Q 01/05

When Burton first showed him the concept art and storyboards, what was Henry Selick's job?

A) A Disney animator

B) An MTV producer

C) A Pixar layout artist

D) A theme-park designer

Answer · why

A) A Disney animator

A Disney animator like Burton, Selick saw the sketches in the early 1980s; Disney shelved the idea, and only Burton's later live-action hits won the p...

Q 02/05

How long was Tim Burton's original poem that became The Nightmare Before Christmas?

A) One page

B) Three pages

C) Twelve pages

D) Forty pages

Answer · why

B) Three pages

Three pages was all Burton's 1982 poem ran to; Disney weighed it as a short or a half-hour TV special, then shelved it as too weird.

Q 03/05

The 76-minute Nightmare Before Christmas needed roughly how many separately posed frames?

A) About 1,100

B) About 11,000

C) About 110,000

D) About 1.1 million

Answer · why

C) About 110,000

About 110,000: at 24 frames a second the count came to 109,440, each one a fresh pose of the puppets, which is why the shoot took years rather than mo...

Q 04/05

In The Nightmare Before Christmas, what creature does the Mayor of Halloween Town wear as a tie?

A) A black widow

B) A vampire bat

C) A coiled snake

D) A black cat

Answer · why

A) A black widow

A black widow spider serves as the Mayor's tie; for all the menace, he admits he is 'only an elected official' who can't decide anything without Jack.

Q 05/05

Back in Halloween Town, how does Jack Skellington try to work out what Christmas means?

A) By running scientific experiments

B) By questioning a captured elf

C) By reading Santa's own diary

D) By holding a midnight seance

Answer · why

A) By running scientific experiments

By running scientific experiments: he borrows a lab's worth of equipment and tests the trinkets he brought home, but the results tell him nothing abou...