Se7en Deconstruction

Here, I have carried out a deconstruction on the film Se7en trailer, looking at how the storyline is depicted to the audience through sound, mise en scene, camera angles and how editing changes the feeling of the trailer, building tension and adding to the action of the shots shown. I chose Se7en to analyse as it relates to our idea about sins, and a killer who kills people because he feels they deserve to die- an initial idea that we have for our trailer that we are going to be creating.



Initial view of the production company for two seconds is shown with the initiation of the low droning note of non-diegetic sound.

The trailer starts off with an over the shoulder shot of one of the main characters. Mise en scene of this shot involves plasters over cuts on his fore head and nose, bags under his eyes- he is tired looking- and the location being within what looks like a police investigation or interview room. Sharp diegetic dialogue introduces the trailers abruptly, fast pace editing and sound adding tension and excitement.

With a charm non-diegetic sound, the shot changes to a low angle mid shot of the other main character holding a flash light and wearing a trench coat-signifying to the audience the genre is related to crime. The editing of the first few shots is very fast, the scene changing again to a close up shot of the first man within a room- lighting red- with prints of photographs hanging from a string- again signifying the crime genre.

Linking to the non-diegetic dialogue, "These things you see"- following from the initial diegetic dialogue, the editing changes fast to show the objects that are being "seen", a banging non-diegetic sound played at each change in shot to emphasise the images being seen. Following this, shots within the film such as the characters driving past a police car, a reflection in the glasses of a character looking at a graphic image and someone investigating the contents of a room with a flash light- all relating to the initial representation of a crime form of genre, are shown. With these on-going shots, the non-diegetic sound starts to build, adding tension for the audience to become more captivated with the drama of the scenes.

At 18 seconds in, one of the main characters, already seen, is official introduced through a non-diegetic voice over, heard during a number of different angled shots of this character in different scenes within the film. A shot of the character within an office talking to a man who says "Your retiring..." and various other shots give the audience a good idea of who this man is- "Detective William Summerset"- and what his background within the story is. The second main character is then immediately also introduced, "Detective David Mills". The voice over is conveying to the audience the basic story line, "...Summerset is looking for a way out... Mills is looking for a way in...".

A number of scenes with interaction between the two characters are seen, showing their relationship to be initially strained with Mills not wanting Summerset's help, denoted through dialogue mainly, and mise en scene regarding location of their interactions, as if Summerset is harassing Mills in the streets and at work.

At 40 seconds, the non-diegetic sound starts to change, having started to die down slightly, it becomes more mysterious and high pitched, with a shot of Mills breaking down a door as an initial diegetic bang and the two detectives investigating a murder- shown through different shots, denoted through mise en scene, dialogue and camera angels, reflecting the change in mannerism between the two men and how they are starting to work together- with two shots rather than single mid shots and low camera angle shots as they were previously shown to signify their initial differences.

45 seconds, an editing feature with a static followed with an image of a UV light on the words "HELP ME" in blood on the wall. This is the point within the trailer when the shots shown relate more to the murders that are occurring within the film, multiple shots all at different angles are shown relating to investigating the crime scenes, shots of the victims of the killer, evidence being collected and examined. And during all of these changing in shots, the diegetic and non-diegetic dialogue played is explicitly relaying to the audience the storyline of the film and the concepts of the murder, the idea of the seven deadly sins being introduced trough Summerset's diegetic dialogue within a shot placed at a police station- again backing up the stereotype of the genre being depicted from the trailer to the audience.

Carrying on through the length of the trailer, the editing starts getting even faster, keeping up the tension within the clip to convey to the audience the excitement and action within the film. Every second or so, a new shot is shown, and they are all different, giving a good idea of the story line. This is to really allow the audience to get a taster of what the film is about, who the main characters are and what the ultimate story line is about. It is clear from the shots that come up of the different murders, shown in various shots depicting this through mise en scene and dialogue-, along with the words saying "greed, lust, gluttony, pride, sloth..", that the film is about a killer who goes after people who, he feels, reflects one of the deadly sins. With these increasingly sped up shots that include a lot of the action involved within the film, the non-diegetic sound matches the action and is fast paced and up-beat, keeping the viewers tensions high, the non-diegetic voice over continuing to relay parts of the storyline to the audience.

The trailer finishes with a final sequence of head shots of the main characters, the voice over stating the actors names, followed by the words "greed, lust, gluttony, pride, sloth.." shown on screen again. The last shot shows the two detectives Mills stating the dramatic sentence, "Have you ever seen anything like this", indicating to the audience that this film is unique also and the storyline is something they have "never seen anything like before". The last shot is the title "Se7en" shown in red lettering and the tag line "Let he who is without sin try to survive", the list of actors and directors etc and the date the film is coming out "coming soon" also follows that- all of which is shown to inform the viewer of this set of information for their note and to allow them to know what to look out for when the film does go into the cinema.