Monster's University

Dir. Dan Scanlon

2013

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We start and end on scene of near painterly tranquil. In between we're treated to cutesified grotesqueries (the birds in the first shot are soon to be revealed as three-headed, fang-bearing monsters) and the painful knowledge that just because you try hard at something, doesn't mean you'll get good at it. This message, a rare one in children's cinema, is delivered with a light touch: the autumnal imagery of the opening image sets the stage for a lot of softly lit near photoreal animation; but it's nevertheless conveyed deftly.

Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone

Dir. Chris Columbus
2001

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We start the seven year, 8-film journey charting Harry Potter's development from neglected, underfed, friendless and underprivileged to his ascension as a knowledgable, capable and person-of-import here, looking up into a bleak night sky with a sign announcing the plainness of his origins. It's always there, in the back of Harry's (and by extension, the audience's mind), that Harry came from an ordinary (and, in many respects quite unhealthy) place; and it's somewhere he could always slide back into. Indeed, each film begins with him again back at Privet drive. But, inside this opening image is embedded a clue to his potential, a magical owl; a person in animal form who is looking out for him. Indeed, in the final shot the angle has changed; we are above the clatter of the world and looking straight at the distant magical castle. We are inspired to dream as Harry dreams: that no matter our origins and previous traumas and no matter our tendency to return to them, we have a greater potential, and, perhaps, we have loved ones looking out after us.

Ponyo

Dir. Hayao Miyazaki
2008

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Starting the film with a frame neatly divided between the sea and what lies above, Miyazaki shows how his little Ponyo has progressed by the end of the film. A creature of the depths now risen (floating even!) above her place of origin. A journey undertaken that has now changed her on a fundamental level.