6 ms·

David Fincher, the Unhappiest Auteur

65 points by prismatic 6y ago

cm2187 6y ago
How do you measure performance when movies are released straight to streaming? Are there “streaming box offices” already?
- objclxt 6y ago
  Internally obviously Netflix et al have all the metrics they need, and goal on things like minutes watched and completed watchings. Externally, there are companies like Nielsen that attempt to derive ratings for steaming media (via surveys, paying people to install plugins, using audio fingerprinting etc), but it’s not clear how accurate they actually are.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  I don't think you do. You read the marketing about how well a film has done and decide whether you believe it. The only people who actually know are the distributors, and they have paid teams who spend all day trying to get stories published about how well the films are doing.
tehwebguy 6y ago
Now that AT&T owns Warner and HBO I expect to see tons of crossover ads: promoting the each new movie and the fact that it will be on HBO Max. HBO will get new signups, the movie will get a marketing bill that keeps it in the red forever, and directors + actors with backend deals will get nothing.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  The most beautiful part of vertical integration; being able to buy services from yourself at whatever arbitrary price you set lets you make the units with contingent liabilities worth the least.
sho 6y ago
The industry needs to change. Charging all movies the same is ridiculous and just totally counter to all reality about their audience. We have fast food and gourmet, why wouldn't we have that with cinema too? I suppose I could be reluctantly convinced to part with $5 or $10 for the latest predictable comic book CGI-fest. I'll pay much more for Fincher, or anyone else I actually respect. Trying to charge the same for mass-market lowest-common-denominator marvel or transformers nonsense as something aimed for the sniff art crowd sniff just sounds unsustainable. There needs to be a free-floating price, just like any other product with different markets.
- goto11 6y ago
  People like different things.
- bshimmin 6y ago
  This is an interesting but problematic idea. Firstly, I'm not certain of how the economics would play out: the "marvel or transformers nonsense" (and boy is it nonsense) tends to cost a lot of money to make, because they feature famous actors and they're end-to-end expensive CGI; arthouse films tend to be a lot cheaper because they feature less CGI, and sometimes the actors involved will work for less money because the films are more "worthy", or they like the director. More people watch the superhero drivel than the arthouse films, for sure, so perhaps it would all balance out, but it's unclear. Secondly, while I broadly love Terrence Malick, if I'd paid £20 for "Knight of Cups" (which was dire), I would have to think very, very hard about parting with another £20 for his next film unless the notices were very good. I think you'd end up with a minuscule audience if you started marking up arthouse films in this way. Unrelatedly, I have to admit that "Mank" sounds really boring and I'm not eager to watch it, even though I have a Netflix subscription and I've enjoyed many of Fincher's previous films (hell, I even liked "Alien 3").
  - goto11 6y ago
    If you are a fan of Citizen Kane and the whole mythos around this movie, you might enjoy Mank. If not, you will probably find it quite boring and pointless. Fincher is certainly no art house director. He makes big-budget movies with stars like Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck. He is kind of like Steven Spielberg - a director so talented in the craft he elevates rater middlebrow material to be uniquely enjoyable. Fincher just gets a bit more respect because he is "dark". But dark does not mean deep. For example Seven is really quite silly and contrived, but his excellence at directing makes us forget that.
Keyframe 6y ago
I was in film&tv for a long time. You know, Fincher himself put it really well. I'll paraphrase and add a bit to it along with something Zemeckis said. Any audiovisual work of sufficient scale, let alone film, is a collaborative process. You can't do it alone, you can't finance it alone, yet your name ends up tied to it. Whether you write it yourself or not, as a director it's your interpretation, and every single shooting day (and pre and post) starts with your vision and over the course of that day there are compromises after compromises. You not only have to do your craft, but also give guidance (even when you don't have it) and power through compromises. How well your vision will be delivered is directly proportional to how many compromises you're ready to take. Every