Se7en Evaluation

Se7en Evaluation

From the opening credits scene in the movie ‘Se7en’, I have learnt many new things about the way the genre of psychological horror and thriller should be done effectively.

Right away, you are put in with the killer, he remains unknown, and all you see is his hands and the detail on them. This has taught me that to create a successful opening; you need to focus on one thing with minor details to impress the eye, because with his hands you can see bandages, where he removed his finger tips and in the Mise-en-Scene you can see all of the creative things like his journal, and the detail that is put into something that is barely in focus and is only in the shot for about a quarter of a second, before it jump cuts to something else.

To make my production an effective piece, mystery is needed, because if you add the name of the actor that plays the mysterious killer, then the mystery and drama element of the film is ruined.

Opening credits usually establish what the film is about, and with this one we are left with the psychopath’s mind into how his world works, but we see little of it, and this can help our production because we can show how a psychopath acts and behaves, and use something to keep in focus instead of a whole body or a long shot that shows the room. It’s the things that we don’t understand, that frighten us the most. The opening credits are two minutes and show us what we should strive for if we are doing a horror that involves a character that is a killer and we do not know the appearance of such a person.


The typography was impressive, and was animated. It w

as rough and fits well with the genre it is.

Another big part about the opening credits is the sounds used. Sound can be a very effective way to give people Goosebumps and freak them out in a way that they want to skip the scene. If you use disturbing music, an old piece where it is disorientated and some of the notes are scratched on the record to make the singing high or low pitched, the audience will feel uncomfortable with what they are watching. Especially when the themes that are being showed on their screens are filled with horror elements like a journal with body parts and disturbing pictures of mutilated corpses, or fetuses

. Just things in general that can make you uncomfortable, like watching the mysterious man in ‘Se7en’ cut off his own finger-tips and looking up surgical procedures, adding the element of confusion. 

Another thing that I learnt was how to edit effectively. In the opening credits you do not need to show the narrative, just the people involved with the film and let the audience do the rest, like piecing the film together on what they think they saw, with jump cuts to confuse them. This effective use of editing allows for a bigger mystery that the audience won’t be able to figure out until the end of the film when it is shown to them, the editing is more of a tease. It is not done linear, as we cannot tell what he has done, or is doing.