Sweeney Todd Movie Poster

This is my entry for the Sweeney Todd Movie Poster Contest being held by deviantArt and Dreamworks. Per the rules, I have retained an RGB 3000x4500 pixel copy of this poster on my computer. It remains in .psd format, so that Dreamworks' graphic editors may insert the title and credit images more cleanly; this is a smaller version with title and credit images from the news CSS, to demonstrate where they would go.

"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" started as a screenplay musical, written by Christopher Bond and composed by Stephen Sondheim. It was then made into a book, written by Hugh Wheeler. Now Tim Burton has taken on this dark romance, casting Johnny Depp , with Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, and Sacha Baron Cohen providing supporting roles. After having read the synopsis of the musical as part of my research for this project, I look forward to seeing Depp and Bonham Carter working together again in these most sinister roles, and I hope the other viewers out there appreciate the romantic aspects as well.

I tried to bring both the sinister and the romantic together in this poster, by portraying the hopelessness of the situation as father and daughter look out their windows. He still carries his straight razor, but it is not the foremost aspect of the image, as the eye travels from Depp's head, down his body, up Bonham Carter, and over to Sacha Baron Cohen, travelling the length of her dress to follow off the page. The birdcage symbolizes how trapped she is in her life as the Judge's (Alan Rickman) "daughter" and soon to be wife, and Bonham Carter's gaze of trust and adoration clearly demonstrate her desire to be more than just Depp's landlady.

Sweeney Todd Movie (c) Dreamworks
Opens December, 2007