single person on that shoot day has their input and 'what they think', from an actor to a grip that pushes dolly and everyone has something to say.. yet, at the end of the day they're already on the next production and you're stuck with footage that will bear your name. It's one of the most challenging things I've been involved with. Put those words into context around Alien 3. Young guy, big production and budget - of course he'll listen to everyone since, well.. insecurity! One thing Tarantino said about Fincher though is there's a difference between directors like him and Fincher. I agree but it's not negative how he portrayed it. It's one thing to write your own film and then direct it and the other for someone else to write it and you interpret it. Take what you will from it, I don't take it as negative but different.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chokeartist 6y ago
  > Put those words into context around Alien 3. Young guy, big production and budget - of course he'll listen to everyone since, well.. insecurity! Alien 3 was my first thought when I saw David Fincher in this headline. As flawed as that movie was, I still really enjoyed it. I can tell he legitimately tried to make it a legitimate "art" piece in his mind. Your commentary about him being young+big money... is absolutely correct. Alien 3 could have had 3x the box market pop if there was a more collaborative process in my view. Oh well, you live and you learn. Personal bias: I have enjoyed pretty much every one of David Fincher's movies.
- morley 6y ago
rainworld 6y ago
Speaking of Fincher and streaming, I found Mank, as released by Netflix, completely unwatchable because of overwhelming compression artifacts induced by artficial grain. I hope there will be a Blu-ray release at some point.
- billjings 6y ago
  Surprising. What platform? How much bandwidth? Now I need to watch Mann....was the artificial grain just pure noise of some kind?
  - rainworld 6y ago
    Netflix Ultra HD at the highest bitrate. The 1080p version on the standard plan appears to be heavily DNR’d. It’s not really surprising, though. Think of the HBO ident; noise just does not compress well. I’ve encountered (supposedly well-encoded) 40+GB BRs of old b/w movies with obvious, distracting artifacts. But then, most people can’t tell the difference. As for the source of the problem, I’m sure it looked a lot like real film grain on the reference monitor, but on my screen it looks a bit embarrassing.
    - billjings 6y ago
      I can't imagine a director like Fincher ever taking it into consideration, but compressibility is a real issue that modern filmmakers should aspire to keep in mind. I ran into this dealing with marketing folks at [bigtechco] where bitrate restrictions were more severe: certain visuals got them very excited, but we had to tell them they just weren't achievable. I don't know much about the video production process, but in the audio world it's standard practice to preview media on a range of devices. Creators would need something similar for video bitrate to avoid the situation Fincher is in here.
Grakel 6y ago
This article feels written for a high school audience in both reading level and content knowledge, it's a bit strange.
l33tbro 6y ago
A director in many ways is just a curator - assembling the right artists who they feel will be capable of recognising and contributing to a stated sensibility. Establishing and empowering those artists, while, simultaneously, ensuring the thematic and aesthetic coherency of the finished work is the craft. Fincher's technical acumen and understanding of screen performance is exceptional. While his work can be hit or miss (just my opinion), he is almost inarguably one of the finest directors to practice in this medium of all time.
- pas 6y ago
  So ... how do producers factor into this? Isn't the production team that brings in the artists? Or they try to bring in the artists that the director wishes? Or the director has a soft veto during casting?
  - megameter 6y ago
    Producers are the more influential overall, in terms of the business metrics(budget, schedule, box office). They get to make a lot of key decisions, if only through vetos. What a director does is more akin to structuring the day-to-day focus. A director who has taken to relaxing intent on some broad aspects of the production is going to have a smoother production, be more agreeable, be easy to hire again. But a director who is more stringent may deliver a product that coheres better. It's a kind of balancing act on the part of the producer to not end up with a staff full of prima donnas fighting for control and wasting money through indecision and résumé-driven development.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/mutpV https://archive.is/mutpV

