Stargate

Today's blog is on the action adventure, Stargate! This movie was from the year 1994, however, the DVD release and design was generated in 1999 (so the DVD design is more up to date than the original movie design).

The DVD menu begins with the producing companies logo, a pause, and then a quick motion graphic movie. The motion graphic begins with a black background and the title of the movie "stargate" in white text fading into the center of the menu screen with a technical motion of gray and white colors behind the text and only behind the text. Suddenly a white dot from the center of the menu grows to encompass the entire screen, sort of like a bomb going off or more specifically a flash of blinding light.

Once the light flashes, or "blinds" the screen, the background becomes black once again and soon after a bunch of little white lines come from the outside of the screen to the middle, they then turn after the reach the middle and appear as though they are heading for me; from the background to the foreground. Once this occurs I suddenly feel like I am flying through space on some type of supernova path with flashes of lights and little dots that seem to have lens flares around them as I continue to travel through this path for a few more seconds. Finally, I come to a stop at the main DVD menu.

When I come to a stop at the main menu, what I notice fist is the voice of a woman talking over the music/special effects sounds. She seems like a computer voice or someone who has been on the adventure. The music is composed of low dramatic instrumental sounds and louder explosion and movie effect sounds. The background of the menu is a motion graphic, it never stops moving but from what I can make out, it seems to be the shadow of ancient ruins or maybe the surface of some wall. Aside from the one consistent background graphic, there is one more motion graphic in a drop zone to the top left hand side of the menu screen. It displays short clips from scenes of the actual Stargate movie.

In the foreground, there is a box to the left, middle side of the menu screen. In this box are the menu buttons for the movie, "Play theatrical version, play special edition, scene index, special features, cast & crew, and production notes." It seems that rather then have a special features menu, they kept all of the special features on the main menu, leads to less navigation and maybe an easier time with the DVD.

When a button option is chose, a dull brownish-yellowish colored line appears under the button. When you click on the button the line turns a dull blue (which seems to match closely to the dark blue background of the button box).

Next to the button box, is a still image of three different sized rings intertwined with each-other, I know from watching this movie that the rings represent a portal in which the characters in the movie used to travel to a different world. The rings on the menu do nothing but stay where they are, perhaps used as a space filler.

Below the button box and the rings graphic, is the title of the movie "Stargate" in a dark blue bar (same color as button box background) and below that in a black bar are the words "special edition." Which represents the last of the Stargate DVD main menu. The color scheme to this menu is dark, shadowy orange/yellow with some dark blues and a little white for the type. I basically would get the sense that this is an action filled thriller movie of some kind if I didn't already know that that is exactly the type of movie Stargate represents.