Section 3: The Notice Board

Scripted by Newell Fisher, with assistance by John Ruths

This section covers from 5 minutes 40 to 9 minutes 30. The equivalent Chapter from the book is Chapter 1. The Notice Board

As the camera zooms out from the detailed rabbit we ended with last time, the shot dissolves to one in which a rabbit is represented in the way we will see throughout the film, in other words the fur is a single untextured colour. This is Hazel.

He emerges cautiously. After a few seconds of checking for danger, he returns to the bank and, at last, we hear a rabbit speak, as he reassures Fiver that everything seems okay.

Hazel suggests they try to find a Coltsfoot. This is a change from the Cowslip mentioned in the book.

Fiver, rushing after Hazel, is startled by a bee, which is commented on by Blackberry and, from the voice, Silver, even though he seems to be further away and the rabbit with Blackberry looks more like Dandelion.

Silver refers to Fiver as a runt, whereas in the book his comment is spoken by Blackberry, who is talking to Buckthorn, one of the three rabbits seemingly amalgamated into Silver here.

In the book, Blackberry only refers to him as Fiver and explains his name.

Fiver sniffs around looking for a coltsfoot and, as soon as he finds one, a large rabbit foot lands on it. There follows a more stilted version of the conversation with Toadflax from the book.

Hazel makes it clear that he has had enough of the way things are going in this warren and has considered leaving.

The two brothers arrive at a part of the pasture lower down the slope.

And then Fiver enters a patch of long grass where he is startled by another bee. The sound of the bee is an excellent piece of dissonance in this until now briefly idyllic scene, as it scares him out of the other side of the long grass and straight onto a piece of ground that is muddy and covered in human boot-prints.

An eerie harp and violin theme starts to play as Fiver's terrified eyes look slowly backwards and up.

He turns his head and looks up at the looming noticeboard. And then he smells a discarded cigarette nearby.

And suddenly, terrifyingly, he knows that something terrible is going to happen.

As Fiver's fear builds, a subtle change comes over his fur, as the red of the sunset highlights some parts of it.

The music is building ominously as this first genuinely frightening section of the film arrives and we enter Fiver's dream-state with him.

And so we arrive at the famous shot of Fiver looking at the sun setting over the trees on the other side of a field, as what might have just been the light of sunset becomes something definitely a lot more sinister.

The camera zooms in. The grass in the foreground actually moves out of shot faster than can be accounted for by the zoom, and then the starker outlines of trees replace the scene altogether and mutate. Fiver's vision of death seems to be a reference to the phrase "Like Trees in November" that Pipkin will later use to refer to the rabbits of the Warren of the Snares.

This frightening winter tree now dissolves into a spiral that surrounds the setting sun as we return to reality.

Hazel tries to reassure the trembling Fiver but his suggestion that they return to their burrow has the opposite effect.

As soon as Fiver insists that something "very bad" is going to happen, Hazel seems far too easily convinced, bearing in mind that, moments before, he was telling Fiver he was being "silly" for suggesting they all have to leave the warren. And he immediately says they should go and see the Chief Rabbit.

As a bed of quiet violin music plays they return to the scene of silflay where Fiver was first scared by a bee, where Fiver shouts that everyone needs to leave the warren.

As Hazel and Fiver enter a wooded area, the whole group of silflaying rabbits gather and follow them.

And, as the music bed fades away, we se