Seven Pounds

1 minute and 30 seconds in you are drawn into the film, with heavy, shaky breathing you can tell there is something wrong than we see him crying on the film, upset and shocked. When he reports a suicide and says he is the victim, it instantly grips the audience in wanting to know what happens that leads him to wanting to commit suicide. We know that the film will be about his journey to where he is now and that there is definitely something wrong in his life that causes him to feel this upset and hurt. However, despite the score in the background being calm, slow chords of the piano, it still adds to the upset and hurtful atmosphere. With the music you can relate to Will Smith's character, although you haven't really been introduced to his character you get affected by his choice of wanting death. Nevertheless, not only does it add to the emotions and make it easy to relate to him, it creates a great deal of suspense and tension, creating a dramatic atmosphere wanting us to watch more, that lasts the whole movie, making the audience want to know each detail of the narrative and how it lead to him to be in that position and what happens after. With the music and the opening credits being the first thing we see and hear, it subliminally introduces the genre to the film. The music soft and tensing it create a dramatic atmosphere; hence to introduce the drama genre, also the text is in normal capital letters, which is normally used for drama genres. Nevertheless, the colors used: white and red, signifies that there will be some sort of danger or problem which will arise in the film and we are very shortly informed that there is something unusual going on with this man that causes him to want to commit suicide. I really like the use of music and speech, it really shows what you can do and what affect you can create with the type of music and words. 

When you go into the film, you hear more of him talking as if he hates life, "God created life in 7 days and I wasted mine in 7 seconds". He is swimming and walking towards what seems to be his house; it then confirmed when he is looking through a list to make a phone call. This is when we get a glimpse of the other characters that play a vital part in the narrative; we also get a better perspective of his character. We get an over- shoulder of Will smith- the main character fixing his tie and shirt; normally when people dress like that they are smart and always mean business. We then see an eye-level shot of the list he was looking at and the note really adds to the confusion and suspense of wanting to know more. "Ben, These are all the candidates that meat your criteria here in region 5. Remember, you don't know me" From this line we know that he is looking for someone but we know that he is maybe doing it illegally and he is doing it secretively. This is all in the time in 2 minutes, and we are effectively pulled in to want to watch more but we still acknowledge everything needed to understand, who the main character is the genre and we know where he lives. If you went on to watch it until the film title, you get a better idea of the film and his character, the same quality in the first 2 minutes continuing. However, I looked at the first two minutes because that is the maximum time we are looking to create out film opening and this is a really good opening. The director Gabrielle Muccino was very in clever in his work and it really inspired me with some ideas and how important it is to grip the audience to your film even in the first few seconds. Overall, I think the opening of this film establishes the 3 important things needed in an opening: character, genre and narrative and it was done brilliantly.

Farjana [Reshma] Rahman