Titles
The world knows the legend
Many know the myth
But few know the truth
The Kushner-Locke Company Presents
Dark Prince the True Story of Dracula
1476
Rudolf Martin
Jane March
Roger Daltrey
Michael Sutton
Christopher Brand
And Peter Weller as Father Stefan
Casting By Annette Benson, C.S.A.
Music by Frankie Blue
Costume Designer Oana Paunescu
Edited By Joe Rabig
Production Designer Cristian Niculescu
Director of Photography Dermott D. Downs
Associate Producer Vlad Paunescu, Teresa Garber, Matt Earl Beesley
Executive Producers Peter Locke, Donald Kushner
Produced By Butch Kaplan
Written By Tom Baum
Directed By Joe Chappelle
Analysis
The clip starts with an animation of the Kushner-Locke logo, there is the sound of thunder in the back ground. This sound of thunder sound bridges the first couple of minutes of the opening sequence. After the logo a title saying “THE WORLD KNOWS THE LEGEND...” fades in subtly which indicates a serious mood for the film instead of an obvious title which flies across the screen, the title then fades out. This is repeated for the next two titles, “MANY KNOW THE MYTH...” and “BUT FEW KNOW THE TRUTH.” The sound of thunder in the back ground is still bridging the scenes and it is revealed why in the next scene, which is transition via another fade in, which starts with an aerial shot of a battlefield at night that is taking place in stormy weather. During this aerial shot we are told that the Kushner-Locke company is presenting the film and then it comes up with the title ‘Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula’, again these titles are shown via a subtle fade in and out. We then see multiple shots of various parts of the battle, the camera is handheld to emphasise the constant movement of the battle and make us feel like we’re in the battlefield with them. We can hear the sounds of blades clashing both synchronously and asynchronously within the clip. Throughout the battle we see some slow motion shots as the main character Vlad Dracula (Vlad the Impaler or Dracula) slices his enemies. At 1minute 2seconds into the clip we are shown a cut zoom in on a man’s face as he screams, this is to show us his emotions as he mercilessly beats another man down with a mace. As this scene ends we see that the battle is one and a sound of strings builds up as Vlad seems to roar with victory this is ended with a quick strike of a percussion instrument which continues onto the next scene which has another fade in and out of a title saying “1476”. The next scene is transitioned to by a lit torch going across the screen revealing the map with it in a ‘wipe’ effect and is an establishing shot of a map centralised around Romania with Transylvania clearly pointed out as a slightly faded out image superimposed over the top of the whole map, as this is happening there is a narrative over the top that gives us the background story of Romania being under threat by the Turks and of Dracula’s goals. The torch effect is then used again to show a worried man who is going to be taken away by Dracula for being a traitor to the people, after some short dialogue shown with shot reverse shots the traitor is grabbed by the ear with a sound effect that sounds like a crunching of cartilage in his ear accompanied with the screaming of the man.
We are then shown what appears to be a dungeon which proceeds to show is a medium shot of the traitorous man doing the cross symbol across his chest mumbling to himself to what we can assume to be prayers, the man’s ear is also cut and covered in blood to emphasise on the other mans forceful grasps in the previous scene. We then see multiple shots from Dracula’s Point of View showing us more traitorous noblemen. A soldier is then shown in shallow focus so you are unaware of what he is holding until we are presented with a pull focus onto the object in hand which is a huge wooden spike, telling us why Vlad the Impaler is an appropriate name. The man is again shown with a medium shot this time screaming “NO” as he knows his impending impalement, he is then dragged off and as he gets dragged further a very high pitched screeching strings instrument is played as we are shown the next scene. Here there is a long shot of Dracula walking out of the dungeon like area and starting to converse with a priest, there are some asynchronous horses heard in the background. The conversation is shown with many over the shoulder shots connected with shot reverse shots, Dracula and the priest are emphasised as the important factors on screen as the shot is shallow focused on them. In the next scene we are shown a long shot over a river with an underlying instrumental piece and some ambient sounds, we then are shown that Dracula and the priest are on the boat meaning that there was some elliptical editing used as we did not see them get onto the boat after the conversation but it still makes sense, we then have a POV shot from Dracula’s perspective looking at a nearby church.
