ED deconstruction of an opening sequence

Genre-

• Seven belongs in the sub-genre of psycho it conforms to the conventions of classical psychological films as it has a character collecting information and obsessive behaviour of people and there seems to be a underlying obsession with hands as the character has many images of hands and the sequence only reveals hands to the audience. A obsession with a certain thing suggests mental illness to the audience. 

• The audiences generic expectations of the text are fulfilled as the text follows conventional patterns of psychological thriller. It shows obsessive behaviour followed by collection of data of certain people. It is using extreme close up shots and low lighting to make the scene also feel more scary and restrict veiws for the audience which is sterotypical of a psychological thriller.
• The text conforms to the characteristscs of the genre, the sequence is very serious and it is not playful or ironic and therefore it is encoraging a dominant veiw of the text. This text can only be perceived in the way that it is serious and would be difficult to misperceive it as ironic.

Film language- 

• In this montage lots of the camera is in close up or extream close up this is because the audience are meant to be confused and not able to see everything that is happening to create a enigma code. Lots of panning shots are used when moving across the images in the scene and they move slowly so that the audience is able to see the differnt images. POV shots are used which places the audience with the antagonist which conveys being inside the head of someone with a mental illness. A steady cam is used in the filming to represent that the atmosphere is calm and that there is no panic but this is juxstiposed by the things that the character is doing seem to be strange.

• There is a fast cutting rate through the sequence as lots of images and clips are being put together at once this conveys that there is lots of imformaion and the rapid thoughts of someone who is metally ill. Jump cuts are used when he is writing in the book to speed up the process this connotes that he is is taking his time while writing down this imformation which conveys to the audience that he takes pride in the work he is doing because he is mentally ill. 
• Mise-en-scene on this text is very significant there is lots of symbolic codes such as cutting his fingertips so that he is untracable which conveys that he is invlolved in crime and doesnt want to be traced. The lighting in this scene is very dark for most of it when he is writing in books and sewing things together this connotes that there is something being hidden which creates a enigma code to the audience and imformation they want to know. The photograph of the man with his eyes crossed out represents that he has been killed and that it was planned by the man in the scene this conveys to the audience that the man is a murderer of some sort. The lighting in the red room where the photo's are being processed is red and this is used to connote blood and danger because the colour red has lots of negative connotations to it. 

• We can see in this text that the character is mentally ill this is conveyed through non-verbal launguage of him cutting pictures and sewing  imformation into books this connotes killing and danger because it is the obbsession of gathering this imformation and how he slowly carefully cuts pictures because it is his pride and his work. We are able to tell that the characrter is male through his actions because they are masculine and this conveys to us that the antagonist is a male character.

• Sound in this clip is all non-deigetic but it helps to support the images in the clip such a the high pitched screecing sound when the man cuts of his finger prints this is because the images are gory and there is alot of tension in them and so the sounds adds to this tension in the scene. There is a deep moaning drone in the backround and this comforms to the conventions of the sub-genre that it is in, it conveys to the audience that there is danger and makes the montage scary for the audience. 
• The director has used post production to add other parts to this text there has been a picture of a face which we cannnot see properly with a cross over it to make a sense of danger and fear of the unknown in the montage, this helps to create meaning as the audeince is now in question to who is being killed and why. There has also been a de-saturated effect put on in post production and this connotes a cold enviroment in which there could be a killer. This cold enviroment helps to convey someone with a mental illness in the scene and it creates a dark mood which the audience feels afraid of.

• There are 38 titles that are included on the sequence, the director of the film (david fincher) is put in twice at the beginning and at the end this establishes his importance this is done for the proucer as well. Apart from having the directors name at the start the names go in importance we see the name of the cast first and then the crew, the producers, the writer and then finally director just as the montage ends. All the names are written in white and it is on a font that looks simmilar to handwritting this fits in with what is happening as the man in the sequence is writing things down. The film title comes shortly after the names of the director and producer at the start it also comes after the main cast, the first thing to appear is 'new line cinema' and this helps to show the importance of the distrubution company. 

