Sound Analysis: The Prince Of Egypt

The Prince of Egypt

• The opening starts with a slow wind instrument (sounds like a horn) playing a majestic and inspiring tune. It's quite peaceful and gets the audience interested and focused as the title of the film appears.
• The soft and light non-diegetic piece gets lower and more chilling as the sequence continues (contrapuntal) until finally when the statue falls it transforms into something a lot more ominous and grim. This ruins the first impression of a dream-like atmosphere and emphasises the traumatic reality.
• The rhythm of the music could be identified with the repetitive, hard labour that is being shown on the screen as the theme of the opening.
• This could also be described as a folly track because the rhythmic drums and horns match the movements (Stomping feet, ploughing, lashing etc.) This accentuates their movements and helps the audience empathise with the situation on-screen which is especially helpful because the movie is animated and is hard to see as anything other than fictional and cartooned.
• The voices (from the male choir) that are singing the song create a sense of unity. This helps with the overall image of a nation of people suffering and to introduce the setting and story. 
• Because this film is animated, identifying diegetic and non-diegetic sound is less simple. The singing seems to be non-diegetic because their mouths aren't moving except for the yelled words in the song like 'Faster!' from the leaders. The non-diegetic music makes it seem like it is coming from their heads and not being said like silent prayers.
• The music starts to dim down and a flute-like instrument plays a traditional sounding tune. This highlights the setting and sets the scene. This happens when the location is changed from the busy work area to the more subdued town. 
• The dramatic voices (this time more female choir voices) pick up again as we see shadows of men with spears. A woman hides holding her baby and singing (Diegetic) which sounds quite sorrowful because she sounds desperate and alone with no one to help which plays with the audience's emotions to make them pity this woman.

This opening uses sound and music to effectively manipulate (in a good way) the audience's emotions. I think that the way contrapuntal music is used is interesting and attention grabbing and if we had time to add it in to our opening sequence it would be an effective way to keep the audience focused..