Designing Sweeney's World

Burton's films have always been lauded for their amazing set designs and stylish visuals. The man charged with bringing his vision of 19th century London to life was the two-time Academy Award®-winning production designer Dante Ferretti.

One of the masters in his field, Ferretti first gained international recognition through his work with the late Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini on six films before making his mark in Hollywood, collaborating with Martin Scorsese on several films including "The Age of Innocence," "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator," with Brian De Palma on "The Black Dahlia" and Neil Jordan on "Interview with the Vampire."

"I've seen Dante's work since the Fellini days and there's just an energy about working with somebody who's worked with Fellini," Burton notes. "It roots you in the fact you're making a movie and not just doing it as a business. He's an artist. You walk by his room and he does his own drawings. There's some real energy to that, and the history and all the stuff he's done, that was exciting to me."

For his part, Ferretti always thought Burton reminded him of Fellini, not least because of Burton's artistic nature, always drawing, always sketching. "I always thought so, I always thought he reminded me of Fellini," says the Italian-born designer. "Because he is so creative, he always makes a little sketch, exactly like Fellini. They are very close to each other."

Burton wasn't interested in creating a historically accurate recreation of 19th century London for "Sweeney Todd." "We decided not to be real hardcore because it is kind of a fable and it's slightly stylized," he explains. He sent Ferretti a DVD of "Son of Frankenstein" as a guide to the look he was after in the movie.

"He said, `I want to do a London that's a little bit like an old black and white Hollywood movie,'" recalls the production designer. "Not too many details, like black and white in color, just a few colors. It's very graphic. Tim is really creative. He has a very clear idea what he wants. He's a great, great director and if you look at all his movies, the look is one of the most important things."

Adding to the movie's distinct look was the use of brightly colored flashbacks to explain the characters' backstories or fantasies. "The original music and lyrics talk about Sweeney losing his wife and having her tragically taken away by Judge Turpin," says producer MacDonald. "But the movie gave us the opportunity to visualize that, so we actually see who Sweeney was before and how he was forged. These vibrant punches create a sharp contrast to Ferretti's stark design and convey the juxtaposition between who Sweeney was and what he has now become."

Renowned for creating amazing fantasy worlds using traditional filmmaking techniques - building sets on soundstages and back lots rather than using CGI - Burton had initially planned to shoot "Sweeney Todd" in the manner of "Sin City" and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," using minimal sets and props, and filming his actors against green screens. "Part of the reason was the budget," he explains. "But when I really thought about it, being on a set helps me, it helps the actors, it helps everybody. And at the end of the day, people are singing. And singing on a green screen, you're so far removed from any reality that it would have been a really scary nightmare. I think that made it even more important to have sets on this one, because of the singing."

Producer Zanuck says the difference in cost between building sets and using the green screen method was minimal. "We realized that for substantially the same as doing it digitally, we could, if we did it intelligently with set extension and a little green screen, build sets," he reveals. "And Tim certainly feels much more comfortable and so do the actors."

While Ferretti welcomed the decision to build sets, it would ultimately mean more work for him and his team. Under the initial green screen scheme, the set for Judge Turpin's house was planned to have been little more than a simple window and door shot against a green screen.

Swapping to a more traditional method meant building an entire house set, along with a tree-lined street and an enormous painted backdrop. In all, Ferretti designed and supervised the construction of more than a dozen full sets at Pinewood Studios. A shortened pre-production period and a relatively tight budget required much ingenuity on Ferretti's behalf to not only create the large number of sets required by the script, but also build them on the small number of soundstages available to the production at Pinewood. Ferretti's solution was ingenious and remarkably cost effective. By incorporating movable walls and interchangeable storefronts, he designed sets that could be reused, and so the St. Dunstan's Market, which was built on Pinewood's S Stage, transformed very easily into Fleet Street, saving the production both time and money.

"This is our first time with Dante and he's exceeded our expectations," says Zanuck. "We didn't have a lot of money and we couldn't build everything we wanted. He's taken certain sets and made other sets out of them, by just changing the structure. There are sets behind sets because we couldn't afford to have a lot of stages. It's extraordinary what he's done. You're going to feel like you're in London at that time period, and obviously we have set extensions that are done digitally so you'll get the feeling that it's a big outdoor picture."

