangles and his skeleton band are partly inspired by the cartoon The Skeleton Dance (1929), but are also heavily influenced by Cab Calloway and his band, as they appeared in rotoscoped form in several Betty Boop cartoons. The piano player wears shades, like Ray Charles, and his movements are based on Charles' mannerisms. The character Mr. Bonejangles is based on the famous dancer Bill Robinson, who was called "Mr. Bojangles."

[ray]

The maggot's voice, mannerisms, and facial appearance are an impersonation of Peter Lorre.

[cameron]

Shares several melodies and refrains with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) which was released in the same year by the same director with the same cast and the same composer.

[nora]

This movie along with Cars (2006) is dedicated to the memory of Pixar's Joe Ranft, who sadly passed away due a car accident in August 2005.

[chris]

Albert Finney was the leading choice to play Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), but when Tim Burton was attached to direct, he nixed the idea, because the only big name he wanted in the movie was Johnny Depp, so Burton cast Finney in this movie to apologize. Burton reportedly also offered a role to Sam Neill, who turned it down.

[jessica]

Small moving elements, such as candle flames, were photographed in MiniDV.

[toni]

The second stop-motion animated film to be rated PG by the MPAA, after The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

[veronica]

This movie's images were stored on a one gigabyte image card that was capable of holding approximately one hundred frames of animation. Eight roving camera teams, each team including a lighting cameraman, an assistant, a lighting electrician and a set dresser to deal with any art department issues, worked with the animators to set up shots. Each camera team had a "lighting station" workstation, comprising an Apple G4 computer and a monitor to assist in checking lighting and framing, to view TIFF file versions of the camera's images. Once a shot was approved, the computer was removed and the animators were left to shoot the scene using their still camera and "grabber" computer/camera system to check their work. This movie's story department head Jeffrey Lynch explained that the scenes were developed initially from storyboards created by a team, saying: "We shot as close to a 1:1 film ratio (one take per shot) as we could, because there was no time for re-shoots. We did most of our experimentation in the storyboard process, as many ways as needed, to get the scene how we wanted it. There was no coverage, as there would be for a live-action film." Co-director Mike Johnson would go over each scene with the animators, sometimes acting out the scene, if necessary. The animators would create a "dope sheet", in which a shot was broken down, frame by frame, to account for key "hits". The animators would then shoot tests of the scene, often shooting on "2s" or "4s" (meaning shooting just every second or fourth frame of what would appear in the final animation). Johnson explained: "The next day, when they'd finish their test/rehearsal, we'd cut it in and see how it played in the reel and fine-tune from there. We might do some lighting tweaks, performance tweaks or have the art department get in and touch anything that needed it. Then we'd close the curtain and let the animator animate the shot." The animators would sometimes make use of the voice and/or video recordings of the actors and actresses, a practice also common in cel animation. Once photographed, the frames were manipulated by a team of "data wranglers". Using a workflow developed by Chris Watts, the frames were downloaded from the camera image cards as RAW files, converted to Cineon files and processed through a "color cube". Cinematographer Pete Kozachik explained: "The color cube is a 3-D lookup table created by FilmLight Ltd. that forces the image data into behaving like a particular Eastman Kodak film stock, in this case, 5248, one of my favorites. With this film emulation, we could actually rate our cameras at ASA 100, then take our light meters and spot meters and, with great confidence, shoot as if we were using 5248. Sure enough, the footage would come back and look just like it." The frames could be processed further to generate a TIFF file for viewing on the lighting station computer monitors so lighting, composition and color could be previewed.

[tamara]

Multiple identical puppets had to be created, so that more scenes could be accomplished in a shorter period of time. In all, fourteen puppets of the Bride and Victor were created, and thirteen were created of Victoria.

[duane]

The puppets were made from stainless steel armatures, covered with silicone skin.