Media Audience

This film is aimed at a psychograpic audience of explorers due to its unique hybrid genre. I think the age groupt targeted is possibly 16-35, as the themes in the film are very adult and the actors would be recognisable to both older and younger adults.

Sweeney Todd is a very dark film with very dark themes such as death. The film is also very gory. It could be assumed the film is aimed at people interested in dark genres. It also informs audiences of what life was like during the dark ages appealing to audiences with an interest in the past, especially British history.

The film was released in January which clearly rules out children as the target audience, leaving it to older audiences.

I think this film would have a small following, due to it's dark nature. However, due to the famous actors from famous films (Depp), and actors from the Harry Potter films, it could have a larger following than I think.

Dominant reading is to sympathise with the protagonist. Though the protagonist kills, it’s due to his troubled past. The oppositional reading is possibly that the protagonist is taking as a comical character rather than a serious character.

I sympathise with the protagonist because it has been made clear at the beginning of the film through the flashbacks that he had been forced to prison for something he didn’t do. Though there are a lot of similarities between the characters of Sweeney Todd and Ms Lovett, do not sympathise with her and her love motives for lying about the death of Lucy (Benjamin Barker’s wife). I don’t think my age, or my back ground is the affect of my opinion. However it is a possibility that my gender, as a female, causes me to identify with the sensitivity of the protagonist, as he is an alternative representation of men.

Burton and Depp interview on Sweeney Todd

I watched this interview with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Burton says when he watched the muical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" he was facinated by the hybrid genre: the mixture of nice melodic songs, contrasting with the dramatic graphic visuals and the melodrama. This made him want to make the film reflect the muscial as best as possible, having those same elements.

It also seems that having Depp as the main character was more important than wheather he could sing as he was casted without a singing audition. Could this suggest the institutions main aim is to have a hollywood actor to appeal to larger audiences!

Media Institutions

This film is produced by Warner Bros. Entertainment and Dreamworks Pictures, which are both major Hollywood production companies, who are commerical. Not only that, but the main actors in the film are American and the minor charaters are British, though the film is representing a British historic period. This suggests the production companys aims is to appeal to a large audience as the main actors are well known, rather than reflecting the characters in a more realistic way and informing them of the real story.

As the director, Burton, favours a gothic genre, he has chosen to reflect a very dark, medeval period of London, rather than a modern contemporary one. The choice of storyline of the fim, as in the history of Sweeney Todd, could have been mediated to fulfil audience expectaion of the film and its characters, for example the motives of Sweeney Todd's murders are an act of revenge. From what I have read of the "real Sweeney Todd" there is no actual motive for killing other than for fun.

The film has been distributed on DVD in a one disc and two disc edition, and on blu ray. In the two disc edition there are extra features about the director and the actors, how the film came alive, the real story of Sweeney Todd and the musical version of the film.

Media Values and Ideology

One of the main themes of the film. The progonist ends up dead in the film as he takes his revenge too far and ultimaly killing innocent people. This could signify that revenge can cause people to get caught up in it too much, and ultimaly is a bad thing.

The female protagonist helps the audience assume that manipulting someone to get their love doesn't work either as she is killed at the end of the film.

The film almost uses death as a punishment for wrong-doing. One of the first charaters to be killed is Prielle, who had tried to sell counterfit hair products and treated his slave badly.

Throughout the film, the idea of slitting throats becomes almost "normal" as the protagonist kills his customers so casually, while singing. We as the audience begin to expect the protagonist to kill. At one point, he almost plays with the audience as he doesn't slit the throat of a character straight away when you think he will. This almost makes the audience identify with the protagonist, and becomes just as evil as him, for anticipating the death of an innocent charater.