Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2008-08-29

Interview:


We had the pleasure of sitting down with Henry Selick to talk about his work on The Nightmare Before Christmas, the upcoming Coraline, stop-motion technology, and what it was like to work with Tim Burton. Here's what he had to say:

Does a film like Nightmare naturally looking amazing in high def or does the translation and remastering take a lot of work?

H. Selick: The fact is the film was originally shot in 35mm film, each image is pristine with no blur, so the source material is already high def, more so than a standard film, so the mastering is less of a challenge.

The DVD already makes the animation look so clear. What new details will we notice in Blu Ray?

H. Selick: Some of the details that may become apparent in Blu-ray are that we tried to add texture to all the characters and backgrounds as if they were an engraving, for example you'll see that Jack's stripes on his suit are hand drawn, and the hills behind also have hand made textures built into them. Additional details would be things like the leaves that Sallie is stuffed with, the bugs inside Oogie Boogie. Look into the shadow areas, there are hidden details there that have never shown up on previous DVD but will show up on the Blu-ray.

I read it took over three years of your life, and involved a small army of ILM artists, can you share with fans just how labor intensive this was for you, and what was the hardest element in finishing the film? Also-did you use any other effects houses than ILM?

H. Selick: ILM are the ones who did the 3D adaption, not the original film. We hired several ILM veterans to work on the original film however. Virtually all animation is labor intensive, since it was what I do it did not seem any harder than others. The small army topped out at under 200 people. Because the range of talents and abilities, there was always something amazing and wonderful to see virtually every day, so that the long journey of production was re-inspired regularly. We used Disney's fledgling effects unit in Burbank and they created the very simple snow that falls at the end of the film. Other than that it was all pretty much done by hand in house.

Has it surprised you how much Nightmare has been absorbed into the pop culture stratosphere -- goth kids at hot topic wearing Jack belts and arm bands and the like?

H. Selick: At this point, 15 years later after the original release, I've grown used to seeing Jack and Sallie turn up all over the place. But this did not happen right away it has taken years for our initial cult audience to grow into a pop culture phenomenon. Just this past Halloween, we had some girls show up at the house in NBChristmas costumes and my wife and I pointed out one of the original Jack Skellington and the Skellington Reindeer which was in our office, it blew their minds and they screamed with joy, taking their handfuls of candy and went away just full of life.

What was the biggest lesson you carried away from the Nightmare Before Christmas experience?

H. Selick: When possible always work with geniuses like Tim Burton., who are not only creatively inspiring but in his case, also have the clout to protect the film from the studio system.