The document provides an analysis of the openings of four thriller movies: Seven, Inception, Fight Club, and Hotel Rwanda. It summarizes the camera work, sound, editing, mise-en-scene, and genius behind the opening sequences of each film. For Seven, it notes the creative camera work, unsettling music, rough transitions, and use of lighting and colors to create a chilling atmosphere. For Inception, it discusses the standard camera work and smooth movements, different sound effects, and confusing settings. For Fight Club, it outlines the continuous shot, music, and flashing text. For Hotel Rwanda, it highlights the establishing shots, realistic cuts, and foreshadowing of future events through a radio broadcast.

1. ANALYSIS OF THRILLER MOVIE OPENINGS
By: Mohamad Attia

2. CONTENS
 Seven (1995)
 Inception
 Fight club
 Hotel Rwanda

3. SEVEN(1995) MOVIE OPENING ANALYSIS
This is the opening of seven click it to view the opening

4. CAMERA
Camera use
the camera was used very creatively in
the opening not allowing the audience
to establish a sense of direction neither
does any of the shots allow the
audience to see any characters or
locations leaving the audience unaware
of what is happening, there is almost no
camera movement other than the slow
panning of the Metronome and the
books in the last seen.

5. CAMERA
Camera shots
There were three kinds of shots used in the opening the first
would be a mid shot, the one witch shows the Metronome,
then there are 6 close-ups, 36extreme close-ups and 2
panning the close ups force the audience to concentrate on
the details for most of the opening allowing the audience to
see all the nasty things in the opening while the 2 panning
shots at the end of the trailer shows the amount of books
that have been made this way.

6. SOUND
Most of the sound in the opening is non diegetic sound
except for the Metronome ticking at the start of the opening.
The music used in the opening is very fitting for the imagery
coming with it. The original sound track of the opening is
called “Closer (Precursor)” according to Wikipedia the
heavily edited music was made with a base drum and the
addition of different sound tracks together to create a
special unnerving feel to the music also a lot of the sounds
in this music was muted to give the music an unnatural feel
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closer_(Nine_Inch_Nails_song)

7. EDITING
Transitions
The opening to seven is heavily edited with a lot of rough
transitions. The openings have two types of transitions a Cut
transitions and a quick fade transitions those two transitions
are widely used in cinematography and not special.
The opening of seven intentionally used text on top of fade
transitions to add the opening credits, the font that is used in
the opening of seven is a crude font created from another
font especially for seven.

8. EDITING
Style and effects
The opening of seven is heavily edited, the is also very fast
paced with different clips switching every 4 sec or less. to
add to the roughness and crudeness of the opening David
fincher added random shaking and flickering of texts also
some clips were duplicated on top of each others. To the
end of the opening there were some frames witch were
added in the middle of clips with random text on them to
disturb the audience.

9. MISE-EN-SCENE
Props and locations
the opening of seven doesn’t show the audience any
locations, and as most of the shots are close-ups from
different angles the audience aren’t allowed to have any
sense of direction.
The Probes used are as follows: writing equipment, Books,
papers, sewing kit, Shaving equipment, scissors and
random photos. Most of these probes can be associated
with indoors work and with the style of lighting most
evidence recommend a closed office.

10. MISE-EN-SCENE
Lighting and color
the lighting used in the opening is mostly white Light which
is mostly seen indoors, the light is fader than normal
recommending a crude and slow atmosphere.
the opening also includes a lot of frame highlighting in
different colors, the colors most used are red and yellow
recommending a chilling atmosphere for the audience.

11. THE GENIUS BEHIND SEVEN’S OPENING
Seven is known for having a revolutionary opening which uses
new elements to show the opening credits, the opening follows
the antagonist in the movie ,also the credits do not show the
antagonists name in the starting cast, the whole movie in
general was built over the opening. The opening also showed
a lot of nasty photos and crude text that introduced the
audience to the style of the movie, also the opening answers
to a lot of mysteries that are shown in the rest of the movie.

12. INCEPTION MOVIE OPENING ANALYSIS
The analysed opening of Inception

13. CAMERA
Camera use
the camera use in inception’s opening is standard using mid-
shots and panning camera, and with extremely smooth camera
movements. The opening doesn’t have an establishing shot,
instead it starts with the main character’s close up, the camera
follows the same style multiple times showing Leonardo
DiCaprio the most then Joseph Gordon and Ken Watanabe the
least, the audience can see the difference in importance
between those characters for the movie.

14. SOUND
The opening of inception starts with only diegetic sounds, after
the first conversation, you can hear non diegetic sounds in the
background for the previous dream, the volume of the tiking is
amplified in the middle of the scene to add importance to what
the time passing quickly represents, Background music starts
playing when the characters wife appear creating a sad theme
for the scene and the background music changes to a slower
tone to make the audience feel mysterious.

15. EDITING
Inceptions opening doesn’t have a lot of complicated editing as
most transitions are standard cuts, The opening doesn’t have
any credits other than the logos of the companies. The
opening has two settings happening at the same time there is
the main setting where the characters are talking and the
setting where the character is sleeping and explosions are
happening, both those settings are separated by the clock
scene in the middle, That is pointing out to how time moves
slower with when entering different layers of dreams.

