From an audienceís perspective, the director is the most important person involved on any given motion picture. It is the directorís vision that shapes the film and its content. Without a unifying vision, films have a bad habit of falling apart; in an artistic medium like that of celluloid, people just doing their jobs, earning a paycheck results in efforts like 8MM and The Faculty. However, in southern California, where writers and directors come a dime a dozenóand some even cheaper than thatódirectors and their visions donít necessarily command the respect of the studios like Brad Pitt and new technology advancements in the field of digital imaging. Quite simply, with two exceptions, box office takes are not influenced by the choice of directors; whether Joel Schumacher or John Schultz is attached to a given project doesnít matter to the average moviegoer.
Exception number one is Jim Cameron. Cameronís success on Terminator 2, True Lies and most recently and spectacularly, Titanic, have made him a name director.
Exception number two is Sleepy Hollowís gothic visionary Tim Burton.
Since his humble beginnings on his mid-ë80ís short, Frankenweenie, Burton has been the most independent thinking of all mainstream film directors. With Burton attached to a project, one can be guaranteed that the film will explore a number of different emotions and truly unique situations, filled with subtly warped and offbeat characters.
Given Burtonís dark sensibility and passion for moody, atmospheric pieces, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walkerís rendition of Washington Irvingís famous 19th century folk tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow appeared to be the perfect match for his tastes. And, as is evidenced on screen, the material was just that.
Intrigued by the 1958 Disney animated short of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Burton attacked the Sleepy Hollow project with a vigor, changing a few elements from Irvingís novel to better fit the silver screen: the lead character, Ichabod Crane was turned from a school teacher into a police constable with a background in forensics and the story as a whole was lengthened to make the script feature film length.
After making the necessary changes in the script, Burton began to investigate the feel he wanted to give the material in Sleepy Hollow.
For films like Independence Day, Armageddon or Star Wars: The Phantom Menace the atmosphere is either easily decided upon or, in the end, not a matter of great importanceóthere is only so much artistic beauty a film about Bruce Willis blowing up an asteroid can have.
However, for a film like Sleepy Hollow, a film where the atmosphere, tone and setting would ultimately be characters in and of themselves, this stylistic decision was one of the most important decisions to make.
Meeting with director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki for the first time, Burton explained to him that he wanted the entire movie, regardless of time of day, to take place at dusk; bathed in a perpetual twilight.
After deliberating the matter some, Burton ultimately decided to film the production in the style of horror films of the ë50ís and ë60ís and with a conscious nod to Mexican B-movies; movies that didnít always have a huge budgets that, nonetheless always managed to inexpensively create a distinctive atmosphere.
"We wanted an almost black and white feel," Lubezki related. The whole thing was to be "very monochromatic with a lot of contrast.
As a frame of reference, Burton encouraged his production team (Lubezki, production designer: Rick Heinrichs, costume designer: Colleen Atwood) to watch films like Mario Bavaís Black Sunday, Roman Polanskiís The Fearless Vampire Killers and Hammer horror films.
"Those are my favorite kind of movies," Burton said, "Theyíre beautiful... they really have an art to them."
With this in mind, Burton began to scout locations in upstate New York, specifically Tarrytown, on which they would shoot the exterior scenes. The region was a Burton favorite, an area he called "...a haunted place... like those strangely Japanese paintings of the Hudson Valley that show the rolling hills and town nestled in misty valleys". (quote from Cinefex Magazine)
However, despite Burtonís affinity for the region and the historical accuracy of the settingóthis is where the real town of Sleepy Hollow is actually locatedóthe production ran into an unusual problem. The buildings in the Hudson Valley all looked too historically accurate.
They simply didnít meet the emotional needs of the story.
"[Sleepy Hollow is] more a fantastic tale, not a realistic historical reconstruction," Lubezki said. "We have to enhance certain elements to accentuate the fantastic." And the buildings would not lend themselves well to the ëfantasticí element of the production.
Unable to find any towns that would work within the constructs of his vision, Burton finally decided just to build his own town in a self contained environment.
