Se7en shot analysis

Shot 1The opening shot of the whole film features a close up of a book having it’s pages flicked through. The metaphor being that the book or the film has just been opened.

The close up restricts our vision and focuses the audiences attention on the book and title to reinforce the metaphor but also to show off who made the film.

The music in this shot is deep and bass-y giving the idea of a dark and mysterious story.

The paper and the book both appear to be home made which is uncommon for the time the film is set giving another strange mystery for the film to explore

Shot 2The second shot shows us a drawing or two deformed hands with light pouring across the paper from the top of the shot while keeping one had shrouded in darkness. This gives us the idea that the film with have the villain operate in broad day light with one hand and the shadows with another.

It also gives us the name of the creator of the film in this case David Fincher.

Shot 3We now get the name of the film displayed against a pure black shot in ragged white writing in a font we might see from a type writer. The black screen makes the audience look directly at the title and gives hints about the film such as the fact there will be seven murders.

The fact that the letter V is replaced with a number 7 could both be to make the film stand out during marketing or as another hint towards the murders and the seven deadly sins.

Shot 4The film then has this shot appear behind the title this gives more hints towards the film’s events.

The book seen in the left side of the shot with the hand reaching to it appears later in the film as the note book of John Doe the villain as a way or note down his murders and pseudo philosophy in. The light that is shining on to it from the left shows its importance and the low key lighting that creates throws all else in shot into darkness and shadow.

Shot 5We now see a shot in which the person in the shot writing lines and lines of text into a book.

The use of double vision in this shot gives us an impression of the madness that this character is expected to exude.

The book is seen to be a common theme throughout all of the shots and this gives us an impression of importance from this prop.

Shot 6Again the book appears again in the back ground.

The low key lighting throwing beams of light and shadow. This is again done to lead the audiences vision to what they should be concentrating on.

We see the classic criminal cutting out images of their victim to sick down as a trophy.

The hands are the same throughout the scene we can see this because of the bandages around the finger tips.

Shot 7This shot is a quick one but worth mentioning as it shows a page or writing being turned over but as we can see it is full on both sides and has underlining and scribbling out showing that someone has read over this many many times.

The light that is shining through the page is used so that the audience can see the writing on the page.

The book again is used to show the madness of the character while never having him directly on screen this is done to preserver his sense of mystery.

Shot 8In this shot the small circle of light on the images face focuses our vision on it and the marker being drawn across his face shows us that he is dead or is “no longer of concern”.

The names written across it in this scene is slightly ironic as the names of the people who conducted the casting are plastered below.

Shot 9The split screen nature of this shot shows off the split nature of the character as I mentioned earlier with the shot with the two hands. The red is to represent the need for murder and the white writing the need to catalogue it all for his own purposes.

The red half of the screen is a red room where someone develops a photo which links back to him placing the photos into the book that we seen below.

The hand that is moving the photo around in the liquid doesn’t have the bandages on suggesting it’s someone else’s hands or occurs before the other shots.

Shot 10This shot has the name of god being removed from a dollar bill. This gives us the idea that the villain is removing god from this place. Also the quote that he is removing it from is “in god we trust” which again gives us the impression that god is no longer here and doesn’t deserve our trust.

The canted angle of the shot gives us an impression of a surreal atmosphere. This is also a very common angle used in noire film.

Shot 11The last shot in the opening is one of city buildings with the name of the day on the side of the shot. This is the establishing shot for the scene.

The city is clearly set up in this shot to be the setting of the film and it is grey and dark which follows the theme of a noire film.

The fact that Monday appears on the side of the screen gives us the impression that this is an important part of the film.