In today's lesson we watched the film Se7en, a crime, drama, mystery  and thriller, directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. The film stars Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey.

I thought the film was very cleverly written and I really enjoyed watching it despite the fact that I get scared really easily. As a class we decided that we thought it was much better that the film didn't show much violence or gore, for example at the end it doesn't show the woman's head in the box. There have been debates as to whether this is a good thing or not, however we seemed to have more respect for the film because of this. We felt that there was no need for it, it seemed to have much more effect by keeping us, as viewers, in suspense. We discussed how people's interests in a particular genre always changes. This year it seems that people are more into comedies rather than thriller's or horror's which seemed to be more popular last year.

Watching the film seemed to be inspiration for us despite our genre being completely different. I found myself really looking at the camera angles and different shots. I particularly liked the scene where the officers eventually find where the killer lives and they see him with his groceries at the end of the corridor. The long shot of him down the corridor was really effective as when he pulls out the gun and shoots, it looks as though he is shooting at us, it certainly made me jump!

I also really liked the use of non-diegetic sound- the music. It created a very intense atmosphere especially when the music builds up, you automatically expect something scary or jumpy to happen.

Overall I really liked watching the film, particularly because it starred two of my favourite actors, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. Although the ending was really sad and quite disturbing I still thought it was a clever twist, it wasn't one of those annoying endings that has no conclusion or an anticlimax, it was written really well. I feel as though it will help me and my group with creating our film opening especially with the editing process.

Here are some pictures from the film, some more gory than others.

  

I thought that it was quite symbolic having the barrier in front of both the killers face and also sometimes in front of Brad Pitt's. However the barrier was never shown on Morgan Freeman's face. Perhaps this was done to show that the killer and brad pit will have more of a connection further on the film, which they did.