For these days, we were assigned to analyse another film opening sharing the genre of ours. This time, I went with the 1995 classic: "Se7en". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yALjuJcfg90
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Long still shot is used to establish the importance of the character of Morgan Freeman despite his limited amount of actions in the scene. This shows that his role in the story will likely be of one of the mystery solvers due to his normal intentions throughout the scene. He isn't painted as suspicious. The ambient sound comes off as very normal as well. This doesn't reveal anything important to the story except the viewer likely getting interested in who this character is. The minimalistic established details is a common trope used within this genre.
A similar effect is achieved through this close-up arc shot moving from Morgan putting down glasses to hitting a metronome. Once again, minimalism paints a simple ideology about this character who we can distinguish as normal. The shots alternate between the metronome a slow zoom on Morgan's face. This is to show the calm normality of his life but to an almost "too perfect" degree. This is to foreshadow at something coming that will be "the mystery" and it while involve this character, either as a good guy or a victim. It cuts to black with a non-diegetic thunderclap in the background to transition to the actual opening sequence.
With no transition to speak of, it jumps into this book being turned. This is doesn't tell us a lot as due to how the focus is, we can't see what's on the pages and who's hand that is. The font used looks like it could've been hand printed, which makes you assume that there will be either a journalist or detective character as the protagonist, two character jobs that are common leads for this genre. The shaking of said font feels like a way of telling you things won't be straightforward, foreshadowing the nature of the narrative.
A straight cut transition is used to get to this part of the opening credits. The text being backwards at first but then switching around disorientates the audience which is commonly seen within this opening. Doing this allows the film to hide key details in front of the audience but they won't notice unless they specifically look for it. The text fades out a little but not completely and then disappears which seems like a really odd way to remove it, but it fits with the disorientating ideology. As it does, it is replaced by a high-angle shot of a sketch of two hands, both looking abnormal with what we can assume is a light swinging side to side and it's shadow being in view, a shot that also doesn't tell us anything of importance but it does ignite curiosity to the audience.
The transition from the last clip to this is shots of parts of a gun, three straight cuts to be precise, then going to another part of the credits. However, during those credits for a single frame, this appears. D-35 may seem like a meaningless number for now but it has a purpose. An audience member who sees that is going to remember that, is going to think it connects with the mystery. Regardless of whether the plot does have a detail relating to this number, it's a piece of evidence that may help the mystery genre fans to reach the conclusion on their own terms. However, it's followed by two frames of more scratches but unreadable and a white circle. This is to distract the viewer into focusing more on those because if they're only going to notice one, it'll be the less relevant one. D35 appears more times throughout the scene, along with the numbers 69 and C24 in different forms, hinting more at it's relevance.
The title appears after a few more non-explainable (at this point in the film) clips. However, the use of extreme close-ups on small sharp-looking metallic objects and the hands holding them hint towards these being evidence later down the line, potentially used within a killing later down the line. This is one of the first instances that it's hinted there will be a killing because of the nature of what we see, combined with the first spike in the non-diegetic soundtrack creating a threatening atmosphere, we are told this is what we want the characters to avoid. The title initially appears blurry and like there's two of them, changing size in one frame, being replaced by D35 and finally becoming readable at the intended place in the top right of the screen. This passively forces the audience to put more effort in to find the simplest of details, showing more of the films psychological elements.
After a few more unexplainable shots of similar nature, the way chosen to distract and disorientate the viewer was through layering a shot of someone writing under a semi-transparent shot of the same thing, but delayed, sped-up, something that made them desynchronise. The shot is a combination of a mid shot and a close-up, with what you want to learn about being a mid shot and what it tries to distract you with being a close-up. Along with abiding by the literature I mentioned earlier, it means there's nothing to be gained from the clip other than that. People will try and figure out significance behind it, like D35 but the layered clips mean you can't read the paper. Even in the next couple frames where it zooms in and flips the paper upside down, you see so little of it and it's broken up to the point of not making cohesive sense. This is to throw people off a trail they may be trying to work out, another common trope of the mystery genre. This may have relevance later in the film but if it's your first time, the nature of the evidence will need knowledge unobtainable. There's likely a code to it, unlike the numbers.
Before getting into this shot, I've noticed that a transition the clip appears to be fond of is semi-wipes. Part of the shot swipes on causing the next shot to appear as it goes by. This also leads to a disorientating effect while simultaneously moving the scene along. This is the brightest shot in the entirety of the opening also happens to be one of the most mysterious. You can't make out what the black shadow is in the red. However, the two colours do connote the idea of death, specifically due to the similar colouring to blood. This is one of the first times you may be able to piece together a narrative detail. With the blood connecting to a pre determined idea of killing and the films title being Se7en, the audience may start to think of the seven deadly sins. How this relates to murder at this point is unknown but when I think of "death" and "seven", this is what I come to. This thought process is common to the mystery genre because we reside an emotional affection to our theories and depending on the accuracy, we have a reaction later down the line.
Through the next few shots, we notice another type of transition, where it starts a clip while another one is going semi-transparent and then takes the old one away a few frames later. However, the frames disappear suddenly, throwing off the viewer to the point where they don't realize what's happening. They end up thinking there's more going on that there actually is.
A reoccurring clip used over the next few clips is varying lengths of shots of this newspaper article and someone highlighting certain words. Through the shot, we see the article is about sexuality in some way, through talk of pregnancy and the words "transsexual" and "heterosexual" being highlighted. This can be interpreted in many ways but it's most definitely evidence to character motivations. We can't tell anything yet but if we see any character connected to this theme, we know that there's likely an important relation between them and the story.
Photos are also shown through the many clips and could represent characters we haven't encountered yet. However, it could also be photos of the deceased, due to the fact they're in black and white. The photo's shown in that case are either evidence to the viewer or the characters, a unusual trope only the mystery genre can pull off. It's either evidence for the narrative or narrative structure. Depending on the character roles, these will help us tell who relevant to the story or who's a victim of the case. A lot of what the remainder of the scene does is reuse this assets in an inconsistent order, with different angles, points of focus, messages, etc. That's why it's hard to explain, you explain all the basic parts of it but it has no apparent meaning. That means the clip does a great job of conforming to genre trends, it keeps the audience in the dark.
The only particular point of interest I could find is this clip is this clip which shows a more interesting character. The type of character where you wouldn't be able to tell his name, who he is but you can identify his personality by his actions for these small frames. In these clips, we see dirty hands with peeling skin pulling out a nail from one of them. A nail that was inside the skin isn't exactly a natural occurrence and due to the size of it, it's not something that would get stuck that deep through an accident. It's safe to assume the character in question placed it inside his skin just to keep it on him. Not only is that a stupid idea due to the chance of infection but we can work out the nature of this character, psychopathic. As such, we assume he's the culprit in whatever case we find the plot delves into and anything for the remainder of the opening sequence shown with those hands we assume connect to him.
This begs a big question. Who's perspective is this opening from? Due to the nature of the evidence being shown in evidence form, we could assume it's from the detectives, the protagonist, but with scenes like this with signs of an insane character, we could argue for it being from the perspective of the killer, the antagonist. Either way, this question along with the rest of the opening work wonders for the genre because they do what the mystery genre does best. Makes a mystery. There are more question than answers even though you can work out some of them yourself and it engages the audience while disorientating and distracting them from the bigger picture through sound and editing. The clues are there but that's the easy part.
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Through analysing this clip, I've learnt that a key element to making my mystery opening successful is creative freedom. I must be able to make evidence to a bigger plot in the opening there but using editing I must throw people off what it means. Everything must be unexplainable for everything to have meaning.
