Shubert-"I promise [I'll come back]. Someday. When I'm really supposed to."

At first when I signed up for The World of Tim Burton I imagined a class where we solely watched Tim Burton’s movies and wrote papers on them. However, now that I’ve actually been able to take the class I see that it has been so much more than that. Not only did I get to learn about Tim Burton and his movies on what I have felt is a personal level, but I have also learned about film-making, analyzing films, writing, mise en scene, society, and even a little bit about myself.

 

            Firstly, before I came to this class I was not a Tim Burton junkie. I definitely liked his movies and had seen some of them, but it was not until I took this class that I was able to truly appreciate the movies properly and all Tim Burton had to offer me. I myself am an artist, though I like to act, sing, and dance, not make films, and seeing the process through which Burton has developed into his own genre has changed my view on my life. Burton puts so much of himself into his movies, which makes them, even as a viewer, so much more personal than most movies on the big screen today. Through Tim Burton I have learned to never stop being your own person as an artist and to never let someone change you just to make a buck.

            Furthermore, the fact that Tim Burton’s movies actually teach viewers about society and the world in general was startling to discover as I had only ever regarded his films as entertainment. Also, that the scenes are so exact as to convey specific themes and information about characters, as we have seen by doing mise en scene, baffles me. It had never occurred to me that they put that much thought into each and very scene but I find it very interesting and possibly something I would like to study more in the future.

            Another interesting Tim Burton fact that I had not quite thought about in detail before this is the fact that he works with the same people for almost all of his movies and that he created a sort of artistic family through this. I also thought it was very neat that this was often reflected in his movies such as in Batman Returns with the Penguin’s circus family. However, by far my favorite Tim Burton reflection in a movie was in Big Fish. Not only was this my favorite movie because it was so touching and made me think about reality versus fantasy in a way I had never considered, but also because, as I discovered in one of the class lectures, Tim Burton embodied both of the characters in his own way. I would have never even thought about that movie in such a complex and analytical way had it not been for that very lecture and the whole course in general.

            Overall, although this course flew by very quickly and was a lot of fun, I have learned some very valuable information that I can take with me into my next three and a half years at college and beyond. "The biggest fish in the river gets that way by never being caught."