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 Halloween Town Band, captures the skeleton musicians mid-performance in a dark, warm-toned interior. The three-frame sequence holds a continuous shot of the ensemble, with voice performers Greg Proops, L. Peter Callender, and Randy Crenshaw lending their talents to the Sax Player, Accordion Player, and Bass Player respectively.