Se7en Opening credits Analysis

Se7en is a brilliant example of a hugely successful thriller which has all the essential conventions a thriller needs, in order to be successful.

It throws you right into the action with the title sequence. The titles themselves flash and twitch in and out of the screen and have a font type which makes them look handwritten. I think this effect has been used to make it look more childlike and reflect the simple mind of the unknown protagonist.

 

 

 

Camera angles are effectively used in this opening. They don’t use any wide shots or mid shots which could possibly reveal the killer – by keeping the mystery of who the person is, it intrigues the audience and makes them want to carry on watching. The use of both close up shots and extreme close up shots ensures we focus on the important and disturbing aspects of the scene. This builds up intrigue within the viewer. The editing of these clips is very fast-paced and uses lots of transitions and effects. This is to give the impression of chaos and that his state of mind is disjointed like the imagery shown.

 

 

Mise-en-scene is quite important in this opening scene as it gives you a real glimpse of how the plot line will progress. This is the first time we get to see the killer and gives us key clues as to what he is going to do, his type of personality and who he is. The opening credits shows the man carrying out actions like, writing, developing photos, reading etc. This suggests that he is planning something thoroughly and from the way it is presented it implies that it is something bad. These images are surrounded by lots of black, which darkens the whole atmosphere implying that it is sinister. The colours used in these clips are very bland and no vibrant colours have been used. It almost looks as though a sepia affect has been applied onto the clips. The only bright colour to be shown throughout the opening credits is red. This may be to represent blood and ultimately death.

 

 One of the more graphic scenes shows the man slicing off his fingertips. This suggests that he is going to commit a crime and doesn’t want to leave any evidence behind. It is not too much of a gory image, but it is very horrific which makes the audience feel much more tension. By cutting off his skin it indicates that he is very committed to what he does. He is willing to put himself through pain just to carry out these acts of crime. It also suggests that he is experienced as it is seems planned and that this is not just a one off killing. This keeps the viewers attention as they want to know what he is going to do next.

All the aspects throughout the short introduction illustrate it as very disturbing and horrific. This gets the audience right into the action and shows them immediately what the plotline and film is going to be like.

The music used is a remix by Nine Inch Nails called ‘Closer’. This sound has a gritty effect, and again sounds quite dysfunctional again to reflect the killer’s mindset. This builds up suspense and tension within the audience as the intensity of the music builds throughout the scene.

This is a successful thriller, because it uses all of the conventions which keep an audience interested and excited to see more

Film Questionare

Target Audience - Thriller Film

This is providing research into the thriller genre and its target audience's for different films. It is now possible to make a target audience profile for our thriller film in production.
The age group of the target audience is around 16-25 years, as 75% of the thriller-viewers sample were students. For our film, this can be related to by the audience, as our main characters are teenagers/young adults, providing a pathway for connection from the audience.
The gender of the target audience isn't as specific as age ranges or demographic classification, but is important nonetheless. For our film, the gender of the target audience would mainly be males, though females could be attracted to the film also. This is because, research done into the films we were "inspired" by, showed that males enjoyed the type of film more than females. Kidulthood for example, had user ratings from males as 6.0, however females were only 4.3. It also showed that 18 to 29 year olds (both male and female) enjoyed the film more than under 18's, as both 18-29 year groups voted at 6.4, however under 18 males only voted 6.0, and females only voted a low 3.2. Also, for Layer Cake, males overall rated the movie higher than females, though it was pretty close. However, for our other inspirational film Adulthood, although males overall voted 7.0, and females voted at 6.0, females under 18 voted 0.4 more than males, and were equal in ratings in the 18-29 group. This shows how the female audience is already attracted to our type of film, as there is a certain aspect of a male lead (etc) that is appealing to them, even though there are few females in each movie, and most of them that do appear are not portrayed in a respected manner. Our film isn't going to have any female actresses.
The majority of our target audience will be made up of students due to the age range. Also because of how around 75% of my thriller consumption research proved to be thriller fans.
The interests of our target audience are demonstrated mostly by other thriller films they like, so film reviews of films that we have associated with our film (such as kidulthood, its sequal, and layer cake) are important, as shown above with the gender and age results i obtained from http://www.imdb.com/ and their user ratings.
I think the demographic choice for us will be more C1 and C2. Most films are made for B, C1 & C2 due to the fact that they can afford luxuries like the cinema, and have the means and time to go see films or buy DVD's, however i think B may be aiming a bit high for our film, as it is mainly about C1 and C2 people, students in fact, who have not yet reached the B standard.

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Task!

 

Our aims for the preliminary task was to portray different aspects of film making. This included: Match on action, 180 degree rule and a variation of camera angles. Our objective was to create a simple scene, where someone walked into a room and has a conversation with someone else, while displaying all the different aspects of film making. However, our group went against the convention and we made a clip that contained all of the different aspects but wasn't exactly our objective.

In our preliminary, to begin with, we had Max walk though a door, which met our first objective of match on action as he held the door handle. From there we used a variation of camera shots to show him walking, which included another match on action of him walking through a puddle and a panning shot of him walking away into the distance. From there we used more camera shots to show him walking through two more sets of doors. Finally, we used an over the shoulder shot of him walking towards me and another variation of shots to show him handing me his phone.

Overall, i think we met our objectives of using different shot types as well as match on action and keeping within the180 degree rule. However, we should have included some dialogue and we should have also used a camera stand to keep the camera steady and look more professional.