Tim Burton

Tim Burton

Timothy Walter Burton is an American film director, producer, writer, and artist. He is best known for his gothic fantasy and horror films such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie. Burton has often worked with actor Johnny Depp and composer Danny Elfman, who has composed scores for all but three of the films Burton has directed.

About Tim Burton in brief

Summary Tim BurtonTimothy Walter Burton is an American film director, producer, writer, and artist. He is best known for his gothic fantasy and horror films such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie. Burton has often worked with actor Johnny Depp and composer Danny Elfman, who has composed scores for all but three of the films Burton has directed. He wrote and illustrated the poetry book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, published in 1997 by British publishing house Faber and Faber. A follow-up to that book, entitled The Napkin Art of Tim Burton: Things You Think About in a Bar, containing sketches made by Burton on napkins at bars and restaurants he visited, was released in 2015. Burton was born in 1958, in Burbank, California, the son of Jean Burton , later the owner of a cat-themed gift shop, and William \”Bill\” Burton, a former minor league baseball player who was working for the Burbank Parks and Recreation Department. As a preteen, Burton would make short films in his backyard on Evergreen Street using crude stop motion animation techniques or shooting on 8 mm film without sound. Burton went to Burbank High School but was not a particularly good student. His future work would be heavily influenced by the works of such childhood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl. He worked as an animator, storyboard artist, graphic designer, art director, and concept artist on films like The Fox and the Hound, Tron, and The Black Cauldron.

While at Disney in 1982, Burton made his first short, Vincent, a six-minute black-and-white stop motion film based on a poem written by Burton, which depicts a young boy who fantasizes that he is his hero Vincent Price, with Price himself providing narration. Burton’s first live-action production, Hansel and Gretel, a Japanese-themed adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale for the Disney Channel, which climaxes in a kung fu fight between Hansel, Gretel and the witch. The short would finally go on public display in 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art, and again in 2011 as part of the Tim Burton art exhibit at LACMA. It was again shown at Seoul in 2012. Burton directed Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, the superhero films Batman and Batman Returns, the sci-fi film Planet of the Apes, the fantasy-drama Big Fish, the musical adventure film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the fantasy films Alice in Wonderland and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. He has directed blockbuster films, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Dark Shadows, and The Dark Shadows of Ed Wood. He was fired by Disney in 2000, under the pretext of spending the company’s resources on a film that would be too dark and scary for children to see.