Analysis of the Opening Sequence of 'Se7en' 1995

Director: David Fincher

Starring: Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt

Opening Sequence

The movie begins with a medium long-shot of William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) from the back, the colour-scheme of the room is very dull, everything is very organised and neat, this is all stereotypical of a man who lives alone, with no womanly touch to brighten the place up, or kids to create clutter. This also shows that he is a very organised person. We can hear diegetic sounds in the background; busy traffic and people in other apartments through the walls. Somerset has laid out all of the things he is going to take with him in a neat line, we also see his jacket laid on his well made bed (the way his bed is made suggests a military background), which implies that he has OCD when it comes to how tidy things are.

We then cut to a murder that Somerset is investigating, he is wearing stereotypical detective clothes; a trench coat and a fedora hat. Somerset asks whether "the kids saw" the murder, and another police officer on the scene tells him that he is always asking these strange question that no one else asks, showing that he thinks outside the box and is rather intelligent. David Mills (Brad Pitt) then enters, he appears to be the opposite of Somerset; young, white, wearing a leather jacket to suggest rebellion and he generally looks rather scruffy. The scene cuts to outside, it is raining, this pathetic fallacy sets the grim and dark mood of the movie, we discover that Somerset is retiring in 7 days, luckily, just enough time for 1 big case.

There is then a short scene showing Somerset reading a book in bed, again showing his intelligence, and you wouldn't catch Mills reading a book at bedtime. Somerset then puts the book down and starts up a metronome, to center himself and drown out the rest of the world, we here the sound levels of the metronome increase and the traffic grow quieter to show this. The metronome could also be a metaphor for the passing of time, or the countdown to when the murders begin.

The title sequence begins, the incidental music is rather scratchy and unpleasant, the same goes with the text's font, signifying the unpleasantness that the detectives will experience throughout the movie. We see grotesque pictures of broken hands and images of sexual words like "intercourse" being crossed out, as well as the eyes of people in pictures being crossed out, this suggests that the murders in the film will be religious as it was once believed that if a person's eyes were in a picture it would take part of their soul.

The Preliminary Tasks

The Preliminary Task

Illustration of the 180° rule.

For the preliminary task we were asked to make a short video that needed to include the 180° rule, a match on action and an eye line match.
The 180° rule is a rule that states the camera should stay on one side of a conversation without crossing the line, this is to ensure that the viewer does not become confused. The line can be crossed as long as the camera is shown switching sides. We incorporated this into our video by ensuring that we abode be the rule throughout our video, a good example of it's use is when The Commodore and Agent X were having a conversation

A match on action is when the camera cuts to another angle while the character is performing an action, it creates the illusion of real time. We incorporated this into our video in two places; once when The Commodore turn to begin the walk back to the computer and also when Agent X passes The Commodore the memory stick.
An eye line match is when the camera and characters are in such a position that it looks as though the eye-lines of the characters involved match. It ensure that conversations do not look ridiculous as the people are at the same height, not one looking 7 foot and the other looking 4 foot. We did this in our video during the conversation between Agent X and The Commodore. Both character's eye lines matched throughout the conversation.
The film making process went very well, although not without trouble, for example, the noise level around the college meant that there was occasionally some ambient noise that we did not want in the background of some of the takes, this meant we had to re-shoot one of the shots.
As we only stuck to the one room around the college, we did not have much trouble with people wandering into the background of the take. In terms of the storyboard, we got most of the shots that we wanted. We were unable to get an area around the college that was as dark as we wanted and even editing could not make it dark enough without making it obvious that it had been edited.
Adobe Premiere was a good program to use, although difficult to master at times, once i discovered how something was done it was an enjoyable experience. I can now confidently edit video and sound with suitable transitions. Transition such as fade ins and fade outs, which I used during the opening credits rather effectively.