Se7en - Criterion Collection Laserdisc Preservation

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, presents

A startling twist on the gritty thrillers of the seventies, SE7EN pits two cops against a serial killer obsessed with the deadly sins and establishes director David Fincher as a master of visual tension in the tradition of Scorsese and Friedkin. On Criterion’s special edition, Fincher teams up with key members of the cast and crew to reveal the depth and complexity in each frame of their dark creation.

Audio: English PCM 2.0 Surround / English DTS 5.1 Surround /

Dolby Digital Audio Commentary Subtitles: English / French / German / Spanish Main title: 1080p Supplementary material: 480p Laserdisc source

1995 127 MINUTES COLOR SURROUND 2.35:1 ASPECT RATIO SE7EN is under exclusive license from Warner Home Video TM ® © 2020 by Warner Home Video.

All Rights Reserved. © 2020 The Criterion Collection.

All Rights Reserved. Cat. no.

CC1450L. ISBN 1-5594-0720-4.

Warning: unauthorized public performance, broadcasting, or copying is a violation of applicable laws. Printed in the USA. First printing 2020.

1995

SPECIAL FEATURES • A new widescreen (2.35:1) digital transfer supervised by director David Fincher • New surround sound mix supervised by sound designer Ren Klyce, optimised for home theater listening • Screen-specific audio commentary by David Fincher, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, production designer Arthur Max, and special makeup effects designer Rob Bottin • Deleted scenes, outtakes, and dailies • Crime scene photographs, production design sketches, and storyboards • A study of the opening credit sequence, including storyboards and an early version with commentary by designer Kyle Cooper • A visual essay on the special effects by Rob Bottin • The Killer’s photographs, with notes by photographer Melodie McDaniel • The Killer’s diaries • Hundreds of behind the scenes photos, production and publicity stills, and proposed promotional artwork • The theatrical trailer, eight television spots, and behind-the-scenes footage.

BLU-RAY EDITION

The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality, with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of film. Visit us at Criterion.com

Design and Layout - pineapples101@gmail.com

LD 298

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, presents

A startling twist on the gritty thrillers of the seventies, SE7EN pits two cops against a serial killer obsessed with the deadly sins and establishes director David Fincher as a master of visual tension in the tradition of Scorsese and Friedkin. On Criterion’s special edition, Fincher teams up with key members of the cast and crew to reveal the depth and complexity in each frame of their dark creation.

Audio: English PCM 2.0 Surround / English DTS 5.1 Surround /

Dolby Digital Audio Commentary Subtitles: English / French / German / Spanish Main title: 1080p Supplementary material: 480p Laserdisc source

1995 127 MINUTES COLOR SURROUND 2.35:1 ASPECT RATIO SE7EN is under exclusive license from Warner Home Video TM ® © 2020 by Warner Home Video.

All Rights Reserved. © 2020 The Criterion Collection.

All Rights Reserved. Cat. no.

CC1450L. ISBN 1-5594-0720-4.

Warning: unauthorized public performance, broadcasting, or copying is a violation of applicable laws. Printed in the USA. First printing 2020.

1995

SPECIAL FEATURES • A new widescreen (2.35:1) digital transfer supervised by director David Fincher • New surround sound mix supervised by sound designer Ren Klyce, optimised for home theater listening • Screen-specific audio commentary by David Fincher, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, production designer Arthur Max, and special makeup effects designer Rob Bottin • Deleted scenes, outtakes, and dailies • Crime scene photographs, production design sketches, and storyboards • A study of the opening credit sequence, including storyboards and an early version with commentary by designer Kyle Cooper • A visual essay on the special effects by Rob Bottin • The Killer’s photographs, with notes by photographer Melodie McDaniel • The Killer’s diaries • Hundreds of behind the scenes photos, production and publicity stills, and proposed promotional artwork • The theatrical trailer, eight television spots, and behind-the-scenes footage.

BLU-RAY EDITION

The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality, with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of film. Visit us at Criterion.com

Design and Layout - pineapples101@gmail.com

LD 298

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, presents

A startling twist on the gritty thrillers of the seventies, SE7EN pits two cops against a serial killer obsessed with the deadly sins and establishes director David Fincher as a master of visual tension in the tradition of Scorsese and Friedkin. On Criterion’s special edition, Fincher teams up with key members of the cast and crew to reveal the depth and complexity in each frame of their dark creation.

