Last week marked the long-awaited debut of Wednesday Season 2, Part 1. The smash-hit Netflix series, focusing on titular character Wednesday Addams’ school years, has returned, and executive producer Tim Burton (Film/Video BFA 79) went back to school—returning to the stop-motion roots he honed as a CalArts animation student—for one of this season’s standout moments.
Leaning into that legacy, Burton directs the season opener, “Here We Woe Again,” which features a visually stunning 90-second short film within the episode. Presented as a flashback delivered by a Nevermore Academy resident assistant to a group of incoming students that includes Wednesday’s brother Pugsley, the stop-motion sequence brings to life an eerie campus legend of a former student who replaces his human heart with a clockwork one. The student narrator setup guided Burton’s decision to give it the deliberately handmade, workshop-feel of a class project.
In a recent Vanity Fair interview, Burton reflected on that creative decision:
I said, ‘Guys, we’ve got to go back. I don’t want this to be too slick,’ Burton says. I wanted to make this like it’s a student project. It’s a student telling the story, so I wanted it to feel a bit rougher. It was important to have that kind of crude, simplistic look.
The article also gives CalArts a direct mention, acknowledging Burton’s time studying animation at the Institute and noting how stop-motion has remained central to his artistic voice.
For the sequence, Burton told Vanity Fair he avoided a polished, digital look, instead using found-object textures and practical effects to keep the animation tactile and imperfect—matching the perspective of the in-world narrator and leaving just enough mystery in the details. The Hollywood Reporter notes that the 90-second segment took eight months to complete.
Burton was among the first cohort of the CalArts Character Animation Program, which launched in 1975 and produced a generation of influential filmmakers including Brad Bird, Mike Giaimo, John Lasseter, John Musker, and Jerry Rees.
His relationship with stop-motion began even before CalArts when a high school art teacher introduced him to a Super 8 camera. That spark continued through his CalArts years and into a storied career—from Vincent (1982) to Corpse Bride (2005), and Frankenweenie (2012).
Go behind the scenes with Burton and the rest of the Wednesday creative team to see how this iconic sequence came to life.
All four episodes of Part 1 of Wednesday Season 2 are streaming now on Netflix, to be followed by Part 2 on Sept. 3.
—by Tim Hammill
