Se7en
Seven is a crime based thriller, the film was released in 1995, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, and directed by David Fincher. We see Brad Pitt play the role of Detective David Mills and Morgan Freeman as Detective Lt. William Somerset, the film follows the two detectives desperate hunt to find a serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world's ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins.
The opening 2 minutes of Seven don’t really reveal any of the plot to the film at all, and it remains unknown as to whether the character we see is of any relevance to the film at all. At the start of the sequence we see an open book being turned page by a distorted hand, and then the next shot is of a piece of paper with a picture of some deformed hands flat on a table, some of the fingers are bent in the wrong direction, and broken. As the camera is focusing on this image, a shadow sweeps across it. We then see an unknown characters dirty hands, holding a razor blade cutting skin off of his finger, there is then a very quick shot of a black and white picture of a girl screaming and crying. We then see the hand once again open up this book and starts writing on the pages that seem to be full of his writing, connoting to the audience that it is a journal of some sort. There is then several shots of these hands cutting out images of people in pain or suffering and sticking them into this book, and then we see this mysterious character highlighting lots of words in a newspaper article or a book, the article being scrutinised refers to sexuality and pregnancy. The opening sequence ends with a shot of these hands cutting out a section of a newspaper the word ‘GOD’. The reference to God and the highlighted words hint to the audience that the plot of the film has something to do with religious or moral beliefs.
There is a close up of an open spine of a book as the establishing shot to this sequence, in which we can also see a distorted hand in the background, the distortion of the hand draws the audiences attention to the book rather than the hand. There is then a birds eye view shot over looking the picture of the deformed hands, a shadow runs across the picture as we’re over-looking it, giving an eary feeling to the audience. There is then three quick cuts between shots of different sorts of tools, after which there is an extreme close up of a pair of gritty and dirty hands holding a blade, there is a jump cut cutting to the blade at a different angle in the mans hands, making the character seem a bit on edge and mad. Throughout the 2 minutes there are a few extremely fast cuts to pictures of people in pain, and then back to something else, almost asif there like subliminal messages to the audience, but we are aware that their there. An effect is put on a close up of the hand as it is writing in the journal, to show an elapse in time as we see the hand moving quickly and the tracks of movement staying there, this again makes the audience think this mysterious character is a bit of a loose cannon, a bit of a psycho. As the character is highlighting words in an article two shots of the hand are faded onto one shot together, giving once again an edgy feeling to it. Throughout the opening sequence both fade and jump transitions are used. Fade shots are used to add two different shots together at some points, for example we can see the character writing in the journal, but also developing some photos, both in the same shot. The pace of the transitions in this opening sequence is quite fast, with each shot lasting no longer then 5 seconds max, keeping the jumpy on edge feeling throughout. The non-diegetic music played throughout sounds almost asif it could be from a sci-fi genre, with mechanic noises throughout, but these sharp high pitch noises are used well to create parallel sound between what’s going on on screen and the sound accompanying it. The tempo stays steady throughout but speeds up slightly towards the end.
The credits have been presented to accomponie the music and the images on screen, still giving the audience this strange and mysterious vibe, and they are written in what looks like hand written font, which could be this mysterious mans writing. The font is white on a black background making it stand out, and it vibrates, continuing this strange feeling of the unknown.
The opening sequence to Se7en doesn’t really set out the storyline of the film, however it does leave subtle hints to what it could possibly be, and it does let the audience know what genre the film is going to be. I feel it’s a good first two minutes, as it doesn’t jam a lot into it, it just leaves the audience thinking, which sometimes can have great effect.
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