DVD EDITION 1995 127 MINUTES COLOR SURROUND 2.35:1 ASPECT RATIO

Audio: English PCM 2.0 Surround / English DTS 5.1 Surround /

Dolby Digital Audio Commentary Subtitles: English / French / German / Spanish Main title: 1080p Supplementary material: 480p Laserdisc source

1995

SPECIAL FEATURES • A new widescreen (2.35:1) digital transfer supervised by director David Fincher • New surround sound mix supervised by sound designer Ren Klyce, optimised for home theater listening • Screen-specific audio commentary by David Fincher, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, production designer Arthur Max, and special makeup effects designer Rob Bottin • Deleted scenes, outtakes, and dailies • Crime scene photographs, production design sketches, and storyboards • A study of the opening credit sequence, including storyboards and an early version with commentary by designer Kyle Cooper • A visual essay on the special effects by Rob Bottin • The Killer’s photographs, with notes by photographer Melodie McDaniel • The Killer’s diaries • Hundreds of behind the scenes photos, production and publicity stills, and proposed promotional artwork • The theatrical trailer, eight television spots, and behind-the-scenes footage.

SE7EN is under exclusive license from Warner Home Video TM ® © 2020 by Warner Home Video.

All Rights Reserved. © 2020 The Criterion Collection.

All Rights Reserved. Cat. no.

CC1450L. ISBN 1-5594-0720-4.

Warning: unauthorized public performance, broadcasting, or copying is a violation of applicable laws. Printed in the USA. First printing 2020.

The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality, with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of film. Visit us at Criterion.com

Design and Layout - pineapples101@gmail.com

LD 298

SPECIAL THANKS

David Fincher, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Rob Bottin, Arthur Max, Andrew Kevin Walker, Kyle Cooper, Melodie McDaniel, Misa Klyce FINCHER FILMS Rachel Schadt, Doug Friedman

NEW LINE CINEMA Sarah Olson-Graves, Amanda Veith, Ric Keeley, Beryl Kinney-McCall BRILLSTEIN-GREY ENTERTAINMENT Cynthia Pett-Dante, Brian Glaser WILLIAM MORRIS AGENCY Jeff Hunter, Miguel Herrera

R/GREENBERG ASSOCIATES WEST INC. Suzanne Squire, Jennifer Shainin, Nancy Whitcraft MODERN VIDEOFILM Ron Burritt, Moshe Barkat

LONE PINE PRODUCTIONS Maria Markus, Lisa Darlington

DOLBY LABS Steve Thompson, Steve Vanezia, Caryn Gressler Thanks also to Fenando Favila, Quentin Pierre, Cecil Cole, Peter Dante, Tina Hall, Mark Rance, DanCogan, Paul Klinger, and Peter Girardi The Seven title design used on the box was created

by RGA/LA: notebooks designed by Ph.D.

LASERDISC PRODUCTION CREDITS Producer and videographic designer Executive producer Technical director Production manager Supplement imaging Videographic assistance Associate producer Editorial coordinators Package design Telecine operator Telecine supervisor Additional telecine Soundtrack audio remixing Soundtrack audio supervisor Commentary editors Commentary recorded by

Susan Arosteguy Peter Becker Lee Kline Catherine Gray JJ Gifford, lssa Clubb, and Fernando Music Sean Wright-Anderson Scot Campbell Nancy Bauer and Rebekkah Linton Gordon Reynolds Skip Kimball/Modern Videofilm Maria Palazzola Gregg Garvin/Modern Videofilm, Allan Rogers/HBO Tad Hall/Pacific Ocean Post Ren Klyce Michael Wiese, Paul Supkofl, and Rex Arthur Duane Hubbard/Westlake Audio

- A note to the viewer In its original theatrical release, prints of Seven were created using a silver retention process called CCE, whereby the silver leached out during conventional film processing is rebonded to the print. Silver retention drastically increases luminosity in the light portions of the image and the density of the dark tones. The process is so difficult, timeconsuming, and expensive that directors and studios rarely consider using it. David Fincher worked with the Criterion Collection for weeks to recreate the ideal effect. Only a few hundred of the 2.500 prints of Seven released theatrically were ever produced by silver retention, which means that this laserdisc is a truer representation of the intended look of the film than many audiences saw in theaters.

To get the full effect of this disc in your own home, make sure that your monitor is set up correctly and that the lights in the viewing room are dimmed or out. To check the brightness on your monitor, use the color bars in chapter 67.

Take the brightness all the way down, then raise it just to the point where the three vertical stripes in the lower right corner of the screen become discernible as black, off -black, and gray. If you ever watch television with the lights on, or if your monitor is set to showroom settings, you may need to take the brightness down; it’s worth the trouble.

To see the intended effect of silver retention, compare the dailies (Chapter 64) - which were transferred from the camera negative - to the scenes in the finished film. For more on the CCE process and Fincher’s ideas about exposing color negative, listen to the commentary on chapters 4. 5. and 33.

“[He] loves to set his figures in action against greenish or purplish backgrounds, in which we can glimpse the phosphorescence of decay and sniff the coming storm.”

