National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas was released by Touchstone Pictures in October 1993, produced through Burton's collaboration with director Henry Selick and stop-motion studio Skellington Productions. The film marked a turning point for feature animation, demonstrating that the medium could sustain a genuinely dark aesthetic for mainstream audiences. Its handcrafted production, requiring years of painstaking frame-by-frame work, gives every moment of footage a particular material weight.

This cell, titled The Mayor, captures Glenn Shadix's character mid-gesture in the familiar Halloween Town setting, orange floral decoration visible in the foreground establishing the scene's atmosphere. A second figure, Corpse Mom voiced by Debi Durst, appears against the town's characteristically dark backdrop. Together the frames document a brief but textured passage from the film's richly populated world.