The first sense of civilisation you get is in the second shot where you see a car driving up a road next to a cliff. The setting shows the audience that the character is going to a remote environment and the only sense of civilisation you get is a car driving in the opposite direction. The juxtaposition between the visuals and the sound is simple and effective. If the music wasn’t there the tone of the scene would completely change and become a happy genre, however, the music changes the tone completely and is called unempathetic music. As the car gets higher the weather changes, snow appears which makes it harder for the character to reach civilisation and therefore makes the audience more tense. When you see the big mansion for the first time it blends into the mountain behind it. You get an establishing shot when you see the house as it sets the scene and shows the audience where the film is going to take place.
The titles in this scene are different to many films, they are written in a neon blue, this contrasts to the setting in the scene. The titles move up the screen additionally making the audience feel sick as it isn’t still. The importance in the creators of the film depends on the size that their name is shown on screen.
Only one character is introduced in the sequence, and you don’t even see their face. Only once in the scene the moving camera gets close the car but not close enough to see inside.
This is the first time where the camera gets close to the car and you nearly get a glimpse of the person driving.
This is the first aerial shot of the house. The mansion matches the background which is showing that its camouflaged and more disguised.
This is showing the neon title font that Kubrick used in the title scene. The words moved up the page making the audience feel more sick.
Se7en Opening Sequence
In the opening sequence of Se7en, the scratchy sounds and the jumping shots from scenes to scene show the audience that the genre could be either a thriller or an action film. The use of the non-diegetic repetitive beat throughout the scene and the discordant sounds help to create the overall meaning that the film is going to be intense and fast pace. The empathetic music matches the quick shots that jump creating the audience to feel on edge and a sense of lost breath.
The only type of shot that you see in se7en are close up shots, these are used to show a lot of characteristics about the character without acting showing their face. However even though you don’t see the face or gender of the person you still learn a lot about their personality and intentions. From the close-up shots you get an idea of the persons job or hobbies. You see jars with science experiments inside, pictures of people with their face cut out and many notebooks full of pages of notes. From the number of full notebooks, you can understand that they are a compulsive note taker and is possibly intellectual. Throughout the title sequence you see the character cutting and highlighting words from books such as intercourse, fantasizing and God. The audience can interpret this to be the character writing a ransom note which shows that they might have cruel intentions in the rest of the film.
The titles in this film opening are more unique as others as instead of having the text merge into the film that is going on in the background, this sequence stops the action and puts the titles on a black screen. This makes the audience concentrate on the titles and allows the scene to change when it jumps from black title screen to a scene.
The themes that you get and understand about the character we are introduced to in the opening sequence is they have a fascination with early medical procedures. We can tell this from the many faces with clamps on, jars full of body parts and the extreme note taking.
Comparing both The Shining and Se7en
Both opening scenes both contain short scenes to create impact for the audience. In the shining’s case, the short scenes contained many different camera shots such as establishing shots and birds eye view to make the audience feel nauseous. In se7ens case the use of shorts scenes, which was split up by title scenes, were used to show small parts of the main characters characteristics. However, the music in both sequences don’t match. The Shining’s music is a juxtaposition as the contrapuntal soundtrack doesn’t match the image they are accompanying. The image is a beautiful remote scenery, and the music is very unsettling. Se7ens music on the other hand is synchronous with the action on the screen. This makes the audience fearful as there is always suspense. Both opening titles don’t show the character however gives hints to there personality and what sort of part they will be in the film. For se7en they only show the persons hands and hobbies, for The Shining they only show the man in the car.