Charles Baudelaire, writing on Edgar Allan Poe. What’s striking about Seven is that the detectives never get the better of the killer. They’re two steps behind him from beginning to end, and so are we.

It’s a police procedural/horror hybrid in which the fascination with death outweighs the logic of detection. There’s almost no violence enacted on the screen.

There are no scenes of the killer stalking his victims. The film refuses that kind of cheap thrill. All we see is the evidence of violence.

In the world of Seven, man is corrupt and cities are cesspools of contagion, spreading sin faster than TB. Forget the inequities of class or race, we’re all sinners and urban blight is the Lord’s decor for the gates of hell. If Seven eschews the mythic underpinnings of Fincher’s first feature, Alien 3, its ambiance is even more overwhelming.

Every frame seems saturated with despair. Fincher’s concrete sense of place is the cornerstone of his directing talent. Working with production designer Arthur Max (who developed his apocalyptic style as a stage lighting designer for Pink Floyd and Genesis) and cinematographer Darius Khondji (also of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children), Fincher brings forth an acrid vision of post-industrial decay—all dank greens and browns, the light filtered through pelting rain and yellow smog.

The walls are peeling, the dust is thick, the clutter is out of control. If not for a couple of already obsolete computer terminals in the police station, you might

think you were in a 1930s depression picture or a 1940s noir. In any event, it looks as if things have been spiraling downhill since just about the time motion pictures were invented.

Seven literalizes the struggle of bringing things to light. As in his video for Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun,” Fincher loves the look of flashlights penetrating obscure and terrifying places. The extremely shallow focus is a way of controlling the viewer’s eye, making you look at what you don’t want to see and suggesting that there’s something worse that you can’t get a grip on lurking on the periphery.

Seven is, beginning to end, as lush and lyrical a film as ever came out of Hollywood. Watching Mills and Somerset chase the killer, leaping and staggering through shafts of light diffused through centuries of dust, one things of Tourneur and Feuillade (the almost monochromatic color cinematography has the density of black and white). But Fincher not only molds space with light, he shapes time with it too. Every time a shot changes, the light streaming softly from a window or a lamp hits the eye like a muffled drum beat.

Fincher’s approach is to maintain clinical detachment while heightening the visceral quality of his imagery. The dead in Seven have met with very bad ends. If we are fascinated by their remains, it’s because Fincher is so good at suggesting that there is nothing to prevent us from winding up just like them.

By Amy Taubin - MAR 19, 1996 These notes were adapted from Amy Taubin’s essay “The Allure of Decay” originally printed in Sight and Sound, January 1996.

SPECIAL THANKS

David Fincher, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Rob Bottin, Arthur Max, Andrew Kevin Walker, Kyle Cooper, Melodie McDaniel, Misa Klyce FINCHER FILMS Rachel Schadt, Doug Friedman

NEW LINE CINEMA Sarah Olson-Graves, Amanda Veith, Ric Keeley, Beryl Kinney-McCall BRILLSTEIN-GREY ENTERTAINMENT Cynthia Pett-Dante, Brian Glaser WILLIAM MORRIS AGENCY Jeff Hunter, Miguel Herrera

R/GREENBERG ASSOCIATES WEST INC. Suzanne Squire, Jennifer Shainin, Nancy Whitcraft MODERN VIDEOFILM Ron Burritt, Moshe Barkat

LONE PINE PRODUCTIONS Maria Markus, Lisa Darlington

DOLBY LABS Steve Thompson, Steve Vanezia, Caryn Gressler Thanks also to Fenando Favila, Quentin Pierre, Cecil Cole, Peter Dante, Tina Hall, Mark Rance, DanCogan, Paul Klinger, and Peter Girardi The Seven title design used on the box was created

by RGA/LA: notebooks designed by Ph.D.

LASERDISC PRODUCTION CREDITS Producer and videographic designer Executive producer Technical director Production manager Supplement imaging Videographic assistance Associate producer Editorial coordinators Package design Telecine operator Telecine supervisor Additional telecine Soundtrack audio remixing Soundtrack audio supervisor Commentary editors Commentary recorded by

Susan Arosteguy Peter Becker Lee Kline Catherine Gray JJ Gifford, lssa Clubb, and Fernando Music Sean Wright-Anderson Scot Campbell Nancy Bauer and Rebekkah Linton Gordon Reynolds Skip Kimball/Modern Videofilm Maria Palazzola Gregg Garvin/Modern Videofilm, Allan Rogers/HBO Tad Hall/Pacific Ocean Post Ren Klyce Michael Wiese, Paul Supkofl, and Rex Arthur Duane Hubbard/Westlake Audio

“[He] loves to set his figures in action against greenish or purplish backgrounds, in which we can glimpse the phosphorescence of decay and sniff the coming storm.”

