Act & Sequence Breakdown: Se7en

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors

The 90’s crime/horror classic Se7en is an outstanding teaching film for authors and screenwriters of all genres. As we started to discuss last week, it’s one of the clearest examples both of the Three-Act, Eight-Sequence Structure of film and of Sequence Bridges.

• If you are just joining us, you will first want to read about the Three-Act, Eight Sequence Structure

Filmmakers often use a RECURRING IMAGE or DEVICE to indicate the end of each sequence and the beginning of another (not always for every sequence, but very frequently for the transitions between the four acts). Authors more and more often use this technique in books, too.

When you’re learning story structure, it’s useful to watch a couple of films that do the work of breaking down the act and sequence climaxes for you with this technique of ACT AND SEQUENCE BRIDGES (or TRANSITIONS).

In Se7en, the filmmakers use TITLE CARDS of the seven days of the week to begin/end each sequence. That is, they do until they’ve trained the audience to expect that pattern — and then turn that expectation against us!

• Read more about Act & Sequence Bridges, with examples

Film is classically structured in three or four ACTS consisting of six to eight SEQUENCES of 10-15 minutes each. Watching a movie with a timer and checking what happens about every 15 minutes is a fantastic training exercise to internalize this structure.

I know some of you have done this for yourselves and have been waiting for my breakdown - understandably, because it does get tricky. Please remember that these breakdowns are not set in stone! You may have a different idea of what some of the sequences are than I do, and the important thing is that you’re watching these movies for patterns that are meaningful to you and your own story,

But with Se7en, I am using the filmmakers’ guideposts to come up with the following Sequence List. I’ve noted the minutes of each sequence (approximately!) and named them, and have added just a few details in the list to make it more clear where the sequences begin and end. (More details after the Sequence List).

SE7EN

• Written by Andrew Kevin Walker

• Directed by David Fincher

• Released 1995

• Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes

Teaser: Sunday - “Crime of Passion” (Minutes 0:00-4:16)

Credits sequence: (4:17-6:19)

Act I:

• Sequence 1: Monday - Gluttony (6:20-17:11)

Sequence ends in Lieutenant’s office with Somerset trying to get off the case and also arguing for Mills to be taken off it.

• Sequence 2: Tuesday - Greed (17:12-29:33)

Opens with Mills going solo on a new case with GREED painted in blood at the crime scene. Ends with Somerset leaving an envelope full of his research on the Seven Deadly Sins on Mills’ desk.

(More details on the Teaser, Credits, and Act 1 below)

Act II: Part 1

• Sequence 3: Wednesday (29:33-47:46)

ASSEMBLING THE TEAM - Relationship building with Somerset, Mills & Tracy

Sequence 3 ends with a classic SEQUENCE BRIDGE - a dissolve from Mills and Somerset settling down on the couch in the PD corridor to wait for a fingerprint match; to a Title Card of Thursday over the image of Mills and Somerset now asleep on the couch with Mill’s head on Somerset’s shoulder. Now they’re a real TEAM.

• Sequence 4: Thursday-Friday - Sloth (47:47 - 1 hour 7 minutes)

The Sequence opens with a forensics tech waking the detectives up with the ID on the fingerprints, which takes them to the apartment not of the killer, but the Sloth victim,

(I personally think this sequence contains the next scene with Tracy, which starts on Friday, at 57:29. It’s too short a scene to count as its own sequence.)

Friday: 57:29

In an important SUBPLOT scene, Tracy reveals to Somerset that she’s pregnant., The scene ends at 57:27 with Somerset being buzzed back to the station.

The sequence goes on to Somerset and Mills using an FBI contact to access library records and climaxes at the police station with the reveal of “Jonathan Doe”’s name and address. (1:07)

Act II: Part 2

Sequence 5: John Doe (1.08 - 1.24)

The sequence opens with a seven minute MIDPOINT scene of Mills chasing John Doe through his apartment building (1:08 - 1.14:44) After Doe nearly kills Mills, then escapes himself, the sequence continues with the examination of the Villain’s Lair.

The sequence ends with the question: “Who’s the blond?” - the CLUE that will lead to the next murder victim.

