Opening title sequence analysis: 'Se7en'

In the film ‘Se7en’, the opening title sequence instantly shows the audience what the genre of the film is and what general themes that we can expect to see throughout the film. The film, which is a thriller, also has some sub genres (psychological, crime, action etc.) which are all displayed in this film opening. The Opening title sequence is often a key part of a film as it’s important for the audience to understand what type of film they are watching.

The first indication that suggests that the film is a thriller is the music in this title sequence. The music, which is a very simple, repetitive beat instantly gives the opening a sinister tone and hints to the audience what the main themes of the film will be (murder, crime, cruelty). As the film goes on, the music starts to increase in pace as well as becoming louder and much more bold. The disturbing sounds also have a slight church-like sense to them which foreshadows the storyline later in the film (A serial killer murders people for committing the seven deadly sins).  These disturbing sounds are simply used to add effect to the distressing images and titles which are shown. The way this film opening has been edited creates a flickering effect on the shots and the titles which could cause irritation for the audience. This type of editing is purposely done to make the audience feel uncomfortable when watching it, outlining the genre and the common traits which are used in the film. Most of the shots used in this opening sequence are close up’s of various different objects, some of which would be classed as disturbing to some members of the audience. The dull colour pallet used in this film opening emphasises the dark themes in the storyline, except for some small parts of this title sequence when the colour red is used, connoting danger and blood. There were two types of font used when creating the titles for this opening. The first, is a simple sans serif font which has been distorted to create an unusual effect. The next is also written in a sans serif  fashion and is a font which has been designed to look like someone, who, has not fully developed their hand writing (a child), has written it out on a piece of paper. Both of these fonts complement each other in a peculiar way, as they both have share some similar characteristics which are common in thriller films. The hand-written style font is a very common horror font, and the other distorted font is much more associable with a crime thriller film. As both of these genres of films are included as sub-genres in this thriller film, it suits the title opening very well. The way these titles were introduced were through a flickering effect which allowed them to be displayed very quickly and made them stand out a considerable amount, as your attention would be attracted to something which is constantly moving.

This is very useful to us when thinking about what type of titles we want when creating our own film opening sequence. As our film is a crime thriller, I think the distorted font would be much better suited to it. Our film is set in a modern urban area of a city in England. Therefore, the font would have to be of a sans serif fashion to show the modern era, as well as having a bit of a gritty look to it to represent the low classed urban area to which the film is set. That is why a font such as the distorted one used in the ‘Se7en’ opening title sequence would be appropriate for our film, as it has many of the traits which we are looking for in our titles. The way our titles will be introduced would be very different to how they were in ‘Se7en’ however. As our film opening contains the main basis to the whole storyline of the film, we want the audience to be focused on what the shots are showing rather than having attention on the titles. Therefore, we will probably have them slowly fading in and slowly fading out. This allows the attention to remain on the storyline of the film opening.