Watching 'Se7en'...

In yesterday's lesson we watched the film 'Se7en'. Directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey this thriller definitely gave us the shock of our lives!!

I loved the storyline and thought it was incredibly effective, but only due to the effects the producers used with the camera shots, sound and general mise-en-scene of the film.

(I have already written one post about the opening credits of the film and how much of an impact they have on the audience)

For example, when the first murder is discovered and the two detectives (Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) go to investigate the death, the non-diegetic sound adds so much dramatic tension to the scene that without it, the audience would not have been very scared at all.

The lighting in this scene also builds on the dramatic tension as it is very dark in the room and the only light they have is the light from their torches. The way they keep flashing the torches around means that the audience only really gets to see tiny parts of the scene for a very short amounts of time which makes the audience want to see the whole thing, they are waiting in anticipation to see the full horrific image of what has really happened.

Right at the end of this scene one of the detectives lifts up the victim's head to reveal a close up of his face and his white eyes wide open with the torch light shining in his face.

The fact that the audience has not yet been shown the whole picture up until that moment means that it shocks them to be shown such a horrifying image at a moment when they least expect it.

Clever methods such as this are used throughout the film in order to scare the audience and another example of this is when the murderer kills his third victim; sloth. The audience is led to believe that the victim has been dead for a whole year and whilst the viewer is still reeling from the close up shot of a years worth of pictures of the victim on the bed, another close up shot appears of the supposedly dead man's face and he suddenly gasps for air and dust pours out of his mouth.

Our entire class jumped about 10 feet into the air and were still recovering ten minutes later! I couldn't believe how much it made me jump because in thriller/horror films, it is generally quite easy to tell when something out of the ordinary is going to happen because of the build up of scary music but in this scene I had absolutely no idea that was going to happen! This was probably because there was no music behind it, just the detectives talking over what seemed to be a corpse. This proved to be another clever way of catching the audience when they least expect it.

I think the film is very clever and the story line seems quite unique, but I wasn't completely persuaded by the ending. I thought it was very predictable that he would have killed Brad Pitt's wife and it seemed to be a bit of a tame way to end the film when you compare the ending to the graphic images shown nearer the beginning.

On the other hand, I can see how the ending could be more terrifying in some ways, because the audience doesn't get shown any horrific images, it's all implied so your imagination is left to run wild.

In those last few minutes of the film where the two detectives are driving John Doe to the location, I found myself getting really angry with the killers character for the obvious reasons but also because of what he says about why he kills these people. His character completely contradicts himself with his values/morals.

He thinks he's doing the world a favour by killing these people and that he has been called by God to carry out this awful killing spree but by doing so isn't he breaking one of the ten commandments himself?! The smug grin on his face really got to me as well and I felt myself empathize with Brad Pitt's character as he clearly wants to make him realise what a hypocrite he is.

Another interesting point about this car scene is the metal grid that seperates the killer from the detectives. When there is a shot of Brad Pitt or the killer, the grid covers their face. When there is a shot of Morgan Freeman there is no grid over his face. This is to represent the part the two characters play in the seven deadly sins murders and also to show Morgan Freeman's innocence in it all.

When the time came for Brad Pitt to find out his wife had been killed, as an audience member I responded to what was going on by hating the killer even more because he told Brad Pitt about his unborn baby and then went on to enjoy the fact that he had no idea that his wife had been pregnant.

The complete anguish on Brad Pitt's face leaves the audience feeling quite unsatisfied with the fact that he shot the killer, although they know that it had to be done. (Pitt's thoughts are confirmed by the extremely short flash of a picture of his wife just before he shoots).

I loved the effect that Morgan Freeman's voice over right at the end had on the audience too.

The techniques the producers/directors used were clearly very effective if they left me feeling so angry that the murderer only got killed, it didn't seem like justice to me and this is probably the desired effect on the audience that the producers were looking for.

Another significant part of the scene for our group in particular was when the detectives go into the murderer's flat and find his darkroom. We will be refering back to this scene for inspiration for our film opening.

Such a clever film with a great storyline, but I don't think I'll be rushing to watch it again any time soon...I'll wait till the nightmares subside hahaa!!

Our second day of filming...

Last night we went to the old darkroom of our school and filmed the rest of the shots we needed for our film opening.
We had previously taken lots of photos of some of our friends that look like they've been taken by the stalker and we got them printed off and stuck them up on the walls of the darkroom with notes around them, such as the names, birthdays and occupations of the people in the photos. We hoped this would add to the scariness of the stalker's character.
After we had set up the room properly we began to film the shots that were drawn on our storyboard.
The first shot was of Sarah's Dad (stalker) opening the door to the darkroom (no light) and then turning on the light and letting the door shut behind him. As there was a red light bulb outside the darkroom door, this had a good effect because the shot had the door and the stalker in it, with the red light right in the corner. The fact that the door was really old and creaky also added to the fear factor.
We then did a shot from the inside of the darkroom of Sarah's Dad walking into the room and turning on the light, looking at the wall of photos and then walking past the camera. We had to do this many times because we were using a phone light to show him walking in before he actually turned the lights on. This caused a bit of a problem because the light kept on going off, but we were hoping it will just add to the effect.

Our next shot was going to be a close up of the wall of photos and we experimented with using the red light from my phone's camera as a spotlight to run over all the photos during the shot, but in the end we decided to do a close up shot of one of the sets of photos, then Sarah's Dad dropped something on the floor and I panned the camera round really quickly to show him picking it up off the floor and developing a picture of Charlotte. This was an over the shoulder shot.

