National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Produced by Tim Burton and directed by Henry Selick, The Nightmare Before Christmas was released by Touchstone Pictures in October 1993. The stop-motion animated feature represented a landmark achievement in the format, blending Burton's gothic sensibility with a fully realized musical world. Its theatrical run established an enduring cultural footprint that has only grown in the decades since.

This three-frame cell, titled Jack and Skeleton Reindeer, captures a continuous sequence featuring Jack Skellington alongside his skeletal reindeer, the antlered bone creatures framed against a large glowing orb in the background. The slight shift in framing across the three frames preserves the motion of the original shot, offering a rare look at how Selick's team composed this distinctive image within the film's broader visual language.