Design Task: Burton

Elements of Burton in film:

Flashbacks (dad)

Characters

Odd sets

Music - Danny Elfman


Inspiration movie:

*Beetle Juice

*Dark Shadows

*Alice in Wonderland

*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The Corpse Bride

Nightmare Before Christmas

James and the Giant Peach

Edward Scissor Hands

Characters:

Wacky/ Wise nanny
Strange Butler
Selfish and unkind aunt
Imaginative older child
Wealthy father ( family)


Idea for film: 

A wealthy and happy family living in the time where crime was at its peak. After a stressful night at the office and seeing a mysterious figure both at the office and while driving home from work both mother and father were instantly killed after loosing control of the steering. Leaving their two daughters Annie the older daughter and Leila the younger daughter in a big mansion with their wacky but wise nanny and strange butler to look after the children. Little did they know that their dad had wrote in his will that if something ever should happen to him that the children would be then adopted by his half sister Evangeline an unkind selfish woman that only cares about the wealth she would inherit by her deceased brother. Struggling to fit in with the new routines and expectation set by their aunty the children learn to cope with the vast changes to their household. Everything that was once familiar to them is slowly becoming unrecognisable the children learn to close their eyes and escape to an imagined alternate universe as their father had once told them about where everything and everyone was jolly, where the one could taste the flowers and clouds and nothing was ever wrong. While at night the older daughter is constantly having nightmares and flashbacks of a suspicious figure standing in the background in most of her nightmares/ dreams  surrounding her parents death an especially her father as he was the main figure of her life up to that point. By observing the aunt closely from the words she says to specific movements she makes, Annie becomes more and more convinced that the suspicious figure in her nightmares is her aunty shocked by this she goes back to her alternate universe to calm herself down as she now knows that it is not safe for Annie and her sister to stay in the house, putting all the pieces together ( movements, phone calls in the middle of the night) Annie is now certain that her aunt Evangeline was present at the time of her parents death. She must now prove that her aunt was in fact there, explaining this to the nanny and the butler would come at a shock even though the nanny had already suspected that there was something a little odd about the way Evangeline was acting during her stay. With the help of Annie's imagination, the nanny, butler and Leila she is then able to defeat the aunty keeping all the wealth to themselves, sending the aunt off to prison.