We had already hung up two pictures of me and Aimee gagged and one of Charlotte walking down road. He then replaces the normal picture of Charlotte with one of her gagged and then he puts a normal picture of Sarah up as though she is his next victim. We told him to look at the picture of sarah for a little longer to show that he is looking forward to it.

Also, on the pictures of us our names were written on them so we thought we'd use that as our credits, so I did a pan shot going from the

other side of the room just to show the surroundings and then to show our names as a close up shot.

All we need to do now is look at our footage and see whether or not it will be good enough for our final film.

Sound

Today we had a lesson on different types of sound and how they can effect a piece of film and how the audience responds to that piece of film.
For example, we analysed the diegetic and non-diegetic sound in the film 'Jaws' within the scene where a character called Alex is eaten by the shark;

Use Of Diegetic Sound...

• kids laughing and playing implies a happy environment. Their laughter creates dramatic tension because the audience is aware of the fact that the scene won't be happy for much longer. The three different pieces of dialogue taking place in the scene have the effect of making the beach seem very busy.
• dog barking - maybe a hint to danger?
• sound of water splashing could also be a warning of what is to come - the frantic splashing of people trying to get away from the shark?
• music from the radio is giving the audience a false sense of normality in the scene.
• a little boy playing and innocently singing in the sand builds tension - upsets the audience that he would have to be involved in such a horrific event.

Use of Non-Diegetic Sound...

• scary music score.
• no background noise when the victim is shown on the lilo by himself to show his isolation from the rest of the beach.
• when the shark is about to attack the tempo of the music increases and is reminiscent of a heartbeat - this guides the audience's reactions.
• crescendo in the music also builds the tension.
• right at the end the music is being played quietly over the sound of the waves moving back and forth - creates an odd calm ending to a horrifying scene.

The fact that the crescendo in the music builds and builds and builds up to the point where the shark finally attacks makes it less scary for me personally when compared to the scene in the film 'Psycho' where the music does not build up to a climax, it just comes straight in as soon as the murderer attacks so you cannot predict when it's going to happen so it makes you jump more.

When applying this research to our work, I think I would rather use sound in the way it is used in 'Psycho', instead of using the methods from 'Jaws' for our film opening because I thought it was more effective in the way it made people jump.

For example, when we film in the dark room, one of our shots will be of the stalker dropping something on the floor and the camera quickly swivels round to face him which I think could make people jump if we used the right sound.

Schedule for Darkroom Filming...

We've decided that we'll probably begin filming in the darkroom this thursday, depending on Sarah's Dad's availability. The photography teachers have given us permission to use the old dark room whenever we need to, as long as we let them know.

First Day of Filming...

Over the half term we were given all the equipment to begin filming our film opening.
We began by filming an establishing shot of the house and Sarah's dad walking past the camera and down the alleyway next to the house we were filming in. We got him to walk down the alley from three different directions so that we would have more options when we start editing the shots.
We then filmed Charlotte walking out of the front door from far away so that the stalker can still be seen watching her from the alley. We had to film a shot from behind Charlotte as she was walking out of the front door otherwise we wouldn't have anything to fill in between him walking down the alley to him standing and watching her leave her house.
We also did a shot of her leaving the house out of the top window of the house just to experiment with angles and to give us more variety in our editing.


Then we did the point of view shot of the stalker following Charlotte down another alleyway after she leaves her house. We had to do this a few times in order to perfect it but it's difficult to know whether or not it will work when we cannot watch it whilst filming.

Our last shot was of Charlotte walking past the camera with the stalker following her. (We had also previously filmed a point of view shot of the stalker's hand grabbing Charlotte's shoulder).
All of us were really pleased with how the first day of filming went but also slightly concerned about the weather and how it would effect the continuity of our film opening, as the sun kept coming out and disappearing all the time, so we may have to do some more filming of the same shots.

Developing Our Ideas...

After having further discussions about our film opening, we decided to do the title sequence in the old dark room at school so that the stalker could be filmed hanging up pictures of his past victims and his next victims. We thought the red light would create a very eerie effect (low key lighting).

We decided not to do the shots of the victim getting ready to go out because the dark room shots would take up too much time and we thought that shots of the outside of her house with the stalker next to it would be more effective.

Initial ideas for our film opening...

Here are just a few ideas that we jotted down as a group right at the start of our film making process;

• Graveyard scenes of children happily playing (high key lighting, nice music) then stumbling upon/realising they're in a graveyard (low key lighting, dark music). Possibly point of view shot of someone watching from the bushes?
• If we have the opening sequence inside a victim's room we could have an extreme close up eye-line shot of girl (victim) doing her make-up, then transition to stalker's eyes watching her, then back to the girl?
• Make-up could be a way of doing the title sequence?
• We could use Sarah's house/road and her Dad could play the part of the stalker?
• Charlotte could be the victim, or possibly the twins?
• Point of view shot of the stalker following the victim, noise of something crunching underfoot makes the victim turn around and the camera moves quickly away as if hiding from her?
• Darkroom possible location? Perhaps the stalker takes pictures of his victims beforehand and after the killing? (Possible idea for title sequence)
• Use of alleys?

Not all of these ideas will be used but this was just a quick brainstorm that we did very early on in the process of making our film opening.

An example of someone being chased by a point of view shot (at 1:19);