PUTTING LIFE INTO THE `CORPSE'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

Don't sound the death knell of stop-motion animation quite yet.

By all indications, the genre that was supposed to have been CG-ed out of existence when the Pixar tidal wave hit the beach is as vibrant and alive as ... well ... as a certain bone-shaking, cadaver-partying Land of the Dead in director Tim Burton's new movie, ``Corpse Bride,'' which goes into wide release Friday.

``All forms are valid,'' insists Burton, who, as the producer as well as co-director of ``Corpse Bride,'' has put his money where his mouth is. ``Pixar makes good movies. That's the reason why computer animation is so successful. As soon as they start saying 'cell animation is dead,' someone will come along and do a great drawn animated movie, and everybody will jump on that bandwagon again.''

Because even if stop-motion animation were headed for an early grave, Burton - the Burbank-born lover of all things grave-y and ghoulish (``Beetlejuice'' ``Edward Scissorhands'') - would probably single-handedly resuscitate it. Just as he did with Halloween/yuletide fantasy ``The Nightmare Before Christmas'' in 1993.

That film, which chronicled Pumpkin King Jack Skellington's misguided attempt to usurp Christmas, grossed an estimated $50 million and spurred a marketing and merchandising blitz that has Burton still spotting Skellington purses and tattoos even today.

``(Stop-motion) is actually cheaper than two-thirds of most animated films these days,'' Burton points out. ``It's also a pleasure to be around. You build the sets and do the lighting. There's something very tangible. Even though it's not something people see, there's this kind of handmade quality to the whole thing. The energy to it is just amazing.''

Energy is a quality that Burton's films - animated or otherwise - never figure to be lacking. Featuring a love triangle involving two living people and a corpse, ``Corpse Bride'' bounces jauntily between a somber gray Victorian England and the colorful, jazzed-up underworld where a bowler-wearing skeleton named Bonejangles (go ahead and groan) leads the nightly skeletal band at the Ball and Socket Pub. This being a Tim Burton flick, Bonejangles' numbers are performed by former Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman.

Should you suspect that these innovations were not in ``Corpse Bride's'' original source material, you'd be correct. The original tale, of Russian origin, would barely fill up a page. In fact, Burton says he never even really read it.

``Just the phrase 'corpse bride' conjured up all sorts of things and planted a seed,'' says Burton. ``There were no character names, no plot. We never really found anything.''

Burton's rough character sketches were later passed on to character designer Carlos Grangel. Screenwriter Caroline Thompson (who penned ``Nightmare'' and ``Edward Scissorhands'') did her work, and storyboard artists began mapping out the movie scene by scene.

How many ways can you disassemble a skeleton? By now, Burton and co-director Mike Johnson can probably supply a figure. Skeleton dog Scraps? Check. Victim of the ancient war with a cannonball hole through his chest? Check, again.

``We designed certain characters for specific sight gags,'' Johnson says. ``Lots of these things could only be pulled off in the animation process.''

``I really love everything about it,'' he adds. ``I love the process of physically moving these objects and the puppets themselves. I love the texture of it and the fact that it's a miniature set like a live-action film on a slow-motion miniature scale.''

A rigging assistant on ``The Nightmare Before Christmas'' more than a decade ago, Johnson later went on to work on projects like ``James and the Giant Peach,'' the children's show ``Bump in the Night'' and the Eddie Murphy TV series ``The PJs.'' Much has changed in the stop-motion field during the dozen years between ``Nightmare'' and ``Corpse Bride.''

``We're working with a different style of puppets than we used in 1995. These have fully mechanized faces, enabling us to animate a great range of emotion and subtle facial nuance,'' says Johnson. ``I'm happy with the fact that these things can stand super-tight close-ups and be projected on super-huge screens and convey subtle emotions with no dialogue.''

Forget what you'll eventually see on the shelves of Toys R Us or as part of the inevitable fast-food promotion. What's up on screen are actually richly detailed, handmade puppets of Victor Van Dort, Victoria Everglot and the decaying Corpse Bride, who completes the third point of a most unlikely love triangle.

Helena Bonham Carter, who voices the film's title cadaver, even spent some time with her puppet alter ego while working in the sound box.

``Sometimes they bring the actual puppet to the recording session so you can have a little company,'' says Bonham Carter. ``Literally, 'little.' It's only about a foot tall.''

As cool as it may ultimately look on screen, stop-motion animation is not a particularly easy medium to work within. The puppets must be manipulated in tiny increments, with each pose photographed in a single frame, one frame at a time. Animators then step back in to readjust a puppet's expression another hair's breadth, and the process is repeated. A 12-hour day can often produce barely two seconds of screen time.

The time span even allowed Burton to work concurrently on ``Corpse Bride'' and his last live action film, ``Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,'' both of which were filmed on location in England. On certain days, Johnny Depp would finish filming his candy-man duties as Willy Wonka and go into the sound booth to record the voice of Victor Van Dort. Actors Bonham Carter and Christopher Lee - both London-based - did double duty as well.

Bonham Carter knows full well how glacially paced this medium can be, since she is also supplying a voice for the Aardman Animations feature ``Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,'' another stop-motion film due out in October. Bonham Carter was pregnant during her first recording sessions for ``Wallace & Gromit.'' When the film comes out, Billy - her son with Burton - will be 2.

``You go and record a bit, and then they disappear for months and animate the bit you do,'' says Bonham Carter. ``Over the course of 18 months, they have more and more to show you.''

Or, in the case of Bonham Carter's character, more to unearth.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Not dead yet

`CORPSE BRIDE' creeps to screen

(2) Animator Antony Elworthy makes an adjustment during the stop-motion filming of ``Corpse Bride.''