2 opening titles analysis

1) A series of unfortunate events At the start of the film they set the scene with a vast scene of cartoon trees with a cartoon pink bird flying across the screen, two blue birds symbolize happiness and incorporate titles into the film; it looks like a typical cartoon fairytale. Then even more titles are shown; friendly woodland creatures are shown to symbolize normal, child friendly, fairytale elements. The bird flies through smoke to create a hart this symbolizes cartoon happiness. There’re singing flowers, which are often found in cartoons. The word granny is on a mailbox, which can normally be associated with friendly and fragile. The character and title are centralized to show they are important and are the focus of the attention. The camera follows the little elf to show that he is the main character. Laughing and dancing is stereotypically all the little elf does, it all seems too happy to be real suggesting that it is all a dream or a fantasy. The opening is very childish and creepy which matches the music until the elf is stopped and the screen goes dark revealing the actual opening.

2) Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring

At the start the titles are instantly shown in a very specific font that can closely be related to the fantasy genre, the narrator (Galadriel/Cate Blanchette) instantly starts relating to the books and describes the problem that is shown at the beginning, the title of the film is shown in the font that is instantly recognizable for the lord of the rings and hobbit trilogy/saga. It gives a great deal of background knowledge when it shows elves and dwarves and men being given rings of power and relating closely to the books again. It then cuts to the introduction of the main antagonist and problem throughout the trilogy and gives information to why he is so important, also the music so far has been calm as there is no sign of danger so far, the music increases in volume and tempo to show that this is one of the main characters however not in a positive way, fire and lava are a common thing on the screen now to signify danger and peril. The narrator describes the rings distributed amongst the most powerful and wisest beings of each key race and nothing is corrupt or savaged until Sauron creates a ring of power that is designed to enslave all the other races and the antagonist’s reasons for this are purely for the gain of himself and his subjects (orcs, goblins etc…) . A close up of sauron’s face shows no eyes or any detection of human features or fantasy creature there is no detection of emotion or human like qualities. An extreme close up of the ring on Sauron’s finger shows that it is of great importance and significance to this scene and later the entire movie hence the title. The next scenes are of villages being burnt down and people who would stand against Sauron being slaughtered to show what is at stake and what should happens if Sauron should win this battle for Middle Earth, this shows that he is a force not to be taken lightly. The next

scenes have music which has changed to an opera feel with a great sense of awe and greatness it has a great sense of scale and battle of which adds to the giant clash between forces which is shown in screen, it adds to showing what is at stake. The music stops as you see a close up of the back of Sauron’s head towering over the men showing that they are in in comparison miniscule to him and this isn’t going to be a start to a film in which you feel confident in the antagonists. The next scene is just showing Sauron wiping the men away as if they were flies and getting an overall feel of the awe to the movie, and a sense of what to expect.