Pans Labyrinth Pans Labyrinth also known as El laberinto del fauno, "The Labyrinth of the faun".

Was directed by Guillermo del Toro Gmez, a Mexican film director. Del Toro is a director who likes to experiment with fairy-tales and horror, to see if he can interweave the two genres together to create dark poetic imagery. With Pans Labyrinth he brilliantly twists the two genres together to create this eerie, mythical fairytale into the fabric of film. With its Mexican, Spanish twist and its English subtitles. The plot begins its gothic fairy-tale adventure in Spain 1944, five years after the Spanish Civil War with a young girl Ofelia. It embarks its journey entwining the humanity of the real world with the mythical era of the forgotten supernatural. It demonstrates this through the lighting, the camera angles, and the sound effects and how it affects the audience. The lighting portrayed in the opening scene is dark with a strong contrast of the colours grey, green and red. These reveal the amount of detail in the sequence to indicate something tragic has happened; the grey representing the cold stone, green; damp grass, the colour red; blood, death, pain. These are significant to the opening as it gives the audience a cold shiver. It brings out the darkness that is unravelled within the narrative and grabs their attention. The camera angles are all personal to the character, Ofelia. The first shot shown is a gradual pan leading up to the young girl who is fighting for her life. The rapid motion of the camera singles out Ofelia making her the main focus. This is to gain the audiences sympathy as Ofelia gasps her last breath. In the opening scene no sound effects are used, unlike the majority of horror films which start off dramatically. All you can hear is the sound of Ofelias heavy breathing and the soft hum of a lullaby. Overall, the opening scene is captured perfectly to draw the audience in, to establish the contrast of light and dark behind Pans Labyrinth and the human world.