The opening credits of the film seven starts off with a bird’s eye view shot of an image of disintegrating hands, these hands are not normal hands but hands that look like they belong to a dangerous man; the veins are sticking out and the fingers are wonky. Another pair of hands almost imitating this is turning a page of what seems to be a decapitated, rusty old book; we are not shown who it is which automatically has connotations of mystery. The credit font itself is long, thin and not aligned; this makes it look scruffy, messy and deformed; for a font, this is creepy. Furthermore particular texts are flipped to give a sense of disorientation, which links back to the connotations of mystery.
Extreme close ups are embedded in the opening, one particular scene where we see someone peeling off the skin on the tip of their fingers. This camera shot creates a very uncomfortable atmosphere for the audience, also adds to that theme of mystery and brings a sense of thrill to the viewers. The clip also has a close up of a needle coming out of a finger, this makes us think the audience see think that physical pain is not a problem for this character; he must have bigger issues.
At the end of the opening, there is a pan shot of many books such as the first one implying that he is very experienced in what he is doing.
The character with the cut fingers is the person doing all the page flipping. He also uses scissors to cut a film strip, it looks as if he is reordering it in a different order, and he does the same thing with newspaper article cut outs. These activities make us think that this is a dodgy and sneaky character. There is close ups of him sewing mismatched pages together which reinforce the idea of the sneaky and dodgy characteristics.
The backing track to this opening has a great deal of suspense containing a heavy deep drone sound which makes the audience almost scared in their own seats. The drone sound is a particular sound, which you’re physical body, may feel rather then hear. These sounds are usually heard in thrillers to make the audience fear for the next scene.
Moving on to the location within the opening scene, again we are not given a great deal of information on where in the world this scene is set in,we as a audience notice the place looks abandoned & abandoned places are usually old shut-down factories or even warehouses. We also see machines which you would generally see in factories. This then reinforces the connotations of mystery.
The sound in the background sounds like screeching or some sort of machine saw. Saws and machine sounds indicates that someone is about to die after they get tortured. The spookiness and ghostly sounds make it feel as if it’s taking place in a warehouse. At the end there is a part where the ‘song’ says “you got me closer to go” when word GOD is being cut out of a newspaper article. This has connotations of death and religion; this makes it seem as if the character is on this mission for god. The noise of a light swaying side to side and also the shadow of the light is shown. The sound of chains indicates someone is locked up and is trying to escape but cant.
The pace from shot to shot is very fast using lots of flashing lights and screeching sounds; this is typical of a thriller opening.
There are shadows moving across the book on different pages. An example of this would be when the old man’s hands are being shown, there is a shadow moving on the page suggesting there is secrecy/mystery feel about this story.
There are a number of credit shots, where there is flashing and often the font is flipped backwards creating a puzzled effect reinforcing the idea of secrecy/mystery. Also adding to this is shots of phrases like ‘NO KEY’, as well as code looking phrases like ‘D35’.Letters and numbers put together like so indicate a sense of eeriness and mystery. The fonts are also blurry which could create confusion and unclear views.
There are many pictures of naked babies/children, this makes you question is this person a paedophile? What makes me think this further is that he uses a blunt felt pen to ink out words like ‘intercourse’ and ‘transsexual’. Straight after this, there are close ups of him doing the same thing but to the eyes then complete face of these naked children. Around these pages there are lots of smudges of ink that look like the character does these things without taking time to think.
There are also pictures of a woman’s eyes; they are glaring in a way which makes her look evil. After this there is a picture of a man who’s got a screwdriver in the back of his head, this makes us expect this character and film to have violence in it.
There are flashes of red, the colour red connotes danger.
Shobnom, Tasnima & Harry
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