16. MISE-EN-SCENE
The opening of inception has a lot of interesting probes, from
the start of the opening you can see that the main characters
are in some kind of eastern Asian styled room and according
to the clothing of the character they can be at an important
meeting or party. As the scenes progresses the audience
discovers that the story is taking place in some kind of
Japanese styled grand hotel, but with the cuts to other settings
in the middle the audience gets confused about where the
scenes are taking place.

17. GENIUS BEHIND INCEPTION OPENING
One of the very impressive part about inception is how the
audience is thrown into the middle of the plot without the
audience knowing about inception and dreams etc.. Which
causes the audience to be more interested to know what
inception is meant to be (which is explained in the first arc of
the movie). There is also the part about the dialogue that
makes the audience make some sense out of what is
happening but not know the full story. The opening of inception
tries to be as confusing as possible to make the audience
interested about what will happen next.

18. FIGHT CLUB MOVIE OPENING ANALYSIS
The analysed opening of Fight Club

19. CAMERA
Camera use
The opening sequence to fight club uses an extreme long shot,
the shot style doesn’t change throughout the whole opening
sequence, as the duration progresses the camera zoom also
changes, at the start of the opening the audience can see the
walls of the brain cells of the main character and at the end of
the zoom in the audience can see the gun pointing at the main
characters throat.

20. SOUND
Diegetic sounds
The opening of fight club doesn’t have a lot of diegetic sound
other than the two lines that are used by the main character
Non-diegetic sound
The opening of Fight club is composed mostly of music, except
for the main characters dialogue. The soundtrack used for the
opening is called Coffee Shop Zak. After the soundtrack ends
and the opening seqeunce

21. EDITING
Style & effects
The opening sequence of fight club is not heavily edited as it
only has 2 cuts because of the use of the continuous shot, the
text used in the credits was adapted from the book. The way
the credits are shown is with a quick flash of characters, one of
the clever things David Fincher did in the opening sequence
was flashing the text in the opening with the music. the style of
the opening witch mostly consists of blue black and white
allows the audience to be excited and the techno music further
enhances the experience.

22. MISE-EN-SCENE
Props and location
The opening to fight club uses location in a very interesting
way as the start location is a brain ( anybody with basic biology
knowledge would now that) and then ends with a damaged
chair where the main character is tied to, the end of the
opening implies that the location is some kind of abandoned
flat in a high building. The props used in the opening are
mostly: the CGIused at the start of the opening, the chair, the
gun and a wire, which doesn’t mostly imply anything.

23. GENIUS BEHIND FIGHT CLUBS OPENING
Fight club’s opening is unique as all other David Fincher
openings, The opening doesn’t show as much information as
Seven but at the end of opening after the zooming out
sequence ended the audience are shown the main character
having a gun a pointed at him, this wasn’t a widely used style
to start a film, as opening a film with the last 5 minutes of the
movie might spoil the whole story, But David Fincher made so
that no information would be spoiled for the audience from
showing a part of the ending.

24. HOTEL RWANDA
The analysed opening of Hotel
Rwanda

25. CAMERA
Camera use
The opening of Hotel Rwanda starts with a black screen for the
first minute, then an establishing shot, with the shots
afterwards consisting of establishing shots, mid shots, close-
ups and two shots, the movie has a very consistent still
camera that mostly doesn’t move or pan between shots. There
are a lot of establishing shot to set the location of the film, and
what kind of country Rwanda is.

26. SOUND
Diegetic sounds
Most of the diegetic sounds in the opening consists of
character dialogue and background noise, there is also the
sound of the radio at the start of the intro.(witch might be
diegetic sound or non diegetic sound.), also most of the music
can be considered diegetic sound as they were still coming
from the car in the opening
Non-diegetic sounds
The only diegetic sound that can be heard is the slow music
used when the machetes are seen which can show how
serious how serious the machetes are.

27. EDITING
Style and editing
Most transitions in the opening are cut transitions that might be
because the directors wanted to make the film a lot more
realistic. The style of the opening shows that the movie has a
serious message. The way that the music from the radio were
edited with the establishing shot helped more with the
atmosphere of where the movie is taking place.

28. MISE-EN-SCENE
The main character usually wears a suit showing he is an
important or smart person, it is very obvious where the film is
taking place as the film shows the name of the airport in the
opening, the props used show different aspects of what the
main character is doing from taking the expensive cigars to the
Van. Also the machetes show the different aspect of what the
character might be involved in. the T-shirt was a suppose to
show that the main character is involved in some kind of
idealistic party, and with machetes involved it shows how
dangerous the real situation might be.

29. GENIUS BEHIND HOTEL RWANDA OPENING
At the start of the opening the audience are hearing a radio
broadcast starting with normal news then interrupted by a
talker who talks about purging the tutsi, this is foreshadowing
to the future events of the movie, also the film makes the
audience think more, as the audience doesn’t know the
background of the character then it comes as a shock when
the trader offers the main character to join them, and then
afterwards the audience being shown the machetes which was
part of the ‘revolution’. With the reaction of the Van driver it
helps even more build up the atmosphere