A documentation of my analysis on the opening title sequence of 'Se7en'.

1. Film beginninganalysis
Se7en
It starts out with a shot of a man lying in bed reading. It’s night time, and the lamp that’s on
is creating a shady atmosphere. We then see a close up of the man’s hand putting down his
glasses on the side table and flicking a metronome. We then have a shot from the bottom of
the bed looking to the top and we see the man’s face, who we now identify to be Morgan
Freeman. Due to his fame and popularity, the audience are already drawn in and can
identify that this film will be a good one. Coinciding with the sound of the metronome, there
is diegetic sound of an alarm outside and lots of shouting which tells us that he’s living in
quite a rough area. This is typical of a crime-thriller to have diegetic sound of alarms and
sirens and so on. We then have another close up specifically focused on the metronome and
the diegetic sound of the clicking gets louder. This creates tension and intrigues the
audience as to what this metronome is about. The camera moves closer in on the
metronome, then we have a synchronous sound of thunder as the screen moves to black
out and the credits come in.
There is a book, and in front of the book we get ‘NEW LINE CINEMA PRESENTS’ in white,
chalky font moving erratically on the bottom right of the screen which then creates a
‘jumpy’ and eerie feel for the audience. Followed by ‘AN Arnold Kopelson PRODUCTION’
with the name ‘Arnold Kopelson’ looking like a font that represents scraping words into a
wall. It then flicks to a vertically high-angle shot of a pair of wonky, veiny hands drawn on a
sketch book with ‘A FILM BY David Fincher’ on the top right in the same jumpy font. The
soundtrack now kicks in properly with a jumbled frequency sound. Our main actor’s names
start to arrive on screen now as ‘Brad Pitt’ arrives in the top left of the screen in the same
scraped, white font on a black background. Followed by a shot some fingers playing with a
razor blade. This tells us that the film is going to be quite violent. We then get our next star’s
name: ‘Morgan Freeman’ followed by the title ‘SE7EN’ jumping out at us centre-screen
jumbled up and pulsating as it moves away as quickly as it arrived. Then it comes back up
smaller in the top right so the audience is able to see it clearer. We then get more and more
actors names that are perhaps less important that the two main protagonists. The fact that
these names are placed in the top right of the screen with other things happening in the
background, contrasts with how ‘Brad Pitt’ and ‘Morgan Freeman’ were positioned in larger
text in the top left of the screen with a black background. This is so that there is no
distractions in the background when the main names come up and we know who’s more
important. The soundtracks get louder and more intense and the titles for all of the crew
flash up on screen alongside with eerie shots of needles and hands and blood. Then on the
beat, we synchronously get ‘DIRECTED BY David Fincher’ on top of a black screen to show
the importance of the director and because he’s already created some well-known and
loved films such as ‘Fight Club’. We now get a dark, eerie shot of a block of flats with
‘MONDAY’ written on the left of the screen. This set the scene and confirms the location of
a city. Now we actually get to see our next star, Brad Pitt. It’s clever how one of the main
actors is seen at the start of the title sequence, and one at the end. This is done so that the
audience is able to see who to focus on.