Tim Burton movies are synonymous with Halloween.

The visionary filmmaker is responsible for darkly whimsical classics including "Beetlejuice," "Edward Scissorhands" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas," all of which were scored by his longtime collaborator, Oscar-nominated composer Danny Elfman.

With more than 100 credits to his name, including "Good Will Hunting" and "The Simpsons," Elfman is an authority on film composition, which he'll explore in his new MasterClass "Making Music Out of Chaos," launching Thursday.

The paid online class will draw lessons from Elfman's nearly four decades of work, "and give encouragement to people trying to find their way," he says.

"I try to explain that you can jump in from nothing, take what you have and turn it into a film score. I approach music from a very chaotic place, and yet I've figured out how to work through that chaotic non-process and find ways to organize it."

Given the course's Halloween release, USA TODAY called up Elfman to chat about "Nightmare," Disney's beloved stop-motion fantasy about a good-intentioned skeleton who hijacks Christmas.

Question: So just to clear up the debate online: Is "Nightmare" a Halloween or Christmas movie?

Answer: It's obviously about Christmas, but for me, it's a Halloween movie. Growing up, Halloween was my favorite night of the year and Christmas was a troublesome time. Into my adult years, it was a time where a bit of a dark cloud would follow me around – probably carrying over from my childhood until I had my own kids – and then I developed a new, brighter view of Christmas.

I also felt very close to Jack Skellington's plight because I knew what it was like to be the king of my own little world, and to want out of that world and want something else. So I felt very close to the holiday of Halloween, but also very close to Jack and what he was going through.

Q: You and Tim wrote the music chronologically before there was even a script. Was there one song that you found hardest to "crack?"

A:The hardest challenge for a song was "Poor Jack," because within two-and-a-half minutes, he has to sing the song and completely turn the story around. He starts out totally depressed that he's messed up everything, but then has to convince himself that everything's great and he can fix it all.

Q: Do you have a personal favorite song in the movie?

A: They were all really fun, but if I had a personal favorite, it might be, oddly, a song called "The Town Meeting" because I liked the up-and-back patter. I was using inspirations that were all archaic: Cole Porter, Gilbert and Sullivan, Kurt Weill. My intention was to create something as timeless as I could, but to have it not feel like a contemporary Broadway musical (number). That was the one thing that I absolutely didn't want to do, and Tim was in agreement with me. In that particular moment, "The Town Meeting," I felt like, "Oh, I'm tapping into a little bit of this Cole Porter style."

Q: You've talked before about a disastrous test screening of "Nightmare" back in 1993, after which Disney pulled the merchandise and tried to market it to adults instead of kids. How did you feel about the response at the time?

A: I was extremely frustrated, because I'm used to spending three months on a movie – not two years. I'd never had anything like this, so I was really strongly personally invested to see it all kind of unraveling. I did a press junket in Disney World for two days and almost every interviewer that I talked to would say the same thing: "This is too scary for kids, right?" And I just kept going, "No, no, no, it really isn't. Are your kids scared of Halloween? There's nothing here that's going to scare them." Then I would hear stuff like, "We hear that Santa Claus gets tortured." And I'd say, "No, no, no. He doesn't get tortured, he's mildly inconvenienced and he's fine about it!"

This was the vibe following the film around, and Disney had no way to comprehend what it was. So it doesn't surprise me that they found themselves thinking, "This just isn't going to work, it's not for kids."

Q: Was there a moment when you realized it had gotten a cult following?

A: Well, a decade later, I remember being with Tim in Tokyo for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and we were seeing Jack Skellington and Sally merchandise everywhere that we'd never seen before. And there was a nightclub in Tokyo inspired by "Nightmare Before Christmas." So there was this feeling of, "It's not going away," and Disney did pick up on that and started to put some energy back into it again.

It was a really lucky break of getting a second chance, because that just doesn't happen with movies. I consider it one of the great joys of my career that "Nightmare" got discovered on its own by an audience.