Edward Scissorhands Film Techniques

Burton

Imagine being stuck up in an old rundown castle that nobody has been in for years, secluded from society your whole life. Unfortunately, the only person you’ve ever know has recently passed away. The worst part of the whole ordeal is that your hands aren’t even hands but just scissors. Furthermore soon a women you’ve never seen, of course she’s the only women you’ve ever seen intrudes into your home and in the same fashion she takes you out with her to meet her family and neighbors. This whole experience is so new and you’re seeing things you’ve never seen before like bright colors, shapes, and people of all sizes in such as small period of time. You, Edward from Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands start to become weary of the life of seclusion

you’ve lived. Tim Burton’s dark, mysterious, and sometimes humorous style is best conveyed by his use of colors, lighting, & music in his films Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and Corps Bride
Burton is excellent at using color to create feelings about a setting or character while at the same time he can use dark gray colors to highlight characters emotions.

Burton widely used these techniques in one of his films, Edward Scissorhands, Edwards’s cloths are all black and he is notably pale. Edward could be seen as being gothic whereas the environment around him are colorful, bright, and alive. When Edward and Peg arrive at Peg’s house for the first time you can see that Edward stands out significantly from the houses and the other people around him. This makes the reader feel that Edwards been secluded from the Excitement and emotions of the outside world. In another one of Burton’s films, Corpse Bride, Burton uses a lot of greyness in the first portion of the film for instance the opening scene of the film has no color but grey and darker shades of grey. Burton, by using only grey color creates a sense of perpetual loneliness or a sense that there is no happiness in the world that the characters live in. Overall Burton’s use of color supports the darker part of his style by frequently using out of place colors that are typically darker colors in this case In Edward Scissorhands Edward having gothic like cloths compared to the bright surroundings is a great example of his dark use of

color.
Another film technique Burton uses is lighting but mainly low-key lighting. Low-key lighting is usually used to create a dark and suspenseful setting and portray the unknown for example in Edward Scissorhands towards the beginning of the film where peg had entered the mansion and proceeded to walk upstairs where Edward was hiding from to him this mysterious women but Burton put him in a dark corner so Peg wouldn’t know what or who he was until he was close to her. The low-key lighting used in this scene was meant to build suspense and induce fear in the viewer since from what you could see looked it appeared that Edward was going to hurt Peg. Another example of Burton’s use of Lighting comes from his film Beetlejuice. When Beetlejuice is trying to scare away the new occupants of the home he turn into a large snake with his head as its head. After Beetlejuice drops the father he goes for the daughter and there is a close up, eye level shot up with low-key lighting of his cartoon like snake head. This use of lighting helps Intensify the scene and make it suspenseful for the viewer because they don’t know whether or not Beetlejuice is going to harm her. Low-key lighting is ultimately one of Burton’s essentials when it comes to his style in fact Low-key lighting is used is most if not all of Burtons films. His style really wouldn’t be dark if his use of lighting was different.
One technique that Burton uses is his films that is less noticed because it blends into the scene is his use of fast paced music or sounds. Typically Burton’s use of music and sound intensifies a scene or emphasizes chaos. A good example of his use of music and sound is in Edward Scissorhands when Edward is breaking in to Tim’s house and is trapped. Leading up to Edward being locked into the house there is relatively fast paced music and when The alarm system activates there is a loud alarm sound that goes with it and this is intended to intensify the scene and cause the viewer to hope that Edward finds a way out or ends up ok. One more way that Burton uses music and sound is in the movie Beetlejuice when they are all around the table and they start to sing and dance the song Day-O. Unlike most of Burton’s techniques this one is mainly meant to be humorous but still chaotic. It mixes his dark style with a bit of humor. Music and sound are one of the most important things in a film. Without it the film would be boring and confusing. Music is also essential to create suspense in a dark film like most of Burton’s films such as Beetlejuice.
Burton isn’t like most big time film directors in the way that he uses lighting, color, and music that add to his dark and humorous sense of style in films like Beetlejuice, Corpse Bride, and Edward Scissorhands. Tim Burton uses a lot of odd techniques like stop motion when the film is a motion picture.