Film Opening Title Analysis

The screen shots I have chosen for this analysis each hold a different meaning in relation to the film I have chosen to analyse, which is Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. I like the opening titles to this movie as they are not quite as conventional as other films, but still hold the needed conventions for an opening title sequence.

 2) In this shot we can see not only where the film is going to be set, but it also sets the dark mood of the film. It's raining and it is set in Victorian Era London. It also tells us the name of the production company who made the film, "Zanuck Company".

3) In this shot we see the infamous barber chair, it gives insight into one of the main points in the film, this is the place in which Sweeney kills all of his victims, even though the high shot makes the chair look smaller than it actually is.

 4) This is the first shot we see the name of the director placed over the barbers chair with a splat of blood on the window in which it is being filmed through. The text 'Tim Burton' is bigger than the words 'A' and 'Film' as it shows they are more important than the rest of the text.

5) This shot shows one of the main actresses in the film, along with silhouette portraits of both Mrs Lovett and Sweeney Todd. It also shows the top of a worn chair as well as the wallpaper which is also quite worn, this just shows the environment they were living in and a key piece of information to the film.

6) This is the first time that we actually see the name of the film, although it is quite far into the sequence, and it is really the only colour we see throughout the title sequence so far. The red is significant because of the blood spilled in the film.



7) This is a significant shot in the title sequence as it shows fire, which is a main point in the film's conclusion, it also shows one of the names of the casting directors.




8) This is one of the main shots in the sequence as it not only shows the pies, which as people know, are thee main focus in the film, it also shows the blood, which shows that the pies are not normal pies. Another piece of important information is the name of who the music was written by as the movie is a musical and the music tells the story of the film.

9) This is the last shot in the title sequence, showing the name of the director for the second time, sealing it as his work and putting his stamp on it without any interference in the background.

Preliminary Exercise Evaluation

Evaluation of the Preliminary Exercise

Overall, I think that the filming for the first draft of our preliminary exercise went well. We had no major problems with the filming, we managed to get all of the shots we needed for the piece and the camera did not have any faults in the slightest and we had the perfect location to film in. Although I did not take part in the actual filming of the piece, I was there when Jimmy, Dan and Harry filmed it, along with Megan. When it came to editing the shots together, Megan and myself were in one group, whereas Jimmy, Dan and Harry were in another. This is because there were too many people in the group for us all to get a chance to do it. Although Megan did more of the editing than myself as I took Media Studies last year and did not need as much practice as she did. I would say that the editing went well, apart from a few technical hitches at the beginning.

The names of the people in this group are Daniel Faint, Megan McMillan, Jimmy Beaton, Shannon Pratt (me) and Harry Mead. We filmed our short scene on Tuesday the 9th of October in the head teachers office as it was the best place to film the scene. The equiptment we used to film this excercise were the Canon Legria camcorder to film and  Adobe Premiere editing software to edit the scene and place it all together. The skills that we were practicing in this excercise were the 180 degree rule and camera and editing skills to put together a thirty second clip. The things that went well whilst we were filming were the fact that we managed to complete all clips that we needed to film and the location that we used was perfect. One of the things that didn't go as well was the fact that once we had managed to upload the files onto the computer, there was trouble getting them to convert and import into Premiere, so we have yet to finish editing.

Shannon x