Edward Scissorhands
A Halloween classic, Edward Scissorhands is an iconic Tim Burton film following an artificially created human, played by Johnny Depp, who was never completed but has scissors for hands.
The character of Edward Scissorhands was based on a drawing by Tim Burton, and did not originally include scissors for hands – just extremely long fingers. Special effects guru Stan Winston took inspiration from the early drawing and suggested giving the character ‘scissorhands’, thus giving life to the Edward Scissorhands that we all know and love today. Tim Burton was sold and production of Edward Scissorhands began by Stan and his special effects team.
As detailed in Stan Winston’s School of Character Arts, to start assembling monstrous hands created from scissors, Stan and his team made it their mission to get hold of every different kind of pruning shear and scissor in existence. When you next see Edward Scissorhands, you’ll see that each finger is considerably different from the next. A final design was agreed and the scissor hands came to life.
Believe it or not, Stan and his team were able to produce parts so life-like, that the blades used were not actually real. Instead, they were lightweight resin blades that had been given the appearance of metal; safe to use on set but incredibly convincing in the film!
