The camerawork in the beginning of Zefferilli’s version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ uses a lot of panning. This may be to set the scene without vocal description. There is also a point where the camera zooms into the sun, which, at the same time, the reader says the words ‘star crossed lovers’ and the sun is a star. A border which maybe displays a storybook or a photo album surrounds the piece of film used. Luhrmann’s version zooms in slowly towards the news reporter shown on the television screen and, afterwards, zooms very quickly very small clips to display panic and excitement where as the Zefferilli version is very calm. Baz Lurmann’s version contains high quality effects but Franco Zefferilli’s version does not. This is because there would have been more film technology invented in 1997 when Luhrmann’s version was made than in 1968 when Zefferilli’s version was made.
The music in the 1968 version is traditional and fits in with the Shakespearian story as well as the time when the film was made. The 1997 version is silent at first but slowly builds into very exiting dramatic music. Similar to the camerawork, Zefferilli’s version’s music would make viewers very calm whereas the music in Luhrmann’s would make viewers fell exited and intrigued to see the rest of the film.
The lighting in both versions of the beginning of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ are quite similar because they both display darkness while the prologue is being read and light appears just as the film starts. In the 1968 film, there is an orange glow, which suddenly becomes lighter as the story begins. In the 1997 version, the prologue is mainly set in the night, not including the war scenes, and, as the film begins, it is daytime.
The texts displayed in both versions of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ remarkably differ from the words used to the style of the text and the way that it is displayed. Franco Zefferilli’s version shows very little text. This could be so that viewers focus on what the reader is saying and the words that they emphasise rather than just reading the words off of a television screen. In this 1968 version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the text is fairly eerie which maybe relates to the deaths nearing the end of the story. The text ‘Romeo and Juliet’ appear on the screen just as the words taken from the prologue focus on the characters Romeo and Juliet. The text in Luhrmann’s version is white on a plain black background and is cleverly and effectively displayed in intervals from the film clips of war scenes. These pieces of text all relate to the particular part of the prologue that the reader is reading, for example, when ‘A pair of star – crossed lovers take their life’ is read out, it appears as text on the screen. Only selected parts of the prologue appear as text. During the war scenes, certain lines from the prologue appear on the screen as newspaper cuttings to display that this is what has happened between the Montague family and the Capulet family in the past. The lines used in this way are; ‘From ancient grudge, break to new mutiny’ and ‘where civil blood makes civil hands unclean’. Soon after the prologue has been read, the names and first names of the characters appear on the screen next to the particular character’s face. Shakespeare did not invent these first names of characters so they have been made-up to modernise the film and to prevent younger viewers from becoming confused. The two uses of text differ greatly because the Luhrmann uses text very dramatically and effectively whereas Zefferilli’s version only uses text to show the name of the story, the writer and the director’s name.
I felt that both versions were extremely informative towards the storyline although I preferred the 1997 version greatly. I preferred Luhrmann’s version because I found t very exiting and it left me wanting to watch the entire film. Although I found the 1968 version very informative, the uses of the camera and ways of displaying the film were not very effective and the 1997 version was a lot clearer on what it was trying to display.