"There's something miraculous when, as a writer, you write INT. PIE SHOP and then you see what Dante and Tim have created," explains screenwriter Logan. "I know Dante very well because he did `The Aviator' and I knew he would bring his fine love of detail to this world. In the screenplay, I said the barber shop looked haunted and that's what every square inch of this world looks like. They are very unsettling sets to walk through because they're dark and they have strange broken angles and you never quite know what might come round a corner, whether it's Sweeney Todd with a razor, Mrs. Lovett with a pie or Jack the Ripper. They're frightening sets, which is appropriate because it's a horror movie."

For the actors, the detail in Ferretti's work was nothing short of inspiring. "I loved the sets," says Bonham Carter. "I loved walking onto Fleet Street. The atmosphere helps you considerably if your environment invites your imagination to travel. And I loved my shop."

Another crucial element for the actors was Colleen Atwood's wardrobe because "the costumes are another character in the movie," Burton explains. "I've worked with Colleen many, many times, and she gets that. She's as important as any designer in terms of helping the tone of the whole piece. Her costumes help the actors find who the character is and that helps their performances."

The job on "Sweeney Todd" was particularly challenging because of the limited color palette used for all the present-day scenes, but by playing with various textures and styles Atwood achieved the feel Burton was seeking. "Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett are strong," he says. "When you see a picture of the old Frankenstein or Dracula, or any classic movie monster, you want to have that kind of strength of image. And so that was always the goal: if you ever saw the two of them it would create a new version of those images."

In keeping with that sensibility, Burton wanted "Sweeney Todd" to look almost like a black and white film, devoid of virtually all color. "The first idea was to make the film as close to black and white as possible," explains director of photography Dariusz Wolski. "Tim showed me a lot of old horror films. We both like film noir. We like old black and white movies. So that was the general approach, to make it very moody, very dark, a lot of contrast, very graphic. Dante built sets that were very monochromatic, very stark. Then I came in with the lighting. We looked at a lot of photographs of Old London. We tried to make the film look like an old movie with contemporary technology and a modern way of making an old-fashioned film."

Later, in post-production, the Polish-born cinematographer used a Digital Intermediate process to strip out even more color. "What we're doing in this film is a combination of make-up, wardrobe, set design and me treating the film, pulling the color out," Wolski explains. "We're trying to make this movie almost black and white, except for some faded colors here and there. And blood."

Given that Sweeney's method of murder is cutthroat, it was inevitable that "Sweeney Todd" would be awash with blood, although Burton's film is, of course, following in the footsteps of the stage production. "The first time Tim and I met, the first thing we talked about was when we first saw `Sweeney Todd' and how much we remember the blood," notes Logan. "At the first throat-slitting, the razor goes wide, the blood arched across the stage, the light hit it and it was this unique red.

"In reality when you slit someone's throat it is a messy business and we don't shy away from that," Logan continues. "We are in no way coy about what Sweeney Todd is doing because to understand the tragedy of Sweeney you have to understand the degradation which he inflicts on himself and other people. You have to understand he is, in fact, a homicidal maniac and yet your heart breaks for him. That is the genius of `Sweeney Todd,' and we thought it was very important not to shy away from the reality of the blood. So when he slits a throat arterial blood sprays and people are coated with it."

"Tim was reared on horror movies," laughs Bonham Carter, "that was his treat every Saturday night and Johnny loves them too. And they've definitely looked back at their old favorites for a lot of inspiration. It is a horror movie. But Tim's quite mischievous. There's a lot of schlock, which he finds incredibly funny, and a lot of gore, which again he finds incredibly funny. There's a lot of black humor in it. And hopefully it'll be scary but at the same time it will be very funny, I hope, in a perverse way and very entertaining."

"'Sweeney Todd' is, in the classical dramatic sense, a blood tragedy," concludes Logan. "Obviously it plays homage to Grand Guignol, it plays homage to the `Penny Dreadfuls' of Victorian London. But it's important to say that the blood in `Sweeney Todd' is not sadistic, it is not unnecessary; it is absolutely a part of the world that these characters inhabit, so to shy away from it would be dishonest and coy in a way this story is not and this filmmaker is not. The truth of this is, people are being killed, this central character is motivated with so much desire and passion that he has to kill people with his hands and their blood gets on his hands and on his face, and he is coated with it figuratively and literally."