At the suggestion of producer Scott Rudin, the production moved to London, where Burton had shot the majority of his 1989 blockbuster Batman, and where there were a large number of available soundstages and craftsmen.
With actors Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci cast in the leads, principal photography began in late November of 1998, a year before Sleepy Hollowís theatrical release.
Filming began at Leavesden Studios, where the Van Tassel Manor House and orchard were built, but moved to Shepperton Studios after several weeks.
At Shepperton, the production constructed the impressive Western Woods set.
As was the case with the exterior buildings, there were no real forests that would adequately capture the dark nature of the film, so Burton and Heinrichs were forced to build the woods indoors.
Said Heinrichs, "[The Woods] had to have great visual impact, a place where the child in you is afraid to go."
So the crew worked creating the huge and foreboding set over a 12 week time period, crafting trees out of fiberglass and polyethylene, then texturing the outsides of the molds with real branches, bark and moss.
Sleepy Hollowís most elaborate set though was the village of Sleepy Hollow itself; the village was built on twenty acres of the Hambleden Estate in the Lime Tree Valley, roughly an hourís drive north of London.
The Lime Tree Valley region of England is quite reminiscent of the Hudson Valley region in New York, with its small foothills and lush greenery. Both Burton and Heinrichs noticed the similarities between the two areas and chose to work in The Lime Tree Valley because of them.
On the Hambleden Estate, the production created the town of Sleepy Hollow, complete with covered wooden bridge, a church, a general store, a doctorís office, a tavern, a blacksmith, a notary public, a bank, a mill house and several residences.
In order to light the outdoor set, giant light boxes were hoisted above the set on cranes, allowing for the set to be completely illuminated even during the night shoots. And while this was good for the filmmakers, the local police werenít as lucky, as numerous phone calls were fielded from nearby residents who mistook the light boxes for UFOs hovering in the air.
Building the town of Sleepy Hollow was a challenge, but the lovely British weather added an additional challenge. Not expecting torrents of rain, the construction team that had built the town had done just that: crafted the exteriors to the specifications of Burton and Heinrichs. However, as heavy rains tore through the area, the center of the newly minted town left equipment and workers knee-deep in mud.
Following the passing of the storms, construction crews went back to work, building roads in between the Sleepy Hollow exteriors and even installed a drainage plant so that the water could effectively drain from the set.
However, despite battling Mother Nature and the forces of the underworld in the script, the most challenging aspect of the production came with removing the head of the performers, Ray Park and Rob Inch, playing the part of the headless horseman.
Reasoning that covering Park or Inchís head during principal photography would have looked unrealistic, Burton decided to have the horsemenís head digitally removed during post-production.
To accomplish this goal, Park and Inch would wear a blue hood over their heads as they acted; in essence, shooting their footage against a blue screen. The hood would then be edited out after filming had been completed.
The most complicated portion of the head removing process came once CFC had edited out the blue hood on the horseman: the production needed to fill the blank spaces in the film.
To achieve this end, Burton had to shoot a minimum of two takes for each scene involving the horseman. The first take included footage of the actors and the horseman performer delivering their dialogue and looking menacing. Once a take was ready to be printed, the same shot was set up minus the actors and horseman. The cameraman would then attempt to shoot the scene in the same exact fashion as the last time, mimicking his movements and steps in order to achieve a replica of the original, in principle, capturing all of the scenery that the horsemanís blue hood had been blocking in the previous take.
With both pieces of film in their hands and on their computers, the digital effects artists would then, essentially, cut the necessary bits of background from the second take and paste them into the blank spaces in the take involving the actors.
By combining the two different takes, much like the combining of the matte paintings with real footage, Burton and his team created the intimidating and anatomically correct Headless Horseman.
After months of working shooting, building, editing, creating and digitally decapitating, Burton and his production team finally put together their final cut of Sleepy Hollow. Released theatrically as the Thanksgiving cornerstone for Paramount Pictures, Sleepy Hollow went on to gross over $100 million. The film will be released onto video and DVD on May 23, 2000, from Paramount Home Video.
