Se7en Opening Titles

I watched the first 2.08 seconds of the 2005 film noir Se7en directed by David Fincher. I picked this film as I believe this is a good film to represent to modern day film noir genre and the opening titles were a good indicating of what film noir is about and its typical conventions. All of the sequence is shown through an extreme close up, this doesn’t give to much away but allows just seeing enough to get an idea of what’s happening, making us want to keep watching.

At first we see the names of the people involved in the film, for example director and producers etc. all of the names look like they have almost been hand written, the camera movement is shaky and the names are in white on a black background. This gives each person their own identity so to speech. Normally people only care about the actors but because of its unique styling and layout it allows for audience to take interest and care about each person involved and their involvement with the film.

Throughout the opening titles we only see little parts of images; the images are either disfigured or blurry in some way. A classic film noir convention is used, the use of shadows. This creates dramatic effect and creates suspense for the audience. This leaves us the audience wondering what they really are and what relevance they have with the film. It also puts our minds to work, allowing us to imagine what’s happening in the images shown and why they have a key importance in this film.

We only get quick images of certain objects. Although we only see them for a few seconds we know that these images play a huge role throughout the film. All these images are very important though out the film so paying close attention is important. We know that these images are important but we don’t know why so I think that by the director doing this because it makes us want to keep watching to find out what all these images and words are about.

The next words that come on the screen where the actors staring in the film, first is brad pit, when his name is on, once again in white on a black background with, what looks like his own hand writing. The screen flashes to an image and then goes quickly back to brad pits name on screen again. This has obviously got something to do with brad pits character which again makes us want to keep watching, to find out what that image was and what relevance it had to do with brads character.

The next thing we see is quite a graphic image for an opening sequence. The camera still being in extreme close up, we see a man’s fingers holding a razor blade. This in its self is disturbing and leaving the audience maybe feeling uncomfortable, it goes on to see him running the razor blade over the tops of his fingers taking some skin off with it. This is quite a disturbing thing to watch, in the next shots we see him with bandages on the tips of his finger, this had now made it obvious that the man in the shot has mental issues if he is willing to cut of his own finger prints, but if you keep watching you find out that he doesn’t just have mental issues he is quite an intelligent man.

Then the scene cuts to Morgan Freemans name, the other key character throughout the film. Normally the main characters are shown one after another but I think that director did this to show us that maybe this man shown in the middle might come in-between these men. These are the two main characters in the film and I think that they have shown it this way to give us clues and an

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indication into what happens in the film with these two characters and in my opinion is that is man jeopardies this characters relationship.

We see him next sawing some kind of hand written book together. To me this looks like some kind of bible, thought out the 2.08 clip we have seen a lot of religious words and images, so this to be could be his bible, all the words are hand written and the pictures look like they have been taken themselves which is quite disturbing because the images are so graphic. All of the images are disturbing; one picture is being crossed, maybe indicating that he is dead or going to die. This book he is making is defiantly handmade and he is making it his own in many ways. He’s writing things himself and also crossing out to possibly make it sound more understanding to him. The lens of the camera sometimes also turns red; red is a colour that at times indicates death and evil.

The sequence as a whole looks like it’s an old fashioned style film, with the shaky, jolty camera movements from scene to scene and also the lines that are down the screen sometimes. This shows that maybe this was personally made by the man, who is important in the scene, maybe mad this film to show people what he’s doing and why he’s doing this. He does have a relevant reason to why he’s doing this and maybe this is why of showing this.

The scene keeps flashing to different things then back to the sequence. Sometimes you get a flash of a letter and then a number; this could be a religious term again. To me it looks like a bible passage number, either form the real bible or his bible, or maybe both. We also keep getting flashes of pages from his bible, with the key words such as ‘God’ etc.

The last thing we see him doing is running a needle and thread through his fingers, in one shot the needle is clean and in the next its red, covered in blood. Once again showing us maybe he likes pain, die to the fact he has cut of the tips of his finger and now for fun I think, he’s decided to play with a needle and thread.

The sound track to this scene is ‘nine inch nails’ the name in its self is graphic and puts an awful image in your head. It ends with ‘you’ve got me closer to god’ this again ties into the religious theme and to me just clears everything up and makes it final that this is something to do with religion. At the very end the camera pans across a shelf full of books, maybe these are other books he’s written or even books he’s took his ideas from to write his own book.

Robyn Painter