Analysis of the Opening to Se7en

The opening begins with a very low speed editing, with several closed frame long shots. The diegetic ticking sound in the background builds suspense, a key idea in the thriller, as it hints that something is about to happen. The camera crosscuts between two shots, a close up of the ticking clock and a mid shot that slowly zooms into him. In synchronisation with the shot of him being shown we hear loud non diegetic noises of people talking, which immediately cut out when the clock is shown, this suggests there is something he is trying to block out and forget but can't. The room is lit with low-key lighting by two separate lights, either side of the man. The first shot we see establishes his room to the audience, displaying that he is an average middle class man, though without anything too fancy in his room and his not matching lights convey the feeling that he does not have a lot of excess money. In the first shot of him, he is shown reading illustrating him as an intelligent, studious man. The shot then cuts to black and the title sequence begins. This is a distinct contrast to the first half of the opening as it is made up of a montage of high speed editing close ups. The audience is shown a variety of objects such as books, pens and paper with seemingly no chronology, straight away disorientating and creating a sense of the unknown for the audience. The shots are mostly lit by a signal top light and are all in black and white apart from four shots which are shown in red, highlighting these shots, as red connotes blood and danger. Several times the audience will catch a glimpse of a dark, shadowed hand, reaching into the shot, though as all of the shots are close ups it is not revealed who this hand belongs to, where they are, or what they are attempting to do, adding to the mystery in the opening. The idea of things being hidden from the audience is furthered by several shots being slightly out of focus and the whole opening having a very shallow depth of field. There is a non diegetic typewriter like sound placed over the sequence, paralleling the typewriter style font that the titles are in, establishing the film as being set in the past. The music begins slow, contrapuntal to the high speed editing, though as the opening continues it begins to speed up, building the tension. The music also has a lot of base to it creating a very erie and haunting feel.  The fast pace style opening where very little is revealed to the audience is a key theme in many thrillers, so straight away gives the audience an idea to the genre of the film.