Tim Burton: Film Analysis

The director I will be exploring is Tim Burton, who is famous for his creepy, unusual, gothic take on fantasy, animated and horror films. An auteur is a director who is identified by and associated with the way they have put together their film. All of Tim Burton’s films have similar aspects that prove that he is an auteur and these can be seen through character, costume, style of movie, soundtrack; and camera, editing and audio technique. The two aspects of film I will be focusing on are visual language techniques and sound techniques which I will be comparing in the movies Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Sleepy Hollow (1999) to prove that Tim Burton is an auteur. Themes in both films. Points on his views on society

Visual language features and sound techniques can be compared in both films to show similarities

that prove that Tim Burton is an auteur. Aspects of visual language features include camera angle and movement, use of lightning, characterisation motif and overall structure that the director has used to express and idea or give the audience understanding. While visual techniques are what is seen visually on the screen, sound techniques are the use of music and audio and how the audience hears what is happening.
In the film Edward Scissorhands, flashbacks are used regularly in the form of memories of the main character. In the extract I have chosen there are two flashbacks that Edward has of when the man who invented him was still alive. At the start of the extract Edward is cutting lettuce with his hands and he has a flash back to before he was invented. The image of Edwards face staring at a can opener spinning, where the camera is slowly zooming into his face and then slowly zooming in on the spinning can, and then his face again fades out into another spinning can from the flashback. So frim a spinning can to his face and then his face fading out with a can spinning into main focus. This flashback is a scene that explains how the inventor thought up making a man.
The use of panning along details in the scene is used often, for example the camera pans down onto the cookies on the conveyor belt and then follows the dough across. There is also a use of pan that stood out to me where it moved across behind a contraption but was focusing on the inventor, so the view was temporarily obstructed from the main character at times when the camera moved across and came to a stop in a clearing where the main character was in full focus. The flash back is set in the isolated mansion he lives in and shows bleak stone walls. The lighting is dark and everything surrounding the character in focus is dreary and dull. The flash back ends by cutting back to present, which you can tell from the change in lighting and end of music.
Another visual aspect that can be noticed in Burton’s film Edward scissor hands was character placement.

I saw in the extract, especially at the neighbourhood barbeque after the flashback that mid shots to show from about waist up where used often. Instead of a close up of the face that is talking and cutting between just those faces, he uses mid shots that show both characters, who stand so that their bodies are partially facing the camera. Behind the two talking characters is the bustle of the neighbourhood party. There are people behind the characters in focus that can be seen but are not really thought about. There is another example where Edward is in the middle of about four other men who are talking to him. They all stand in a line as they talk facing outward, toward the camera instead of cutting between faces.

There are similar visual language feature techniques seen the extract I have chosen for the movie sleepy hollow directed by Tim Burton. This extract starts with a slow pan from behind a tree, behind the silhouette of branches to an opening showing full view of the characters. The characters are seen standing around a body.

Character

placement