Se7en

In our lesson on friday morning we watched the film Se7en. This was because Miss Foster had previously shown us the opening credits to get us thinking about our own opening credits in our film, but because we all thought it was so good and wanted to know more about the film she decided to let us the whole thing as a class.

The opening credits were really effective because you don't understand what it is or what is happening until you watch the rest of the film so it makes the veiwer interested and want to carry on watching.


The rest of the film is about a detective, Morgan Freeman, who is about to retire and has 7 days to teach the new detective, Brad Pitt, how to do his job.
Within those 7 days a serial killer starts his work by killing people according to the 7 deadly sins, gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy and rath.
You saw throughout the film how he killed these people and at the end find out his reasonings behind them.
I thought it was a really good film and really enjoyed it. Although many people in the class afterwards were saying that they thought it was a poor ending, I disagree and think it was really powerful. The fact that the audience are left to just imagine what it looks like inside the box I thought was really effective and the way that you can really empathise with Brad Pitt at the end and understand his anger and upset.
There were many things in the film which were used to add to the atmosphere and help you understand the characters. The lighting for example was low key and for almost the whole film it was very heavy rain which made the film very dark and gloomy to add to the mood and effect of the film.
There was also a part in the end when the two detectives are driving the killer to the destination he has told them and there is a conversation between all three men. This is a vital part of the film as the killer tells them his reasons behind all the killings and how he believes he was chosen by God to do this and how he admires the two detectives for their work. As this conversation is happening the camerawork is very clever to show the audience the different characters. Whenever the killer is talking, he is shown through the wire bars as if to show he is bad and should be away from people. When Brad Pitt is talking he is sometimes also shown through the bars to show he is just as bad as the killer in his attitudes, but when Morgan Freeman talks he is shown normally without the bars to show he is good.

There was also a part in the film where the detectives find the killers flat and one of his rooms is a dark room with lots of photos of his victims hung up. This looked like a really effective shot with a red tint so I think this has once again made our group think about maybe putting a red tint over our own dark room scene when editing using imovie.