Tim Burton's 'Corpse Bride': A few firsts

The July/August issue of Editors Guild magazine notes that "The Corpse Bride" is a breakthrough film on several counts:

"...[I]t’s the first feature-length, stop-motion film edited using Apple Final Cut Pro (FCP), it’s the first feature shot using commercial digital SLR still photography cameras and, perhaps most significantly, it’s the first movie to choose digital cameras over film cameras based on the criterion of image quality."

Editor Jonathan Lucas shares some stats from the production: the shoot lasted 52 weeks (compared to 12 to 14 weeks for a typical feature); each week, they produced just two minutes of film, on average; they relied on a Canon EOS 1D Mark II digital camera -- the same kind a professional magazine or newspaper photographer might use.

There's also a great quote from director Tim Burton in the accompanying sidebar:

"My love for stop-motion started with [film animation pioneer] Ray Harryhausen. One of the beautiful things about Harryhausen’s work is that no matter what it is that he was doing––a monster, a low-budget science fiction film––you always felt there was an artist at work behind it; you always felt someone’s personality. It’s like bringing an inanimate object to life. It’s moving a three-dimensional object frame by frame, and you think, `Wow, there’s something really beautiful and old-fashioned, hand-made and artistic about that.' To me, there’s something very special about that."

The film is scheduled for a wide release on September 23rd.