Sequence 6: Saturday - Lust (1.24-1.33)

Sequence 6 opens with Mills and Somerset in a porn shop, showing a police sketch of John Doe to the proprietor. He admits he has made some contraption for John Doe which we don’t see - yet - but which clearly appalls Somerset. They are called to the scene of another murder: “They found the blond.” Then at the police station they question the john who has been forced to murder her. (Lust).

After a DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL scene between the detectives in a bar, to close the Act a sleepless Somerset hurls his metronome across the room, stopping the clock, and throws his knife at the dartboard. (1.33)

Act III

Sequence 7: Sunday - Pride (1:33 - 1:48)

The sequence begins as most of them have, at the scene of the latest murder. (Pride) The audience has been trained through repetition to expect that the action to follow will be the investigation of the Pride murder.

Instead, just two minutes into the sequence, John Doe walks into the police station and turns himself in (essentially, beginning the Act with a CLIMAX)/

Do you see how this breaking of the sequence pattern helps to create that electrifying TWIST?

John Doe makes an offer that sounds too good to be true: (DEAL WITH THE DEVIL) - he will take Somerset and Mills to the bodies of his last two victims and then offer a full confession. If they don’t accept he will plead insanity. The detectives know there’s a huge catch coming but agree.

In a police car, Somerset and Mills drive a shackled John Doe out of the city into a desert. John Doe keeps talking about Envy - how he envies Mills.

Though the action from Sequence 7 to Sequence 8 is continuous, Sequence 7 climaxes when the car arrives at the forest of electrical towers. There is a clear LOCATION CHANGE from driving in the car to this eerie SETPIECE location, where the FINAL BATTLE takes place.

Sequence 8: Wrath and Envy (1.48 - 2.00)

The overhead shots from the police helicopters following the police car serve as a BRIDGE from Sequence 7 into Sequence 8.

On the ground, the men get out of the car and start walking, presumably to the site of the two last victims. In the FINAL BATTLE, which is mostly dialogue, John Doe reveals the murder (and pregnancy) of Tracy (the infamous Box scene). Despite Somerset’s attempt to stop him, Mills kills John Doe (Envy) in Wrath.

Epilogue/New Way of Life (2.00-2:02)

As police arrive, the lieutenant tells Somerset the department will take care of Mills, although it’s clear he’s a broken man, condemned to a living death.

But Somerset tells the Lieutenant he’ll “be around” - and in the voiceover conclusion quotes Hemingway: “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for” - and ends: “I agree with the second part.” (CHARACTER ARC)

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It’s going to take me several weeks to fully break down Se7en, since we are right in the thick of book festival season and I will be on the road for the next two months, not to mention also finishing a book! Also, just the idea of having to lay out the movie’s deliberate parallels and references to Dante’s Inferno makes me want to sleep for a week.

I will continue on it, because it really is one I want in the movie breakdown archives. But also, the breakdowns aren’t everyone’s thing (although they should be!) so I need to intersperse posts on other subjects.

But I’ll start today with some notes, and keep building on it until I’m reasonably done.

(BTW - yes, it annoys the hell out of me to have to type Se7en for the title every time. But it was a clever marketing trick, forever after much imitated, to add an extra edge to the whole package. Also as you authors may have noticed, if you have a title that is too close to wildly successful bands, songs, other books or movies, etc. - having some kind of quirk to set your own book and title apart is pretty crucial to avoid get buried in search results.)

Act I:

Movies used to begin with the credits. In these days of ADHD, most genre movies leave their credits to the end of the film. Se7en was an early adaptor of the technique of launching straight into the action of the movie. It puts an opening Teaser Scene, a crime scene (not one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but a “Crime of Passion”), before the creepy and startling (at the time) credits sequence, much envied and imitated since.

When people talk about a Five-Act Structure - what they usually mean is the same act structure we talk about here, but with an opening Teaser Scene or Sequence that’s usually a dynamic genre scene to hook the audience. Se7en has a short teaser scene which introduces homicide detective Somerset and his typical day.

In this beginning scene we are told quite clearly that Somerset has seven days left on the job before his requested retirement.

Seven days is a TICKING CLOCK - a useful narrative device to create suspense and pace. It’s a set amount of time in which an action needs to occur. (Eg: In Silence of the Lambs, the Ticking Clock is the three days that serial killer Buffalo Bill holds his victims alive before killing them. Put from the protagonist’s POV: Clarice and the FBI have three days to rescue Catherine Martin.).

In Se7en’s case the title cards of days of the week are also a clever fake out to make the audience initially assume the movie title and action is about seven days, not about the Seven Deadly Sins. Of course it’s not just a fake out - the looming seven days before Somerset’s retirement creates a sense of dread for many reasons, not least being that we are all at least subconsciously aware of the mystery/thriller TROPE of “The veteran cop’s last case” - which inevitably signals tragedy to come.

The ticking clock aspect of the film is visually and audibly underlined by Somerset’s use of a metronome as a meditation device/sleep aid - allowing us to hear the ticking clock, and the sound designer to play with that sound.

At the end of the Teaser, Somerset literally starts the Ticking Clock by setting the metronome in motion (and the credits commence).

(Note that the Credits serve as the movie’s INTO THE SPECIAL WORLD scene - disorientingly bringing us straight into the mind and world of the VILLAIN).

Now, as the movie progresses, the crimes do not happen like clockwork, one per day and sequence. However, because the first two sequences in the first act have one crime per day and one day per sequence, the film has set the EXPECTATION in the audience that there will be one crime per day and one day per sequence.

Filmmakers on the level of Fincher and Walker (and the Kopelsons, and Nana Greenwald) are also acutely aware that their audience is already trained, at least subconsciously, to expect a CLIMAX every fifteen minutes or so.

The filmmakers use those expectations to heighten TWISTS by later breaking the pattern, as we see especially in Se7en’s iconic Act II CLIMAX, which happens not at the end of Sequence Six, where we would usually find it, but suddenly and shockingly a few minutes into Sequence Seven, as John Doe inexplicably turns himself in and the Final Battle commences.

You can see the same kind of setting of audience expectation with title cards and then twisting that expectation in The Shining, as I discuss here:

• The Shining

SEQUENCE 1 takes us to the scene of the first grisly murder, an obese man dead at a table, collapsed into a plate of spaghetti. Retiring Somerset meets his young replacement, Mills. The two are opposites in almost every way and immediately clash. An important early PLANT (or SET UP) comes as Mills goes on somewhat of a rant about cops who fail to check a victim’s vital signs to see if they’re really dead, which will of course PAY OFF in one of the movie’s most shocking twist/scares - even though we were plainly told it was a possibility!

• More discussion and examples of PLANTS and PAYOFFS

The end of Sequence 1 is a character scene in the Lieutenant’s office. Somerset wants off the case: “This can’t be my last duty. And it shouldn’t be his first,” he says to the Lieutenant and to Mills. Somerset’s urgent DESIRE to keep clear of this case not only demonstrates Somerset’s SUPERPOWERS of intuition (what cops call “Blue Sense”), experience, and wisdom; it also creates a powerful sense of dread and foreboding, creating the important element of audience FEAR for the characters.

Not only does Somerset fear the outcome of this clearly serial case for himself, he fears for Mills, who at this point he doesn’t even much like. Somerset’s assessment is underlined by the Lieutenant sending Mills out of the room like a kid - it’s clear he too thinks Mills isn’t ready for this case. But he refuses to let Somerset off the hook. And the Lieutenant argues that Somerset can’t not be a cop - voicing the conflict between Somerset’s INNER AND OUTER DESIRE: he wants to quit, he can’t quit.

It’s very important for you authors to understand that your characters must HOPE and FEAR for specific things in the story - but so must your audience/reader. And -

What characters hope and fear for themselves is often NOT the same as what the audience or reader hopes and fears for them.

Here, we are certainly not hoping that Mills goes on to solve this case by himself, as he clearly hopes to do! We share Somerset’s fear for relatively callow Mills. And we may be hoping that Somerset escapes this case, but part of us is also hoping he keeps going, or - no movie.

SEQUENCE 2:

Of course this is a crime story so Sequence 2 is INVESTIGATION and FOLLOWING CLUES. The sequence opens with Mills at the crime scene of a new case on his own. (Note the CLUE and FORESHADOWING of the Greed victim’s wife’s photo with bloody eyes, placed against Mills sitting in the victim’s chair). At the police station the Lieutenant, who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, entices Somerset into action with details of the case: the word “Greed” was painted in blood at the scene of a rich lawyer tortured to death by someone forcing him to cut off parts of his own body. The lieutenant also leaves Somerset a vial of linoleum chips taken from his “obesity murder” which sends Somerset back to the crime scene, where he discovers two clues behind the refrigerator: the word “Gluttony” in blood on the wall, and a note pinned beside it: "Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light."

Somerset recognizes the quote from Paradise Lost and realizes the two obviously linked cases are referencing the Seven Deadly Sins. Somerset goes to the library (a gorgeous and evocative SETPIECE location) to research literary references to the Inferno and the Seven Deadly Sins - the texts and images he looks at contain a number of PLANTS that will PAY OFF later: including images of decapitation and a line that reads: “Even children slain!”

The film cuts back and forth between Somerset in the library to Mills working his own case by looking through crime scene photos and reports - CONTRASTING their methods. (Another PLANTED image of decapitation with Mills tilting his head back in his chair at an angle that cuts off his body).

This sequence heavily lays out the core thematic IMAGE SYSTEM, taken from Dante’s Inferno, the medieval narrative poem which depicts the journey of Dante, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, through the circles of Hell.

Loosely, Mills is Dante (35 years old in the Inferno); Somerset is the ghost Virgil who guides him through the Underworld (Virgil wrote the Aeneid, also depicting a journey in the Underworld); John Doe is Satan; and Tracy is Beatrice, who in the Divine Comedy is the symbol of divine love.

Sequence Three is a classic ASSEMBLING THE TEAM/TRAINING/TEAM BONDING sequence, which very, very, very often comes exactly at this place in a story.

• See for example - The Hunger Games, The Wizard of Oz

In Sequences 2 and 3, the filmmakers (including Freeman and Pitt) use CONTRAST and also cleverly heighten everything that is inherently annoying about Brad Pitt to create CONFLICT between the two detectives in the beginning. While Somerset researches in the library to the strains of Bach, Mills has a meltdown (beginning of Sequence 3) when he attempts to read Dante and resorts to Cliffs Notes.

But that conflict and abrasiveness is softened and thawed in Sequence 3, in a series of moments like: Tracy ironically “introducing” the two to each other at dinner; Somerset watching Mills wrestling with his dogs like an overgrown puppy; the beautiful comic moment of the rattling train; the detectives sneaking out in the middle of the night to re-investigate the Greed crime scene and finding the hidden fingerprints; and finally falling asleep on the couch together.

I’ve already gotten more detailed than I intended to in this post, but just one more observation!

Skipping to the -

Midpoint

The sequence opens with a brief interchange between Somerset and Mills as they knock on the apartment door - which then immediately turns into an extended chase scene. (Mills chasing John Doe through apartment building (1:08 - 1.14.44.) You very frequently see this kind of ACTION SCENE at the Midpoint - as the climax of Sequence 4, the beginning of Sequence 5, or its own full Midpoint Sequence, which this seven minute chase almost is.

• More on MIDPOINT

It's a good example of how a Midpoint game-changer can be an extended scene or series of scenes. Note that all plot movement stops during this action. Although there’s plenty of jeopardy, it actually serves to give the audience a breather from the intellectual work of following the mystery plot, clues, etc.

The chase ends at 1:14:44, but the sequence continues as Mills and Somerset enter John Doe’s lair.

Now, you might have called that chase scene the climax of Sequence 4, or a whole separate MIDPOINT SEQUENCE. Both of those are just as right an answer as mine! I ended up putting the chase in Sequence 5 because I felt Sequence 4 ends at the clear climactic CLUE of the detectives getting John Doe’s name and address, and the location changes completely to John Doe’s apartment building, where it stays for the next seventeen minutes or so. A LOCATION CHANGE is one of the clearest indicators of a new sequence.

But again, this is about what feels right to you, structurally. So what did you decide? Is there anything you’re wrestling with? I’d love to hear!

More to come!

—Alex

All material © Alexandra Sokoloff, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors

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