Journal+Entry+1+-+Tim+Burton

Tim Burton is well known for his visually dark yet comedic films. One thing that I learnt from Tim Burton is that the main characters in his films are usually social outcasts, whether resulting from their appearance or personality (normally extremely introverted/timid). This really influenced me to make the main character of our film, Frank, a socially awkward person because of his anxiety. This plays a huge role in advancing our story’s plot. Even though everything seems to occur by chance, Frank’s anxiety is actually what moves the plot forward: his anxiety leads to the bad first date, which leads to him seeking therapy, and his comment about Lauren’s nose due to his social anxiety leads to Lauren’s plastic surgery. Thus, this helped me develop the theme of fate vs. chance in our story. This side of Frank also enhances the awkward tone of the film but at the same time allows the audience to feel sympathy for him.

Another notable thing that I learnt from Tim Burton last year the theme of appearance vs. reality. Even though this theme is not in “The Blind Date”, it is my inspiration for the nose incident. In Tim Burton films, there are usually main characters that are misunderstood due to their appearance, such as Edward in Edward Scissorhands. However, the characters/society that judge others by appearance eventually overcome this barrier or learn the consequences. In “The Blind Date”, this does not happen. In fact, Lauren decides to get a nose job simply because a guy with anxiety commented about it, which I think is pretty unexpected. I also did this because our film realistic in a way that it’s not idealized. I think there are lots of people who succumb to the standards of superfluous appearances today, so it would be interesting to portray it in our film.

Lastly, I also learnt a lot about Tim Burton’s stylistic mise-en-scene. One of them is his attention to color schemes. Tim Burton uses undersaturated and colorful color schemes to create a stark visual contrast between the two worlds in his films and suggest a disparity between appearance and reality. In our film, Frank and Lauren live in the same world. color schemes will be an important part in our film as it is going to imply what is going on in their inner worlds.