IDD 400 - Analysis of Masterpiece Theater TV Main Titles

Imaginary Forces's TV main title sequence for Masterpiece Theater consists several key features that it maintains during its sequence. The music is a capella and has a quick beat to it but is melo as well. We first notice an upclose shot of a book with pages turning. This pages are hand written and in a scripty font. The color palatte is very warm with an almost sepia feel to it with some dark shades of blue. We can see the old style pen writing in the pages of this book. The transitions to this are smooth and long. Page turns in the book are often transitions. The shots for this are always panning slowly in one direction or another and it feels like this is almost all one long smooth shot. There are silouttes of what appear to be excerpts from different stories in the background. These silouttes have an American feel to them with one of the first silouttes being the Statue of Liberty. Others include farm land, steam boats, and people interacting. Even the pen that is being written with has a star on it which adds to this American feel. It definitely continues the theme of books throughout the titles as there is a visible bookshelf as well which opens up into the siloutte of a city and people talking.

About 2/3's of the way through it we start to see titles. The first title being the "American Collection" followed by the show's sponsors. This sequence has a very calm and soothing feel to it almost and is very relaxing and easy on the eyes. The end comes back to that pen that we first saw and writes out the final sponsor, "Viewer's Like You" and ends there smoothly.