Analysis of Film opening sequences: Se7en

For our second film analysis, we shall be talking about the opening title sequence to the 1995 movie Se7en. Directed by David Fincher.
Our clip starts with a shallow focus, close up shot of a book with the silhouette of a hand changing the pages, but the way this is done seems to be in a dark, sinister manner, the hand slowly caresses the book suggesting that this person may be possibly psychotic, and may be the villain. The next image we see is of a detailed drawing of human hands on stained paper, the screen then quickly moves to a close up shot of a man dismantling a razor, removing the blade itself, we then see a quick image of the man's hands but he is cutting away the skin off his fingers with the razorblade we have just previously seen. This footage of the man removing his fingerprints is extremely effective, due to the fact we actually see the skin being peeled away from his fingers, this causes a sense of disgust within the audience but also creates suspense and fear at the same time, the reason for this is that this causes the audience to think why is he removing his fingerprints, we then come to the conclusion that he must be the villain of the movie and prepares us for the grotesque scenes later on in the movie.
We then see various clips of the man and his poorly bandaged fingers handling various items, ranging from making a cup of tea, handling images of murder scene to writing, drawing and cutting up images of the negative film from cameras, so this tells us that the man is creating something like a diary or a scrapbook, so this keeps us drawn into the film and makes us want to know more.
Towards the end of the sequence we realise that he is actually making a scrapbook. To keep the pages held together he uses a needle and thread which seem to be covered in a red, dry matter (we assume this to be blood) again this creates suspense as we want to know what he is making the scrapbook for, especially due to the fact it contains pictures of mutilated corpses and murder scenes, so again this draws us into the film and keeps us on the edge of our seat.
The titles used throughout the whole sequence are alike to the collector, the titles flicker onto the screen and are in a distorted, eroded style font, this works well along with the sequence as the images we are shown are very dark, grim and have a violent aura about them due to the nature of the images themselves.
Background we have the soundtrack playing (Nine Inch Nails, Closer Remix) the song is a very dark, slow paced piece of music composed of metallic sounds and deep bass fluctuations, this suits the footage used as the song itself (due to the sounds it is built up on, loud bangs and scratching etc) suits the dark, psychotic images we are shown, so both the sound and footage used contain many elements within themselves which creates fear, suspense and confusion.
Overall this title sequence works very effectively, although there isn't much footage used, the various elements used within the sequence itself all come together and work as one for example the quick shots of the murder scenes and of the man's scrapbook work well with the dark scraping and loud banging noises of the soundtrack song. This sequence doesn't seem to rely on the footage itself as their is not much used, but it relies and focuses on the image presented by the footage and music, and the image given off is dark, but interesting.

Our finished preliminary task.

Analysis of Film opening sequences. The Collector

For our opening sequence we have decided that the genre of our work will be a psychological horror.The definition of Psychological Horror is a a genre of film that creates a sense of threat, fear, suspense and sorrow within the audience, we have decided to work with this genre as we are all avid fans of horrors and psychological thrillers. Here I will Analyse and evaluate three movie openings similar to the genre we have chosen for our work.

Our first selected clip is from the 2009 movie The Collector directed by Marcus Dunstand.

The opening title sequence is a montage sequence with a heavily distorted soundtrack in the background.

It starts with a number of clips that flicker onto screen at a fast rate, the clips come onto the screen on the beat of the song, thus making it more fast paced and dramatic.

There are clips of insects and bugs used such as tarantulas, cockroaches, maggots and flies, the director may have used clips of these as there are a large number people who have a phobia ofthese creatures, so here he has already started trying to inject fear into the audience.The other clips we see contain images of blueprints to devices that we cannot identify (this helps build up the suspense as to what they are) and blueprints of peoples homes. After these clips we are shown images of various surgical devices (scalps, forceps) and household tools (drills, saws) this also builds up more suspense as we wonder what all these are meant to be for, specially with them being covered in what seems like dried blood.

We then also see an image of a large, tall man, who has a large box behind him, the man is shown as a dark silhouette (maybe hinting that he is the bad guy in the film?) But then incontrast to the large dark figure, his surroundings are lightly lit but have a saturated look to it, instead of appearing as a nice white light, the background colours consist of blood red, brown, a dark orange and black shadows, this helps set the scene and mood for this movie. The scene of the introduction to this movie seems to look like an industrial warehouse, thus making the film seem more gritty and dark.

The soundtrack is also very important. The song is called Shut up and bleed by the industrial band Combichrist. The reason why this song suits the intro is due to the actual nature of the song. The song consists of heavily distorted bass and drums, it is also made up the sounds of clanging metal and sawblades cutting through metal, and this matches up with the industrial warehouse look of the introduction. The sequence ends with a grotesque image of what seems like a person covered in red liquid (we presume this to be blood) the figure then moves and gives a bloodcurdling screen that is distorted, this kick starts the movie. Overall the introduction to the The Collector works amazingly well, every aspect of the sequence is dark, distorted and fear provoking, it is made up of silhouettes of a large built man, instruments used for torture and then the distorted song playing in the background which itself is heavily distorted, this provides all the perfect aspects for a introduction to a psychological horror

Our group and the Preliminary Task

The members of this group are; Aaron Sherratt, Kyle Jones, Javad Amiry and Tom Walsh.

Upon starting this module, we were given a preliminary task to complete, this is to show our understanding of the 180 degree rule, and to show how well we can work with a camera.

Our preliminary task can be anything, but chairs must be used. When hearing this, our group decided to film a basic conversation between two friends, with one friend asking the other to come out, however the other friend can not as he has work to do that must be finished for the next day.

We already had a basic idea on what to do as we had already planned the shots and most of the conversation previously before filming, this helped us to work more efficiently and quickly thus giving us more time to edit and more time to focus on our main task.