Analysis of Sleepy Hollow a Tim Burton Film.

The first setting in the film is a dark eerie street. Ichabod Crane appears on screen and a dead body is being pulled out of a nearby lake. At this point in the film everything is black as it is night time and it gives the audience a bigger feel a tragic, scary death if it all takes place on a dark night. 

By this point it is semi clear that Ichabod is some sort of detectives. Ichabod believes that there may have been another cause of death other than drowning. However his colleague says that if he was found in a lake he must of drown and then gives orders for the body to be cut up. This shows the audience at that this time period post mortems and trying to get to the bottom of a death was very rare. 

When people commit crimes and people perish, the town have no real way of settling this and therefore Ichabod tries to do something about this by protesting. The setting has changed to a Court room and still the setting is black and white. I feel that this is to emphasise the melancholy in everyone's lives and the routine of they're monotonous lives. 

To put him to the test the judge sends him away to the town of Sleepy Hollow to solve the mystery of the murders. Ichabod accepts this job and goes home and free's his bird from its cage. the bird is red and is the only thing in the scene that is of colour. This could be to represent the bird is in colour as it has freedom whilst everybody else is chained down to they're regular enjoyable lives. 

The characters all operate in a rather blunt fashion. They all speak to each other in a way that could give the audience the impression that there's almost no time for them to make friends with each other they're all nothing but acquaintances. 

Editing was all kept very plain and simple. Everything is in black and white. All of the sound that was in the first 3 minutes of the film was diegetic.  

Lastly the camera angles were mainly mid shots but also the odd few birds eye view shots. The mid shots were used to show the audience the immediate action and let them watch the storyline and give them a greater understanding of what was going on. in comparison to this I feel that the birds eye view camera angles were to keep the audience in suspense, because as most of the scene was quite dark, the audience wouldn't know what they are looking at until the camera zooms in.