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 composer Danny Elfman. A landmark in stop-motion animation, the film blended gothic sensibility with musical storytelling in a way that had rarely been attempted at that scale, earning lasting cultural significance well beyond its initial release.

This cell, titled Ghosts, captures three consecutive frames from the same shot within Oogie Boogie's lair sequence. The frames show a dark, chaotic environment illuminated by swirling white energy, with a jack-o-lantern visible in the lower portion of the composition. Together they preserve a rare sense of motion across a single continuous moment from one of the film's most visually intense settings.