Nightmare Before Christmas

Netflix was so kind as to include this great family movie on its list of streaming. I watched it with a friend last night looking for subtle, but easily noticeable, setups within the Halloween world. There were a couple major things I noticed and a couple more inward things that many of you probably overlooked. These "things" include the smooth camera movement, the music accompaniment, the framing of particular subjects and persons, transition, lens flare, even introductory cues for characters. I'll start with the camera:

It's hard for me to give specific details about the camera that I liked (yes, the entire movie was that good). However, I must mention how smooth the camera panning was. In a few scenes throughout the film, the panning was very elegant. In one scene, particularly where Jack was singing his famed "Poor Jack," the fly-cam panning was so well done, I had to pause the movie to take it all in and to talk about it with my friend +Kamryn Lamons.

I do not own the rights to above image.

As the camera circled Jack, presumably imitating his mind spinning from what just happened, it brought the feeling of insecurity and confusion to the table. Talking about the techs of it, doing such a smooth path for a stop motion film has to be one of the most amazing accomplishments in the film. Like I said before, the entire movie included some of these shots, however most of them being establishing shots. 

A couple specific things I saw during the film was how some shots were set up. For example, I saw low-cam, high-cam and its derivatives. Most pronounced would be the fact that they use mostly low-cam shots for when they are depicting Jack to be in power. In contrast, during the low point in the characters life (during "Poor Jack"), the camera seemed to predominately be overhead, looking down on Jack, which also implies that he had just messed up. Also, this movie featured a confident amount of close-ups. Which leads in to the aperture of the film, and it was fantastic. The definition of foreground and background was immaculate. 

I do not own the rights to above image

Moving on from the camera, it's safe to introduce the subject of framing. The framing in the movie was phenomenal. To start, the iconic scene where Jack walks on the hill with the moon behind him is spectacular for a reason. Not only is it spine chilling to watch Jack climb up and over a hill that unrolls itself, but the moon. The moon! The moon was framing him the ENTIRE time! I counted seven different shots of him walking within the moon in the same scene. Not until "Jack's Lament" ended, did he walk out of the framing yellow moon. I was very impressed with this to say the least. Not really a framing aspect, but I did notice that whenever Jack was being powerful and strong (or scary) he potentially fills the entire screen with open arms and his tall slim skeleton-self. 

Next, I want to talk about the coloring in this film. The first thing I noticed was when Jack was in the Halloween town being a star, and when he walks away from the town, he's walking into blue light and away from orange light. I feel a lot of movies use these two colors to represent two polar opposites (notably the movie "Drive"). Blue and Orange are very common as a pair. Anyway, to wrap up the feelings for Jack, at the end of the movie, he does the opposite: He walks away from the blue light and into the orange. To me, that's a great way to complete the story. 

The music accompaniment for the film was so spectacular. Danny Elfman usually does an amazing job. Away from the score, the musical lyrics have deep meaning. Besides the physical music, when and where it's placed is almost masterful too. I can tell which character is talking or about to show up just on the score. Especially when Oogie Boogie comes. The music turns jazzy, a high contrast to the "normal" music. A great thing too, because Oogie is considered the main villain. At least for Sandy Claws (even though I can argue that Jack himself is the villain -- but we are led to believe in him and support him, the same way we do for "Inception"). But enough of that controversy. 

Some random things I noticed throughout the film:

• Jack breaks the fourth wall a couple times. 
• There are, in fact, a couple of POV shots. 
• When the main town has its Christmas jeopardized, none of the adults' faces are shown. Parents, police, etc. They are all left out. 
• The bats at the beginning sequence are held up by noticeable strings/wires. 

Also, another tech fact I learned from IMDb Trivia, is that this movie technically ran at 12fps (frames per second). Only two scenes were the traditional 24: 

1. The overhead shot of the forest
2. When the bugs were falling out of Oogie Boogie (which was horrifying, by the way)

This concludes my Movie Review for "Nightmare Before Christmas." I hope you enjoyed it, because I certainly did. Please leave any comments or questions.