Opening of seven

In the beginning a very basic tune is played, and then slowly you hear abstract, irregular noises which slowly join the slow tune. As the music continues the sounds become more frequent, this gives a very eerie feel. At the very end of the non dietetic soundtrack a non dietetic voice says “you got me closer to god” which gives an insight into what the movie is about.

A close up of an open book is shown however the pages of the book are out of view, there is a cut which reveals a picture of a man’s very deformed hands, it then cuts to show a man using a razor blade to shave his finger prints off. This has been done to show the mind state of the character because he would only want to conceal his fingerprints if he was planning on doing a crime. The fact that he cuts his fingertips off, instead of wearing gloves shows this person is not your average criminal, and along with the weird and unsightly pictures he is looking at gives the initial thought that this man is insane. Another cut shows a very deformed woman’s face in a photo, then cuts to where it introduces the title of the movie, which is seven, however it is written se7en, and looks very messy as if it was scratched on. This is to show the nature of the movie because it is unusual to have both the word seven with the number seven in the middle, because the number seven is in the middle of the word the viewer automatically assumes the number 7 represents the letter v.This also shows the importance of the number seven to the viewer because it has both the word and image in one.

There is a medium close up of the man opening a box, we are shown the plasters on every one of his fingers, and this shows that what is in the box is related to the previous scenes where you see the presumed same person shaving off his fingertips. There is another cut which shows a lot of time and work has been put into his “project” and that he is looking at the pictures for more than just curiosity, and he may have objectives related to this pictures. There are several more cuts showing him sticking photos into pages of writing, this again shows he believes this is a project, the fact that the director made so many scenes showing the man creating pages of these abominable pictures, and clearly showing he is not researching them shows he is not a detective or any sort of protagonist but a antagonist. A medium close up which is completely black except a small space where a small picture of a boy is shown, and the person draws a line through the boys eyes, this is because he is blinding the boy because he doesn’t want to see the boys emotions through his eyes or he may see not see these people with emotions simply objects. By making most of the screen black except the boys face it draws the viewer’s attention to his face. There is another cut which compresses time, which then shows the boys face completely covered in black pen; this is because showing the man slowly draw lines through the boys picture is boring for the viewer because we can see he did this by cutting to when this has been finished.

More scenes show the person studying more gruesome pictures and sticking more of these pictures into his written work. I noticed that all the pictures of young children had a black line running through there eyes, this may be because he sees the children as being innocent so he does not wish to see their eyes, or perhaps the person was abused as a child.

The person then cuts the word god out of an American dollar; this gives the viewer an idea into why the person is studying these pictures. The fact that the person cuts the word god out of the American dollar rather than underlining it as he previously did with the other words, and that the camera zooms up to a close up of the person cutting it out shows the reader the importance of this action, and may give the impression that this person believes god has been taken out of America. Also when the person cuts the word god out of the dollar a non diegetic sound of a man’s voice saying “you got me closer to god”. This reinforces the idea that the person believes he s serving god, or that god has been taken out of American society.

The final cut reveals a small part of the setting in which the person has been doing all this work; you know this because the books on a bookshelf are the same type of book the man was writing in. By showing loads of books similar to the book the person was writing in, it shows the reader that all these books have been filled in with the man’s sick, demented research, this shows the person as a fanatic which is usually a trait a protagonist has in the general media.