The opening scene of the 1995 thriller drama Se7en directed by David Fincher and the opening scene of the 1980 horror drama The Shining by Stanley Kubrick are both critically acclaimed. Both try to unsettle the audience. Se7en and the shining use in parts the same techniques while looking and being extremely different. But how do they both create this feeling?
The shining’s opening scenes shows a classic a to b journey of a car driving through a beautiful landscape characterised by Mountains. The non-diegetic opening track of The shining by Wendy Carlos and Rachel is based/inspired on/by “Dies Irea” a famous Latin (musical) sequence which is known for its unsettling sound, it’s also been used in e.g. Star wars and the Lion King and can be traced back to the 13th Century. The music lets the audiences know that something is wrong, something is going to happen, e.g., a audience member might expect the car to drive down a Clive. It foreshadows the horror parts of the Film; it sets the tone. The music is like the paste of the editing slow, allowing us to really focus and connect on/with the car and the passengers which we haven’t met yet. The opeing scene shows long lasting shots filmed from a helicopter. These movements throw the audience off. In the beginning the camara spins around like in a roller-coaster after this we see e.g., a Birds eye shot from very high up intended to unsettle audience members with a fear of hights. Other shots show the car driving along a cliff meaning a crash would lead to a certain death.
Se7en´s opening switches between a blackscreen and shots of creepy/mysterious images/actions. It´s pasted really quick this being one of the many contrasts to the shining’s openings scene. The fast paste allows the film to show a lot of images in a short period of time causing an overstimulation. The entire scene consists of close ups. Therefore the audience doesn’t know were they are this feeling of being lost hits even harder because of the lighting the entire scene is very dark there by focuses the audience on what they can see. This being either mysterious objects or the titles. The soundtrack in this opening consists of a dark synth dubstep like beat and a lot of samples e.g. samples of what sounds like screams. Creating a sound that isn’t really common this perfectly adds to the scene because the audience doesn’t really know what’s going on.
The titles of both films are at least of putting. The shingings light blue titles scroll through the scenery. They stick out, and don’t feel organic. Se7en´s titles as mentioned before stick out the audience is focused on them. They heavily flicker around, creating an uneasy feeling. Both opening’s present (a) Caracter/s. While the audience meets them they don’t know them. Their identity isn’t being reviled. They know that someone is paling something and they know that either someone or a group of people are driving somewhere but they don’t know who these people are. The audience gets to know the characters and conncets with them without ever meeting them. The imagination of the audience is supposed to fill in the gaps. Making those scenes more powerful when seeing the car driving down the road we might think of a family trip and we imagine that our family could be in this car, when we then feel scared for the passengers we feel scared for people we know. Not knowing who makes these plans in the opening scene of Se7en lets the audience fill in this gap with a person they are most likely scared of making this scene more interesting and maybe even more familiar.
Both scenes create a feeling of unsettles through the lack of context. Both openings profit from their soundtrack and extrem camara positions, this being the close ups in Se7en or wide shots in The Shining. While they might not look the same they most definitely use the same mechanisms to get the audience involved.
