Ironic Techniques In Tim Burton's Stylistic Movies

“A lot of things you see as a child remain with you...You spend a lot of your life trying to recapture the experience.” These are the words of Tim Burton, a successful movie director--however, him saying this causes people to wonder what Tim Burton had gone through during his childhood, in order for him to come up with his sarcastically dark stylistic movies. For over 30 years, director Tim Burton has been creating movies that are significantly different from others in terms of its stylistic choices, portraying his style effectively to the audience. They range from comic science fiction film like Mars Attacks! to a gothic horror film such as Sleepy Hollow, including a wide range of genre. However, in all his movies, we can see that Tim Burton’s

To illustrate, in Alice in Wonderland, through the scene when Alice has found herself trapped in the small room trying to fit through the small door that leads to wonderland, low key lighting is used. Here, Alice seems nervous, and is struggling to get through the small door by eating cakes and drinking liquids that make her bigger or smaller. The low key lighting, or the flooded shadows and darkness used in this scene creates an overall gloomy atmosphere. (Alice) Use of lighting here plays an extremely important role in creating the grim mood Burton endeavored to portray. Therefore, this distinctive mood conveyed through low key lighting is efficiently juxtaposed to the scenes that follow, which are more wondrous and dazzling. Subsequently, succeeding the scenes where Alice was on the dark room, when Alice finally is able to open the door to Wonderland, the scene shifts into high key lighting--creating a stunning and sensational aura, differing from the grim and gloomy atmosphere created before. Here, Alice finally enters Wonderland after struggling to open the tiny door, and is amazed and dazed by the magnificence of the place she found herself in. The bright and open looking scene flooded with light helps add to the wondrous environment. (Alice) Aside from shots or the use of sounds, the high key lighting strengthens the overall focal mood for this particular scene; as a result, the two different back to back scenes are able to be juxtaposed because of its two contradistinctive moods--gloomy to wondrous. All in all, Burton’s effective use of different lightings play another major role in juxtaposing two scenes together by creating two contrasting moods; in the meantime enhancing the plot and appealing to the audience's emotions and knowledge of the