Se7en

Seven is a psychological thriller directed by David Fincher made in 1995. It stars Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey. The movie is based upon the crimes of a deranged serial killer who murders his victims violently in ways that embrace the seven deadly sins. The film follows a pair of detectives that have been given the job to stop him.

The opening sequence represents the serial killers personality giving the through the use of a collection of images, props and text. Books and writing have been exposed a lot in this sequence; this connotes the killer’s organised and collective approach to such an inhumane subject as murder. Also many rough, metallic props which are highly associated with pain and torture can be seen in the sequence. The Hermeneutic code is building up the question also the killer still remains a mystery to the audience.

The main thing that grips me in this sequence is the cold, crooked text is used to show the credits, it’s displayed as white, maundered handwriting which get bolder progressively. This is so effective because it’s so simple; it gives the audience a brief understanding on the contents and direction of the movie and connotes the loathsome and deranged characteristics of the character displayed on the screen.

A Trent Reznor song is used as a non-digetic soundtrack which makes the audience agitated from the beginning; the music is in the heavy metal genre and creates a manic atmosphere within the scene. It sounds very scratched, metallic and twisted and has been cross cut with everyday tools that in this scene conote torture and mutilation such as a wood shaver, scissors and a needle. Also theirs digetic sound of a twisting motion of chains, this sound deconnotes different meanings. As the chain reels it becomes tenser causing hypothetical tension; however it also gives a physiological reaction because you feel like the tension is building within the sequence as the music is more upbeat and quicker cuts.

The director starts the sequence with a series of long takes to build up the tension, as the clip progresses the cuts and shot time become a lot vigorous and random. The shot time is very shorter and camera behaves very unpredictable, conflicting against the controlled mentality at the beginning. This connotes panic within the audience and causes an uncontrollable apprehension, this is Roland's Barthes theory of proairetic code and this highly suggests that something bad is going to happen.

The use of close ups in this sequence are very persistent; they mainly focus on the characters hands so this portrays his much organised approach towards his brutalities this hermeneutic code.Also this connotes to the audience that this killer is very much unidentified and mysterious leaving the plot open but with certain key details of his personality are left in their mind. This is mixing both theory's of hermenuetic and proairetic codes which interlink the negative feeling and the tension which make the audeince uneasy.

Many images pop up for a slit second on the screen as a form of a cut; this is aform of montage editing. The images flashed are very much unrelated to the film but reinforces the films genre of a psychological thriller as it effects the audience imagination theses images are enigmas. This is reminding the audience what’s in stall for them and the strange perpetual images that are within the film. The use of colour in this sequence in is interesting, it’s majority black, dull and metallic. However towards the end red begins to play a part. Blood red only connotes one thing and that is blood, this tells the audience that the film is going to be very gory and this is heavily backed up by the sanguinary images. This is very much the semantic theory and proairetic theory           and the proairetic theory combined as the images are suggesting negative things,