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David Fincher’s Impossible Eye
- hardwaregeek 6y agoFincher seems to me like a remarkably brilliant director. But I worry that this emphasis on his attention to detail contributes to a view that directing is akin to micromanagement, and that the best directors are the best micromanagers. Yes, Kubrick and Fincher and many others are perfectionists. But they are only one school. The author even acknowledges this briefly. > Fincher has leaned toward a “very classical” visual rule book whose fundamentals predate French New Wave and vérité. Filmmakers such as Agnes Varda or Truffaut wouldn't care about a camera bumping or a light being off. Varda made The Gleaners and I on a digital camera in the early 2000's and I'd put it up against any Fincher. I don't mean to dismiss Fincher. But there's definitely this image of a director being this picky person yelling "cut cut" over the smallest issue.
- elchief 6y agoI mean, he is infamous for "breaking" Gyllenhaal on Zodiac, after 80 takes
- geden 6y agoWhich is probably his worst film. Expending more effort on a more rewarding ending would have been time better spent.
- elchief 6y agoThe point of the film is that all the work was for naught
- I-M-S 6y agoI think the lack of a rewarding ending is what that film is all about!
- geden 6y agoHmm perhaps ‘rewarding’ wasn’t the right word. Satisfying is closer. I wasn’t looking for a ‘the baddie got caught and everyone lived happily ever after’ per se. I thought the pacing / editing was unsatisfying towards the end, I inferred studio meddling.
- Ntrails 6y agoDefinitely disagree
- skinpop 6y agonot having the movie explain itself in the end was the real reward.
- mjklin 6y agoScorsese’s editor Thelma Schoonmaker has been known to use takes that don’t match up (e.g. cup in hand, cut, cup not in hand) as long as the emotional truth carries through.
- hardwaregeek 6y agoThe more movies I watch the more I agree with this philosophy. Either the movie works or it doesn’t. If continuity helps the movie work, then great. Otherwise who cares? If you went up to Herzog about a continuity error, he’d probably tell you to get a life.
- _old_dude_ 6y agoI don't think it's that simple. As an anecdote i've recently seen Extraction with Chris Hemsworth, great movie but in the middle of the first big action scene, the camera goes through the windscreen of the back of the car without the glass being shattered. It was enough to pull me out of the action into a moment of disbelief. Breaking continuity has a cost
- jquery 6y agoSounds like the emotional truth of the action didn’t carry through.
- mrec 6y agoHow is that a continuity break? It's not like the camera is a real, solid entity in the movie's fictional world.
- aspaceman 6y agoYeah that doesn’t make sense for me. The camera isn’t real but just a virtual pinhole with a screen on the other end. A “window to another world”.
- bombela 6y agoIt felt like noclip=1 for a second. I genuinely liked it. You are within the action, but it reminds you that you are an omniscient and untouchable spectator.
- nostromo 6y ago> The camera moved at the same speed as Affleck, gliding with unvarying smoothness, which is exactly how Fincher likes his shots to behave. I appreciate this so much. There’s a lot of shaky cam out there and it often gives me motion sickness or confuses my understanding of the scene. It also feels like a cheap trick directors use to create faux excitement, or to cover up sloppy filmmaking. Fincher movies are easy to watch and understand visually. He does a lot of wide shots and long shots without sloppy cuts. In Panic Room he did a single shot (although CGI) that lasted several minutes and showed the viewer around the entire set in a single uninterrupted view. It was glorious. I wish this approach was more common. Although I expect it’s not because it’s hard to accomplish. Here are two of the worst abuses of fast cut, shaky cam scenes out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCKhktcbfQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCKhktcbfQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNlmRId2FVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNlmRId2FVQ
- raiyu 6y agoCouldn’t agree more. I’ve turned off a few movies because of shaky cam. Every now and then for a bit of drama or action is ok but not the entire damn film.
- dmitriid 6y agoShaky cams are abused in "western" cinema to hide the fact that the studios never have the time to give their actor skills to act out an action scene. In contrast, "asian" cinema either stars actors who can do a large chunks of their own action scenes, or spend time training them. On top of that, "western" cinema doesn't even know about how our eyes and brains perceive the world. Every Frame a Painting has a very good video essay on how Jackie Chan films action scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PCtIaM_GQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PCtIaM_GQ Note how punches are filmed.
- dbspin 6y agoActors don't avoid action scenes because of lack of time. But because... 1) Doing your own stunts steals work from the stunt team, who are payed per stunt. It's greedy and narcissistic because... 2) An injured star can shut down (temporarily or even permanently) a whole production. 3) The vast majority of films made in the 'West' are not action films, and the vast majority of action films are not martial arts films. 4) There is no single 'western' cinema. Hollywood has numerous directors, some workmen, some auteurs, and European cinema has enormous diversity. 5) There are indeed terrible directors and DOPs who use confusion to paste over the gaps in their own capacity to convey action. They're not anything like a majority, and are outnumbered by more classical directors like Spielberg, Fincher and Nolan, who have an excellent grap of visual space, pacing and blocking. 6) Every frame a painting is fantastic. Perhaps you should watch more than one episode?
- keiferski 6y agoThis video by Every Frame a Painting is a really good introduction to Fincher's style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPAloq5MCUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPAloq5MCUA
- BLKNSLVR 6y agoSomewhat tangentially, I love the movie Alien 3. The longer cut is obviously a more coherent movie, but I find even the theatrical release enjoyable enough. It's harsh, dirty, somewhat chaotic, and unapologetically brutal in a way that matches, poetically, the setting. I think it also helps that, despite it being released a few years beforehand, I get a strong Quake (2) vibe from the colour palette and setting of Alien 3, and that serves to further endear it to me.
- effie 6y agoAlien 3 is a masterpiece. The acting, visuals and the music are like nothing else. I understand people got pissed when they ditched the surviving characters from Aliens. But in Alien 3 it all makes sense and the film stands on its own.
- I-M-S 6y agoAgreed, I never understood the hate that film gets.
- AndrewFastly 6y agoWell even Fincher hated it >I had to work on it for two years, got fired off it three times and I had to fight for every single thing. No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/feb/03/david-fincher-interview-transcript https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/feb/03/david-fincher-i...
- taeric 6y agoIt basically took a needless stab at everything awesome that survived from the second movie. I even agree with everything said above. It is nicely dark and gritty. Matches the setting really really well, all told. It gained nothing from being a continuation of the previous one, though. And killed a lot of emotional enjoyment you could have by rewatching the previous one.
- fractionalhare 6y ago> “I get, He’s a perfectionist,” Fincher volunteered. “No. There’s just a difference between mediocre and acceptable.” Ah, spoken like a true perfectionist :)