How does the director of “Shrek” convey morals to the audience?

The composer of “Shrek” has encouraged many morals such as ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’, ‘Good always wins over the evil’ and “No good deed always goes unrewarded’. The composer of Shrek uses film techniques to convey these morals. Film techniques such as lighting, music, camera angles, setting and costumes.

One of the most important morals the composer of Shrek encourages is ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’. This means people cannot judge something or somebody simply by looking at their appearance.

The director has made “Shrek” look like an ugly and green ogre but he actually was a kind hearted ogre with feelings. This is shown when he was staring into Fiona’s eyes and Fiona was staring into Shrek’s eyes after he rescued her. The sunset was the background setting and they were shown in a close-up shot which shows emotions or romance. Another example would be when Shrek and Fiona were exchanging proclamations of love after Lord Farquaad was devoured by the dragon. When Shrek kisses her, instead of turning back to human form, she turns permanently to an ogre. When Fiona says she was supposed to be beautiful, Shrek says she is already beautiful. Fiona and Shrek were shown in a close-up shot again showing romance. This ending stresses the relativity of beauty, thus leading the allegory to the moral.

The next moral shown was ‘Good always wins over the evil’. The villain in Shrek was Lord Farquaad. The director used a range of film techniques to show the evil in Lord Farquaad. In the scene when Farquaad was preparing to torture the gingerbread man, there was loud organ music in the background with dark lighting which expresses dark and evil presence. Lord Farquaad himself is wearing red clothes which symbolises evil and command. To add to his evilness, he tries to make his kingdom perfect by getting rid of all fairytale creatures.

On the other hand Shrek is the knight in shining armour. He is the good guy in the story. Shrek is the person who saves Princess Fiona from the dragon and delivers her to Lord Farquaad. Then Farquaad tries to marry Fiona to become King but Shrek, donkey and the dragon stops them and Fiona marries Shrek instead. Farquaad in result gets eaten by the dragon. This therefore proves the moral being encourages by the composer.

The final moral is ‘No good deed goes unrewarded.’ This moral was easily conveyed by the director. As Lord Farquaad was the villain, he wasn’t rewarded in anyway. He tortured the gingerbread man, arrested all fairytale creatures, asked others to rescue Princess Fiona and tried to arrest Shrek when he barged into his wedding. In the end he did not gain anything but instead he was eaten by a dragon.

Most of the camera angles shot at him were either a close up shot to show his anger or an up angle shot to show power.

In conclusion, the film Shrek has many important morals that encourage its audience to understand and appreciate. They are shown effectively by using film techniques such as lighting, music, camera angles, settings and costumes.