ancient and rickety skeleton who rules benevolently over the underworld. Jane Horrocks as two characters: The Black Widow Spider, an affable seamstress. Mrs. Plum, a dead chef working at the Ball and Socket Pub. Enn Reitel as two characters: The Maggot, Emily's sarcastic friend who lives inside her head and acts as her conscience, parodying Hungarian-born actor Peter Lorre. The Town Crier, who alerts the Van Dorts and Everglots about Victor and Emily's marriage. Deep Roy as General Bonesapart, a diminutive skeleton in a military uniform with a sword stuck in his chest. He is a parody of Napoleon Bonaparte. Danny Elfman as Bonejangles, a vivacious, one-eyed, lounge singing skeleton. Stephen Ballantyne as Emil, the Everglots' long-suffering butler. Production Development The film is based on a 17th-century Jewish folktale, which Joe Ranft introduced to Burton while they were finishing The Nightmare Before Christmas. The film began production in November 2003, while Burton was completing Big Fish. He continued with production on his next live-action feature, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was produced simultaneously with the film. Co-director Mike Johnson spoke about how they took a more organic approach to directing the film, saying: "In a co-directing situation, one director usually handles one sequence while the other handles another. Our approach was more organic. Tim knew where he wanted the film to go as far as the emotional tone and story points to hit. My job was to work with the crew on a daily basis and get the footage as close as possible to how I thought he wanted it." Filming The film was originally supposed to have been shot on film, though a last-minute change by the studio helped introduce a different technology. In 1997, during pre-production on Henry Selick's feature, Monkeybone, the film's cinematographer Pete Kozachik was looking for a type of filming that would streamline the process of integrating stop-motion characters with pre-filmed live actors. After finishing Monkeybone, Kozachik continued to test cameras for a practical means of shooting feature animation digitally. In early 2003, the production unit was not interested in digital capture for stop motion; the team was instead prepping the movie for a film shoot. Two weeks before filming was to begin, Kozachik and visual effects consultant Chris Watts came up with a solution using digital still cameras that was deemed viable by Warner Bros. senior vice president of physical production and visual