Narrative

• The plot outline in the opening sequence is clear we are able to see that it is a man that is hunting down people to kill them for a reason and he is a phsycopath and therefore it is mental illness and obsession as motivation for the murder. The stock charaters in the opening sequence are the characters which are being crossed off and the ones which have images of their faces. There is only one character present in this montage and so we only see him.
• The opening scene of this is in a structure of a montage and we are revealed through organisation differnt bits of imformation revealing things about the characters personallity. The montage helps the audience to understand that the character has a mental illness and that everything that is about to happen in the film is planned and a string of events related to this one person, however the identitity of the character is not revealed in the montage.
• The audience is positioned outside of the narrative they are looking in on events happening how ever have no influence to what is happening in the scene, the audience can see what is happening through close ups  and therefore look very closely at things happening.
• The main themes in this narrative are mental illness, obsession, and murder we can see this with the a extreme close up  on him cutting of his finger prints this is clear that he has a mental illness and is trying to hide something by doing this creates a semic code and the audience is now to look out for cases without finger prints. The photos of faces with lines through them and the obbessive writing suggests that there is some sort of hunting and chasing down people because of a reason and a theme in the killing this we later find out that this is the 7 deadly sins. During the montage the audience does not yet know the link between the murderd but the audience is able to assume there is a link between them because of the obsession of one person.

• Tension is created in this montage as there is very little lighting as so the audience is unable to see properly what is happening and they would like more revealed to them, there is also a fast cutting rate and this stops the audience from being able one scene for a long enough time to reveal to much. The audience sees the character crossing out photo's and words in a book which creates a enigma code as to why he is doing that and what he has done to the people, who the people where and why he has killed them. Another enigma code is why he is cutting of his finger prints as this suggest that he has something to hide and that eh ahs possibly commited a crime that would need to be traced.

Representation and ideology

• The social groups presented in this sequence are the mentally ill because the sequence focuses on the mind and activity of a mentally ill man. Another group which is represented in is male and the audience is able to assume that the character is male because his hands are manly and dirty, this comforms to the sterotype that men tend to be less clean than women and that they have dirty hands sometimes when they are working. This is binary opposition as it is a males hands in comparisson to a females hands. 
• The ideological discourse in this sequence shows us that the sterotype of a male antagonist and and the fact that a male antagonist is dangerous is very relavent as it helps to reinforce dominant veiws of male being more dangerouse. We are able to see in the opening scene the film title 'seven' and the fact that the antagonist looks in  religiouse books allows us to assume that it could be to do with the 7 deadly sins and this is reinforces the importance of religion as we can see that it is religiouse teachings that are motivating this character.

media audiences

• The target audience is 16-30 although the rating of the film is a 18 its target audience is 16 to 30. in the openng sequence we can see the target audience it may attract as it has alot of mystery which will mean people want to watch it because there are questions to be awnserd however is manages to attract the 16 year old audiene because it feels like it will have a element of gore to it when the man pulls the needle out.
• The dominant audience readings of this sequence are that the man is killing these people he has images of and he has a metal illness and obsession and therefore there is a motive for why he is killing them. The negotiated readings of this are that this man may not have necessarily killed these people he could have organised them dying or have a obsession with them and he is doing it for a motivated reason but is not mentally ill. The oppositional reading of this text could be that the audience feels he is not a killer of these people at all he is trying to find there killer and he is not obsessive over them he is just watching these people for their saftey.
• I evaluate this text to be this is a mentally ill man that is a guilty murder of the people he is showing photo's of. My age and backround teaches me that if a man is collecting photo's and imformation in private about people and is creating a book of this imformation and then cutting of his finger tips he must be a murderer because this is not seen as normal.

Institutional context 

• This film was produced by Arnold Kopleson and Phyllis Carlyle it was distrubuted by New line Cinema. Arnold Kopleson has been invlolved in films such as 'Devils Advocate', 'Platoon', 'The fugitive' and 'Eraser'. New Line Cinema has been invlolved with films such as 'A Nightmare On Elm Street','The Lord Of The Rings','Blade','The Hobbit' and 'The conjouring'.
• It is a industrial film this can easily be seen because is has been produced by a famouse producer Arnold Kopleson and it has also got a ultra high budget of $33 million. The film is directed by David Fincher and it has been backed by a large studio (New Line Cinema).
• Seven incudes A-listers such as Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman these are very famous actors and are well recognised world wide. They are very significant because they are both main characters in the film and the fact that they are so famouse brough publicisty to the film.