Title Sequence Research

Se7ven


David Fincher’s American crime/horror, Se7en, clearly shows its genre through its open sequence. During my research I found this is important because this helps the audience get more involved with the film and keep them interested. As the opening sequence this is very important.
The opening credits start out with an extreme close of a book; this could possibly portray the books importance as throughout the title sequence it’s shown a lot. The camera then goes onto an ariel shot of a drawing of hands, which are made out to be quite gruesome. In between each flashing image, whether it’s a photograph or extreme close up filming,which would create the Hermeneutic Code and Proarietic Code to create intensity and mystery(Roland Barthes) there’s a piece of information given about who helped create this film, starting out with the production company and the person who actually produced it. Next it goes on to show who’s staring in the film whilst flashing some pictures of an extreme close up of somebody carving their finger tips off. Immediately from seeing the first 17 seconds of this title sequence we as an audience can tell this film will be spine-tingling. The sequence carries on showing more flashing images this time making them un-clear as to what they are, possibly to cause intensity, Next the title of the film appears in a large font, flashes then moves into a smaller font somewhere else in the frame. The flashing images continue, then moving onto somebody being filmed whilst writing in the book we first see at the beginning of the text. Along-side this we see the other actors names who are featuring in this film appear. There’s then a picture on picture effect, where the man continues to write whilst another image appears on top of it. The man, who’s appeared in the rest of the text, appears again with a close up of his hands cutting up some photographs of something and sticking it into the mysterious book. Once again this content has illustrated this text has a thriller horror. After more flashing images of what people would class as disturbing appear on screen, the text then goes on to showing the important information of who was involved in the major detailing of the text. This tends to be showed chronological order of importance, the most important person being last. Starting off with who was in charge of casting, then onto music and costumes. It then goes onto people who were involved in creating the text in itself, such as editing manager, production designer, director of photography, co-producers, co-executive producers, the writer, who produced it and most importantly the director. Each piece of information is separated by some sort of flashing image whether it’s a still photo or moving text.
Whilst all this is happening, behind the images and given information about the film, there’s non-dietetic music. This could be classed as “techno”. On top of this music it the occasional creepy sound such as doors creaking and people screaming. Right at the end of the sequence there’s a man who says “you got me closer to god” this could be interpreted as someone’s been killed, which goes along with the theme of the film.
In this opening sequence the majority of camera shots are extreme close ups, this is because close ups create anxiety. There are no shots of the persons face or body, purely just his hands and the objects he’s holding, this also could be to create nervousness, and leave the audience wondering who this mystical person is. All the way through this text there are a humongous amount of cuts, from one picture to another, this creates a intense effect.