Art of the Title: Se7en

Se7en

• Starts with focused pages in the foreground and a hand turning pages in background. This draws the audience’s attention because it makes them consider who this person is and if they are significant in the film.
• ”New Line Cinema Presents” appears in a Courier New font and almost vibrates on the screen. This emphasises the idea of instability and gives the audience ideas of mental disturbance. The font looks like words written on a typewriter which is quite an outdated way of writing. Someone who used a typewriter would be deviating social norms because of the technology available nowadays implying that this character or one of the characters demonstrates abnormal behaviour.
• The next words appear on a black screen and are first shown backwards but then quickly turn the right way while vibrating. It looks like the words were put on screen frantically and without care. This further implies that an element of the film is an unbalanced character.
• The titles stay in the same state, vibrating through the whole of the opening sequence. However the obscure scenes behind them become more disturbing as they continue.  There are pictures of hands with fingers bent at unnatural angles, someone scraping skin off their fingers with a razor… grotesque things to make the audience physically cringe. The audience by this point has been verified that the person in all of these scenes is crazy.
• The writing is mainly white on black, which makes the words easier to read but also could hint at a theme of light and dark, or good and bad. 

The titles appear with its production companies and studios (i.e. New Line Cinema-which is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Studios) at the beginning, followed by the Director (David Fincher- Golden Globe winning Director of The Social Network) and the cast and then the name of the film. The cast list carries on after the name of the film but the people (Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) and companies listed before it are given more importance.The credits appear for about 1 and half seconds with 2 or 3 second intervals. This gives the audience time to watch the introduction shots and figure out what kind of atmosphere the movie is trying to present.

We can take ideas of colour from this opening. The black, white and red shades link closely with the dark and disturbing theme of the intro. Our introduction is supposed to have themes of crime and shadiness. We can use lots of shadow and obscure colours to signify the burglars being covered by the darkness. We can also use music to give our opening the right atmosphere like Se7en does with this opening.

The order of titles are:

Production Company
A ... Production
A film by ....
Main Actor #1
Main Actor #2
Title of the Film
(Less crucial) Actress
"                "   Actor
"                "   Actor
"                "   Actor
"                "   Actors (appear at the same time on screen)
Music by....
Costumes Designed by...
Edited by...
Production Designed by...
Director of Photography...
Co-producers...
Co-executive producers...
Executive producers...
Written by...
Produced by...
Directed by...

Research and Planning: Opening Sequences Se7en

Opening Sequences

Se7en:

The opening scene for 'Se7en' starts with a bang (almost like a gunshot) and a black screen. This seems significant because it shows right from the start that the movie will include something dangerous and it foreshadows murder. 

There is an even louder bang when the first shot appears of someone opening a book. This is an indicator that the person (whose face is never shown) is to blame for all of the chaos that will happen during the film. The sound effect probably won't be used in ours because of its dark and chilling effect, and ours is more action than horror.

The shots used are a disorganised compilation of things that the character is doing. The audience can't tell any information from this except that the character might be crazed because of the disturbing images shown in whatever scrapbook he is making. 

There are certain close ups (of hands with a razor, a lot of writing) that make it hard to see what all of it means, which could be representative of the crime genre and that detectives have to piece together whatever evidence they have to solve the crime. This could be useful for our film because of our genre but instead of unrelated and random shots we could put together shots that flow together to tell the story e.g. Burglars planning an escape route.

The music is made up of lots of distorted single sound effects with the steady drum beat and sizzling sound accompanying it. The sounds make the atmosphere quite intense and creepy because it's all unorganised. This keeps the audience tense and anticipating something popping out because things are usually calm before a jump scare in thrillers and horrors.