Harringay Local Shares Secrets of Working with Tim Burton on Frankenweenie

I met Malcolm Hadley over a hot camera at the recent Harringay Cashmob on St Ann's Road. Someone had hinted to me that he'd an interesting story about working with Film Director Tim Burton. I thought it warranted a little telling.

Malcolm is a Director of Photography. His thing is stopmotion - you know when you film with puppets or models and create movement by filming consecutive frames after each tiny movement of the film subject. Painstaking work, but enormously effective when done well. Today, I showed a colleague a few frames of a film Malcolm had worked on recently and they confessed that they thought it so lifelike that they believed it to have been computer animated.

Malcolm's portfolio encompasses a range of projects including some adverts which are very familiar. From a lay person's perspective though the feather in his cap must surely be two major assignments working in a photography director capacity with Batman film director Tim Burton.

The first was Corpse Bride. More recently, Malcolm worked on the two year Frankenweenieproject as part of a team of several hundred.

Filming was done in the vast Three Mills Studio near the Olympic Stadium. Malcolm ran a team directing photography and lighting. He worked around on one of three stages that were in use at any one time, moving between up to ten sets a day. Burton was determined to recreate the feel of 1930's horror movies with Frankenweenieand that set Malcolm and his colleagues a particular and intriguing set of challenges with lighting.

Now, I could try and tell more of the story of how Frankenweeiewas made, but I'd far rather let you hear it from the horse's mouth. I can't promise anything, but Malcolm hinted that when he's got time, he may be persuaded to share his story with us all and give a talk show.

I also had this thought of how marvellous it would be to use the skills of someone like Malcolm to make a wee film to tell Harringay's story. He'd be up for it he says if we can get together a team of locals who'd be interested in co-working this creative project. Anyone up for this?

Oh, and before you go, here's a smidgen of Frankenweenie: