Opening Sequence Analysis of Se7en

Se7en is a Thriller psychological crime film. it has a very unique opening.

The purpose of Se7en’s opening sequence is to confuse the audience, but also get them interested at what is happening, at what it is the man is making. Some of the audience may even be disturbed from the opening. There are many different conventions that can be seen in the opening because the film is a hybrid genre of thriller, psychological crime. There are things like gutting letters out of newspapers, which would be expected in a crime genre film. There is heartbeat music, which would be psychological to attempt to make the audience uneasy. And there are some disturbing images, which would usually be shown in thrillers.

There was not a wide variety of shots in the opening. There was mostly point of view shots, but there was also some close ups and extreme close ups. The camera is mostly handheld, and the area is dark suggesting that it is underground, maybe a basement. All we can work out from the opening is that a man is making some sort of book, and he doesn’t want the police to know his identity, it also suggests that the book may be sent to someone. And then the police will get involved.

The text in the opening looks like chalk written onto a chalkboard. This is because the genre is thriller, which means unusual fonts are to be expected. There is no continuity editing to try and confuse the audience. This is typical of crime and psychological films.

There is no diegetic sound in the scene, there is some creepy music, and parts that sound like a radio picking up static, and another part that sounds like a tape being rewound. There is also a link to god at the end where there are lyrics that say, “You got me closer to god” suggesting some religious link also suggesting that the book made could be a bible of some sort.

There is not much we can get about the character or narrative in the opening. One conclusion I came to was that the man may have some sort of military background, because he is doing a military procedure of blacking out unimportant parts in a document and a black line across someone’s eyes in a photo to keep them anonymous suggesting he was in the military or something similar.