Charles Baudelaire, writing on Edgar Allan Poe.

- A note to the viewer In its original theatrical release, prints of Seven were created using a silver retention process called CCE, whereby the silver leached out during conventional film processing is rebonded to the print. Silver retention drastically increases luminosity in the light portions of the image and the density of the dark tones. The process is so difficult, timeconsuming, and expensive that directors and studios rarely consider using it. David Fincher worked with the Criterion Collection for weeks to recreate the ideal effect. Only a few hundred of the 2.500 prints of Seven released theatrically were ever produced by silver retention, which means that this laserdisc is a truer representation of the intended look of the film than many audiences saw in theaters.

To get the full effect of this disc in your own home, make sure that your monitor is set up correctly and that the lights in the viewing room are dimmed or out. To check the brightness on your monitor, use the color bars in chapter 67.

Take the brightness all the way down, then raise it just to the point where the three vertical stripes in the lower right corner of the screen become discernible as black, off -black, and gray. If you ever watch television with the lights on, or if your monitor is set to showroom settings, you may need to take the brightness down; it’s worth the trouble.

To see the intended effect of silver retention, compare the dailies (Chapter 64) - which were transferred from the camera negative - to the scenes in the finished film. For more on the CCE process and Fincher’s ideas about exposing color negative, listen to the commentary on chapters 4. 5. and 33.

What’s striking about Seven is that the detectives never get the better of the killer. They’re two steps behind him from beginning to end, and so are we.

It’s a police procedural/horror hybrid in which the fascination with death outweighs the logic of detection. There’s almost no violence enacted on the screen.

There are no scenes of the killer stalking his victims. The film refuses that kind of cheap thrill. All we see is the evidence of violence.

In the world of Seven, man is corrupt and cities are cesspools of contagion, spreading sin faster than TB. Forget the inequities of class or race, we’re all sinners and urban blight is the Lord’s decor for the gates of hell. If Seven eschews the mythic underpinnings of Fincher’s first feature, Alien 3, its ambiance is even more overwhelming.

Every frame seems saturated with despair. Fincher’s concrete sense of place is the cornerstone of his directing talent. Working with production designer Arthur Max (who developed his apocalyptic style as a stage lighting designer for Pink Floyd and Genesis) and cinematographer Darius Khondji (also of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children), Fincher brings forth an acrid vision of post-industrial decay—all dank greens and browns, the light filtered through pelting rain and yellow smog.

The walls are peeling, the dust is thick, the clutter is out of control. If not for a couple of already obsolete computer terminals in the police station, you might

think you were in a 1930s depression picture or a 1940s noir. In any event, it looks as if things have been spiraling downhill since just about the time motion pictures were invented.

Seven literalizes the struggle of bringing things to light. As in his video for Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun,” Fincher loves the look of flashlights penetrating obscure and terrifying places. The extremely shallow focus is a way of controlling the viewer’s eye, making you look at what you don’t want to see and suggesting that there’s something worse that you can’t get a grip on lurking on the periphery.

Seven is, beginning to end, as lush and lyrical a film as ever came out of Hollywood. Watching Mills and Somerset chase the killer, leaping and staggering through shafts of light diffused through centuries of dust, one things of Tourneur and Feuillade (the almost monochromatic color cinematography has the density of black and white). But Fincher not only molds space with light, he shapes time with it too. Every time a shot changes, the light streaming softly from a window or a lamp hits the eye like a muffled drum beat.

Fincher’s approach is to maintain clinical detachment while heightening the visceral quality of his imagery. The dead in Seven have met with very bad ends. If we are fascinated by their remains, it’s because Fincher is so good at suggesting that there is nothing to prevent us from winding up just like them.

By Amy Taubin - MAR 19, 1996 These notes were adapted from Amy Taubin’s essay “The Allure of Decay” originally printed in Sight and Sound, January 1996.

Video. All Rights R es e r Home a rn e r y W violation of applicable laws. P ved. © b a rint 0 s 2 i ed 2020 0 g n © 2 i in t py ® he The TM co r US Cr o o A. ite de ing, i Fi rio V t rs e cas tp n m d a l Al n. tio 20. c lle 20 Co ing t ir n R ht s Rig

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Criterion Collection - Laserdisc Preservation Seven (Se7en): Special Edition #298 (1995) [CC1450L] https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/06954/CC1450L/Seven-(Se7en):-Special-Edition Blu Ray - Region A/B/C DVD - Region All Audio: English PCM 2.0 Surround / English DTS 5.1 Surround /

Dolby Digital Audio Commentary Subtitles: English / French / German / Spanish Main title: 1080p Supplementary material: 480p Laserdisc source

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