Shrek DVD Authoring Analysis

The first thing that you notice about the Shrek DVD menu is that so much is happening, hardly anything is static, it makes the DVD menu seem like it is alive. As soon as the menu appears things are moving, in the background all of the individual characters are moving, some of them are only moving their heads or limbs but others such as donkey are jumping up and down and speaking which is pretty impressive compared to other DVD menus at the time (2001).

When you click on one of the buttons, the transitions between different menu screens are a scene in which a certain character or characters will step forward say something and then appear to walk or run off the screen to the menu that you have chosen, for example when you click on subtitles the wolf will step forward say “What?” and then walk out of shot and will appear again sitting in an armchair with the subtitle options behind him another example of this is when you click on play the three little pigs jump forward say “play the movie” and then run off screen and then into Shrek’s outside toilet. The reason why the creators of this menu have made it so interactive and alive is so that that it will appeal to is younger audience (5 – 10), it makes the menu so much more interesting having everybody moving instead of it simply static, the DVD menu actually feels like it is alive.

The amount of stuff that they have managed to pack into this DVD is great, there is so much to check out; the creators obviously spent a lot of time creating it. Also considering that this is an early DVD there is more features on this than there is in a lot of new DVD’s, some of the stuff on the special features is the kind of things that you are getting on Bluray now. There is Xbox playing hints, DVD – ROM that once downloaded on your computer you can open a “Re – Voice” studio and storyboards.

Another thing about the Shrek DVD menu is that on the scene selection page, all of the individual chapters are moving; this is another part that is quite advanced for its time. Its as if the creators of this DVD when all out and tried to create the best and most exciting DVD menu they could, it obviously paid off because it eventually became the biggest selling DVD of all time with over 5.5 million sales. The Shrek Video was also very successful which was released at the same time of the DVD, it went on to earn around $100 million. I personally like the Shrek DVD Menu design, I enjoyed the film and I feel like the menus capture some of the fun and excitement of the film.