Titanic DVD menu analysis

DVD Authoring

Titanic (1997)

Released in 1997 the romantic disaster movie was a gigantic hit, directed by James Cameron and starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio the film set records in the highest grossing film of the year. The film’s plot is based on a true story of the tragedy of RMS Titanic in 1912 and an unlikely love story that evolved along its journey.  The film itself was rereleased in cinemas and digitally re-mastered into HD, Blu-ray and 3D.

The disk I will be analysing is the 2 disk special edition of the rereleased HD version.  The audio used within the DVD was DOLBY Digital Surround sound (6.1) along with many other options in the ‘setup’ for advanced sound. The film is partnered with THX which is a well-known and high rated company for home cinemas. This will also assure consumers when buying that quality is involved. The video quality has also been Improved to 1080p (fully HD ready) however the aspect ratio is 16:9 the same as the menu to give it an all rounded quality.

On the back cover there is a copyright certificate certifying that it cannot be pirated or taken advantage of. The original cost millions of money and the company would lose too much, it is also (-R) meaning it cannot be re-writable or re authored in any way. The twin disk DVD is set to DVD 9 and is also duel layered, the storage is needed for the upgrades and the whole visual effects and features that came with the film.

The main menu itself consists of four basic options, ‘Play Movie’, ‘Chapter Selection’, ‘Special Features’ and ‘Set Up’. The layers behind the options is VTs of the establishing footage from the film, another layer involved a golden title ‘Titanic’ running along the clips. The background sounds includes the iconic instrumental song ‘My heart will go on’ by Céline Dion is running along in sync with the motion picture layers and loops once the transitions have played. The instrumental enhances the love story and the dramatic tale to follow. The other options include the chapter selection which is a basic design with a different mellow background instrumental and still from the film. The chapters are highlighted once hovered and plays a small montage of clips from that particular scene; Once selected it would be highlighted before a cut and fade in to the section.

The special features and the set up both again use different soundtracks and movie stills from iconic scenes. The designs are similar with the title in the generic font at the top of the screen, the set of options are listed below however the set up place on the right hand side and the special features on the left. On Set Up page there is a THX logo along the bottom left hand side to signify the sound qualities available. Then across the bottom of the screens are the options to resume the movie or to go back to the main menu; spectating the options the same colour scheme of gold underlines and turns red once selected. Lastly when either the ‘Play’ button or ‘Resume Movie’ has been selected a quick video of a moving ship along with the sound of a ships horn blasting is played before the roling sequences commence.