David Fincher as Auteur
Film Style in Fight Club
David Fincher
David Fincher has proven himself to be a master filmmaker over the years with a
filmography including Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac, The Social Network and The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo.
His films are unique and iconic and have been praised by many.
David Fincher Trade Mark
• Single frame insert: His movies often features several single frames that flash on the
screen in the middle of a scene
• Fluid tracking camera which can access anywhere; a digital age innovation in camera
movement pioneered by David Fincher and Kevin Tod Haug along with BUF Paris
• Silhouettes: Frequently has characters in the shadows where you cannot make out their
face (Kevin Spacey in Se7en (1995) and Brad Pitt in Fight Club (1999)).
• His films often end in a suicide, either attempted or successful
• His films often have low-key lighting with green or blue tinted colour temperature.
• Wide shots
• Frequently casts Brad Pitt (Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999), The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button (2008)).
• Downbeat endings
• Often displays end credits as slide shows (Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button) or scrolling downward (Se7en) rather than the traditional upward
scroll.
• Low angles
• Backstories filled with flashbacks
• Stationary shot, unfocused background with character walking into focus
• Posters almost always feature close-ups of characters' faces
• Frequently collaborates with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for musical scores (Social
Network & The girl with the dragon Tattoo)
David Fincher, is a master of form; there's usually a reason behind every shot and cut in his
movies—a big-picture sensibility that explains every choice. That includes credit sequences,
an aspect of Fincher's filmmaking that's examined in this five-part series of video
essays. From the brazenly spectacular sequences that open Se7en and Fight Club to the
more sedate, elegant openings of Alien³, Panic Room, and Zodiac, Fincher cements his
reputation as a big-budget utility infielder, trying his hand at many different genres, but
always letting the story dictate how he tells it
The following videos are from film critics Matt Zoller Seitz and Aaron Aradillas takes a critical
approach to the opening credits/title sequences to the films of American auteur David
Fincher
Panic Room, Alien 3, Se7en, Fight Club & Zodiac
http://filmataquinas.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/david-fincher-as-auteur-fight-club.html
• What do they opening sequences tell us about Fincher's approach to film making?
• Why do you think he invests so much time and creative energy into the opening
sequences of his films?
• How well do they capture the essence of his films and establish key themes?
To understand the ideological complexities of Fight Club we need to seriously consider
Fincher's status as an auteur and if the film does represent a repeated concern with
specific themes and characters
Studio executives Mechanic and Ziskin planned an initial budget of $23 million to finance the
film, but by the start of production, the budget was increased to $50 million. Half was paid
by New Regency, but during filming, the projected budget escalated to $67 million. New
Regency's head and Fight Club executive producer Arnon Milchan petitioned Fincher to
reduce costs by at least $5 million. The director refused, so Milchan threatened Mechanic
that New Regency would withdraw financing. Mechanic sought to restore Milchan's support
by sending him tapes of dailies from Fight Club. After seeing three weeks of filming, Milchan
reinstated New Regency's financial backing. The final production budget was $63 million.
The filming lasted 138 days, during which Fincher shot
more than 1,500 rolls of film, three times the average
for a Hollywood film. The locations were in and around
Los Angeles and on sets built at the studio in Century
City. Production designer Alex McDowell constructed
more than 70 sets. The exterior of Tyler Durden's
house was built in San Pedro, California, while the
interior was built on a sound stage at the studio's
location. The interior was given a decayed look to
illustrate the deconstructed world of the characters.
Marla Singer's apartment was based on photographs of
the Rosalind Apartments in downtown LA. Overall
production included 300 scenes, 200 locations, and
complex special effects.
Fincher hired Jeff Cronenweth as cinematographer and they applied a lurid style, choosing to
make people "sort of shiny". The appearance of the narrator's scenes without Tyler Durden
were bland and realistic. The scenes with Tyler were described by Fincher as "more hyperreal in a torn-down, deconstructed sense—a visual metaphor of what [the narrator is]
heading into". The filmmakers used heavily desaturated colours in the costuming, makeup,
and art direction. Helena Bonham Carter wore opalescent makeup to portray her romantic
nihilistic character with a "smack-fiend patina". Fincher and Cronenweth drew influences
from the 1973 film American Graffiti, which applied a mundane look to night-time exteriors
while simultaneously including a variety of colours.
Fight Club was filmed mostly at night and Fincher purposely filmed the daytime shots in
shadowed locations. The crew equipped the bar's basement with inexpensive work lamps to
create a background glow. Fincher avoided stylish camerawork when filming early fight
scenes in the basement and instead placed the camera in a fixed position. In later fight
scenes, Fincher moved the camera from the viewpoint of a distant observer to that of the
fighter.
The scenes with Tyler Durden were staged to conceal that the character was a mental
projection of the nameless narrator. The character was not filmed in two shots with a group
of people, nor was he shown in any over the shoulder shots in scenes where Tyler gives the
narrator specific ideas to manipulate him. In scenes before the narrator meets Tyler, the
filmmakers inserted Tyler's presence in single frames for subliminal effect. Tyler appears in
the background and out of focus, like a
"little devil on the shoulder".
Fincher explained the subliminal frames:
"Our hero is creating Tyler Durden in his own mind, so at this point he exists only on the
periphery of the narrator's consciousness."
The film's title sequence is a 90-second visual effects composition that depicts the
inside of the narrator's brain at a microscopic level; the camera pulls back to the
outside, starting at his fear centre and following the thought processes initiated by
his fear impulse. The sequence, designed in part by Fincher, was budgeted separately
from the rest of the film at first, but the sequence was awarded by the studio in
January 1999. The company mapped the computer-generated brain using an Lsystem, and the design was detailed using renderings by medical illustrator
Katherine Jones. The pullback sequence from within the brain to the outside of the
skull included neurons, action potentials, and a hair follicle. Haug explained the
artistic license that Fincher took with the shot,
"While he wanted to keep the brain passage looking like electron microscope
photography, that look had to be coupled with the feel of a night dive—wet, scary,
and with a low depth of field."
The shallow depth of field was accomplished with the ray tracing process.
His visual style is unique, always dark and gothic. Always flashy - and Fight Club is his
masterpiece in that account. Its story might be not as straightforward as the one of Seven
but the style just carries you away - from the masterful opening sequence to the end.
Fincher uses a couple of really cool ideas:
• Voice over: Done a lot, but seldom this well. Ed Norton comments the scenes, explains and makes fun of characters etc.
• Back jumps: Within the movie, the film sometimes just stops for Pitt / Norton to explain
something. E.g.; "let me tell you something about Tyler Durden".
• Freaky inserts: we see Brad Pitt for just one frame about 4 times in the movie. Blink and
miss.
• Special Effects: Some neat effects like a penguin, collapsing buildings, the interior of a
brain, a plane crash - and Ed Norton inside an Ikea-catalogue.
Homework
Research Art Linson – Fight Club
PRODUCER
Look at his filmography
www.imdb.com
If you can, watch the film ‘What
just Happened’ or read the book
of the same name.
Written by Art Linson himself, he
details his life during the making
of fight club and his life after
Bibliography
• Museum of moving image: Grand Openings
http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/grand-openings-pt-2-20100927
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club