KS:Film Opening Analysis: Sweeny Todd

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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 2007 musical film directed by Tim Burton. It is an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Tony Award-winning 1979 musical. It re-tells the Victorian melodramatic tale of Sweeney Todd, an English barber who murders his customers with a straight razor and, with the help of his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, processes their corpses into meat pies.

Genre

'Sweeny Todd' belongs to the horror/musical film genre. Horror films are unsettling movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust and horror from viewers. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres. Horrors also frequently overlap with the thriller genre. This Tim Burton film focuses around the horror elements of blood and masacre but with a lighthearted musical feel to it.

The audiences' generic expectations are not fully fulfilled by the opening sequence but the sequence does have traditional horror traits and strong elements of the film. The audience is centered to follow the blood of what they believe is a victim around an industrial urban area watching it drip on the walls and through the technology. And so although we see the horror iconography of blood through a dark grey colour wash to create an eery and dramatic setting the audience is challenged in the opening sequence by not being truely started or horrified by any killings. 

The text does not heavily conform to the characteristics of the genre, with the usual horror genre subgenred as thriller or sci fi, the 'musical' use treats the traditional horror conventions in an ironic and playful way. 'Sweeney Todd' does however use the stock characters of the psychotic killer set in the dark mysterious stock location of underground, industrial yet worn down areas; with the traditional iconography of blood and sharp images such as a knife. When the 'killers' sing their conversation, instead of the audience horrified by the harshness of their words, it instead creates a light hearted feel so it is down to the actions and the mise en scene, with the particular colour, make up and props to create an enigmatic feel.

Film Language

The mise en scene in the the films opening is particularly sucessfull, with the use of a dark colour wash to convey a creepy atmosphere. This is further reinforced by the strong prop iconography of the dripping blood, the metal cogs used a a weapon of destruction. Special effects are used to create a blue stormy sky in the opening, raining large blood drops to symbolise an unusual and creepy evening. The lighting, also a typical horror convention creates dramatic tension as the camera tracks to the left to reveal deeper information about the story. The housing and exterior location is shot through an establishing birds eye view long shot so the audience can develop a time period for the setting, the particular brick work and housing style with the large chimneys throwing smoke into the air conveys a traditional Victiorian city in the industrial revolution. The lion statue creates a feel of an upper class situation with great wealth. The image of fire, followed by the baking of pies is an unusual one, which aims to question and confuse the audience, challenging generic expectations to the characteristics of the horror genre. Bars are used to create an imprisioned and controlled feel to the situation, and the use of the rats to further reinforce the run down industrial setting and to highlight the unusualness of the pies.

The camerawork particularly relies on the use of tracking the blood as it moves around the situation. The sequence is shot entirely on steady cam usually panning movement to allow the audience to view the setting of the film and to create a direct feel of a dark eery atmosphere. The track in through the window reveals a chair in the centre of a dark room is very successful as it draws the audience into the film, from the great outdoor setting the the narrower and more personal room of where the story will reveal itself. The camerawork is mainly made up of medium shots and medium close ups to create a direct yet creepy sense of the objects and the setting, the sequence is also shot mainly in eye level view angles however the odd use of canted angle shooting is very sucessful in creating a disjointed surreality to the opening. At the end of the sequence the camera follows the swirl of the blood in the water to intensify the viewing and create a 'horror' movement. The close up of the pies, followed by a zoom out from the warm colours to the darkened underground setting provides a direct reference to the unconcious meaning behind the film then returns back to the dark eery canal.

The film's opening sequence uses just non digetic sound of music; a thumpy discordant beat of dramatic punchy and jarry tones underlining the horror genre and creating an intense yet scary feel. The music is made up of instrumental cords of a violin and piano with the beat increasing and the tempo lowering throughout to create a dramatic climax then drowns out as the blood disspears into the surface of the water, anchoring the strong horror visual imagery and underlining the traditional dramatic 'musical' sound track. 

No characters are revealed through the opening credits of 'Sweeney Todd' so we do not develop their personal traits or their position in the narrative. Instead the strong setting and the main blood theme creates a location for the characters and perhaps portrays the consequence of the characters actions, a death and we follow how the blood runs. Tim Burton cleverly creates the blood on the swirling water surface and creates a realistic movement of dripping blood and the colour it changes as it hits the water, dispersing into the background. 

Instiutional context

'Sweeney Todd' has many famous stars including Jonny Depp, Alan Rickman and Helena Bonham Carter, and many others. This was very important as the film used a blanket release world wide from an initial budget of $50,000,000, generating $13,635,390 in USA in 23 December 2007 from playing in 1249 Screens. 'Sweeny Todd' is an industrial film as a remake of the Victorian tale and traditional musical. Co produced and distributed by Warner Bros pictures and Dream work pictures, 20th century Fox and Paramount pictures also distributed the film across various countries. These companies had to overcome many marketing hurdles for the films release, including the time pressured date of release set around the popular christmas time.For another, it’s a musical, but not the feel-good romp that movies like Chicago, Hairspray and others were. It’s also got to appeal to both Burton fans and Sondheim fans, groups that may not significantly overlap. With the use of multiple teaser posters filled with signs that shriek to the audience that this is supposed to be scary instead of just being scary in and of itself. Burton and Depp are prominently mentioned, but the oddly on-the-nose title treatment overwhelms any actual sense of foreboding or terror that the imagery might be trying to create. There was just one trailer that was created for the movie’s U.S. audiences.Despite the constant cries of some people there is plenty of music in the trailer, with Depp singing what seems to be one of the movie’s major set pieces. A graphic website was also used to as an online marketing campaign.with a “Cut Your Own Trailer” feature that lets you create your own Sweeney spot using provided audio and video files as well as other assets like transitions, graphics and title cards; there’s also a link to the Sweeney Todd MySpace page and a link to buy the official companion book from Titan Books.