'Seven' Opening Analysis

In class we watched several openings of thriller films, these included Panic Room, No Country for Old Men, Arlington Road and my favourite of the the few: Seven. The opening was very effective in the sense of mystery, but very much produced the sense of horror and gore. It was almost messing with the psychological aspect of things.

The opening sequence included a lot of props, if anything, it was all props. I'm not disagreeing that it was to its advantage but it would be hard to use the same characteristics in my own production, just because it is easier to produce a clip with many aspects such as narration and actual visible characters instead of just one focus of props. However, Seven created a really good effect with this method, of showing almost intimidating props and actions, such as old books, razorblades, photo clippings, scrawly writing, bandages, etc.

There is no speech whatsoever in the clip, and this can effective, it portrays a better sense of mystery to such a thriller, but then again, you would have to be very sure of the quality of your film to introduce narration into the commencing sequence of any film.

The lighting works very well with the camera angles in Seven, the continuous extreme close up shots which are normally darken out with dim lights or in red lighting, give an eerie aspect of the situation. The close ups are used to create more detailed description of the objects and deeper meaning, rather than a vague camera shot of them. It is also effective in the sense it doesn't show the character, rather showing what he does, which again is part of the characteristics of a thriller, in the way it creates continuous mystery, especially in the first scene.

The music/sound is equally as important in a thriller opening. It creates atmosphere into what the audience should expect. In this particular film, the music opening title sequence is greeted psychedelically with an electric, rhythmic, distorted music. This of course fitted in very well with the excellent flash editing, there was so many shots it would have been impossible to count, and the creativity and ability of the editing to create such an impact was incredible.

On the whole the opening sequence was excellent on creating such horror/eerie atmosphere for the audience. I will soon watch the whole film, and come back on here to update if i thought the rest fitted into the thriller category.

I have listed here the link to the film clip for reference of source. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY