Bram Stoker's Dracula

Bram Stoker's Dracula is the 1992 adaptation of the Dracula story and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola with an all star cast, including: Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder. The film was an Important endeavour for Coppola because his production company, Zoetrope, was in a tough financial situation. Fortunately the film was a blockbuster hit and the company was saved. The opening eleven minutes of the film, which I am looking at, neatly cover the origin of Dracula and events which set the story in motion.

The cinematic style of the film owes a lot to the movies which inspired it -Nosferatu, Dracula (1931) and Dracula (1951)- particularly in Coppola's choice to use as few digital effects as possible (infact there is only one in the entire film). The effect of choosing not to use digital effects is that the film has an ageless quality to the special effects. This is because CGI tends not to age well when compared to practical effects. e.g.

  The practical Uruk Hai make up in Lord of the rings still stands up today, where as Jar Jar is showing his Age compared to the work in Avatar. That being said even Avatar is already showing it's age compared to the CGI for the latest Mass Effect game.

   The music also deserves special note because it harks back to Hammer and horror films of the 40's to 70's. Which solidifies the aesthetic established by the visual style.

The use of practical affects is particularly ingenious in two instances. The first cleverly uses already filmed footage projected onto the backdrop of the scene to make it appear as if Dracula's eyes are appearing in the sky.

The second interesting use of practical effects is during the battle scene with Dracula where the soldiers fighting in the background are all shadow puppets. While this is not intensely realistic it gives the whole scene, and indeed further uses of similar techniques give the whole film, an air of fantasy without appearing simply badly done.

The colour palette is also exaggerated which gives it a feeling of heightened reality, or fantasy. This combined with some of the other techniques listed above and the clear fantasy of Dracula's castle

 

       

Dracula's castle in fact was directly inspired by Resistance - The Black Idol.

 

  

Some of the more interesting techniques used are high angle shots, so high they are almost straight down. Top down shots are regularly used to show the character in their surroundings and often to show them isolated there. The technique is used in this manner to show the character Renfield in his cell. However, the angle is slightly off which gives the shot a weird overtone. The other use of a very high angle shot is when Dracula has lost his love. The use of the technique here seems figurative, to show that Dracula is now alone, isolated, now that his love is dead. 

Another interesting point is that the two loves in this 

scene are both wearing colours associated with love 

and lust -Elizabetha Green and Dracula Red- and 

Dracula's in particular carries other connotations such as blood and anger.

One other point worthy of note is the quality of the framing of many of the shots in this film. The cinematographer was Michael Ballhaus who has been nominated for three academy awards.

  In this show Dracula is framed directly in the centre and is flanked by the door and the torches. The door almost create a corridor focusing our view on Dracula.

 

 Here the shot encompasses so many elements all framed in the centre by the well lit cross.

Once again a centralised shot of the two characters framed by scenery.

In terms of marketing there was a single trailer that had to be recalled because audiences found it too intense. <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/x-JGNTHXbos" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>