The Fresh Prince of Bel Air:
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air title sequence is lots of fun. It is fashioned after Will Smith's Parents Just Don't Understand video and pretty much sets up the premise of the show. Visually, the sequence is colorful and comedic, moving quickly from one shot to another.
Although there are tons of different colors, the most prevelant are yellow, green and blue. Smith is clad in a yellow and green striped shirt with blue cap that somehow seems to match the ensemble. The written credits (which are scrawled along the lower bottom third of the screen) are colored a bright green, underlayed by a pink that is equally as bright. Among the colorful grafetti in the beginning shots I notice references to money "$," the word "pig"( a social statement), "Bob's Big Boy," a popular hamburger joint that first opened in Hollywood in the fifties, "Thunder Chunky" and "Bay-Bee"(two tagger phrases that became popular as the show grew into a hit.
As the sequence begins, we see Will Smith sitting in on a throne turning in a circle upside down; this theme is repeated as bullies hoist him up and turn him around in circles. I think this is symbolic of how his life in Philadelphia was going. Background/foreground is demonstrated when a policemen enters the shot from our POV (and looks directly into the camera in the same way Will's mother does in a later shot) as Will tags a wall in the background. I also recognize depth in the shot where Will flags down a cab; the Hollywood sign looms in the background.
All of the characters are campy, way over the top, resembling Charlie Chaplin's silent movie style. Something I did notice was that the house Will moved to in Beverly Hills looked like a southern plantation...I wonder if this was an oversight or done on purpose?
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