65 points by prismatic 6y ago

How do you measure performance when movies are released straight to streaming? Are there “streaming box offices” already?

objclxt 6y ago
Internally obviously Netflix et al have all the metrics they need, and goal on things like minutes watched and completed watchings. Externally, there are companies like Nielsen that attempt to derive ratings for steaming media (via surveys, paying people to install plugins, using audio fingerprinting etc), but it’s not clear how accurate they actually are.
pessimizer 6y ago
I don't think you do. You read the marketing about how well a film has done and decide whether you believe it. The only people who actually know are the distributors, and they have paid teams who spend all day trying to get stories published about how well the films are doing.

tehwebguy 6y ago

Now that AT&T owns Warner and HBO I expect to see tons of crossover ads: promoting the each new movie and the fact that it will be on HBO Max. HBO will get new signups, the movie will get a marketing bill that keeps it in the red forever, and directors + actors with backend deals will get nothing.

pessimizer 6y ago
The most beautiful part of vertical integration; being able to buy services from yourself at whatever arbitrary price you set lets you make the units with contingent liabilities worth the least.

sho 6y ago

The industry needs to change. Charging all movies the same is ridiculous and just totally counter to all reality about their audience. We have fast food and gourmet, why wouldn't we have that with cinema too? I suppose I could be reluctantly convinced to part with $5 or $10 for the latest predictable comic book CGI-fest. I'll pay much more for Fincher, or anyone else I actually respect. Trying to charge the same for mass-market lowest-common-denominator marvel or transformers nonsense as something aimed for the sniff art crowd sniff just sounds unsustainable. There needs to be a free-floating price, just like any other product with different markets.

goto11 6y ago
People like different things.
bshimmin 6y ago
This is an interesting but problematic idea. Firstly, I'm not certain of how the economics would play out: the "marvel or transformers nonsense" (and boy is it nonsense) tends to cost a lot of money to make, because they feature famous actors and they're end-to-end expensive CGI; arthouse films tend to be a lot cheaper because they feature less CGI, and sometimes the actors involved will work for less money because the films are more "worthy", or they like the director. More people watch the superhero drivel than the arthouse films, for sure, so perhaps it would all balance out, but it's unclear. Secondly, while I broadly love Terrence Malick, if I'd paid £20 for "Knight of Cups" (which was dire), I would have to think very, very hard about parting with another £20 for his next film unless the notices were very good. I think you'd end up with a minuscule audience if you started marking up arthouse films in this way. Unrelatedly, I have to admit that "Mank" sounds really boring and I'm not eager to watch it, even though I have a Netflix subscription and I've enjoyed many of Fincher's previous films (hell, I even liked "Alien 3").
- goto11 6y ago
  If you are a fan of Citizen Kane and the whole mythos around this movie, you might enjoy Mank. If not, you will probably find it quite boring and pointless. Fincher is certainly no art house director. He makes big-budget movies with stars like Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck. He is kind of like Steven Spielberg - a director so talented in the craft he elevates rater middlebrow material to be uniquely enjoyable. Fincher just gets a bit more respect because he is "dark". But dark does not mean deep. For example Seven is really quite silly and contrived, but his excellence at directing makes us forget that.

Keyframe 6y ago

I was in film&tv for a long time. You know, Fincher himself put it really well. I'll paraphrase and add a bit to it along with something Zemeckis said. Any audiovisual work of sufficient scale, let alone film, is a collaborative process. You can't do it alone, you can't finance it alone, yet your name ends up tied to it. Whether you write it yourself or not, as a director it's your interpretation, and every single shooting day (and pre and post) starts with your vision and over the course of that day there are compromises after compromises. You not only have to do your craft, but also give guidance (even when you don't have it) and power through compromises. How well your vision will be delivered is directly proportional to how many compromises you're ready to take. Every single person on that shoot day has their input and 'what they think', from an actor to a grip that pushes dolly and everyone has something to say.. yet, at the end of the day they're already on the next production and you're stuck with footage that will bear your name. It's one of the most challenging things I've been involved with. Put those words into context around Alien 3. Young guy, big production and budget - of course he'll listen to everyone since, well.. insecurity! One thing Tarantino said about Fincher though is there's a difference between directors like him and Fincher. I agree but it's not negative how he portrayed it. It's one thing to write your own film and then direct it and the other for someone else to write it and you interpret it. Take what you will from it, I don't take it as negative but different.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chokeartist 6y ago
> Put those words into context around Alien 3. Young guy, big production and budget - of course he'll listen to everyone since, well.. insecurity! Alien 3 was my first thought when I saw David Fincher in this headline. As flawed as that movie was, I still really enjoyed it. I can tell he legitimately tried to make it a legitimate "art" piece in his mind. Your commentary about him being young+big money... is absolutely correct. Alien 3 could have had 3x the box market pop if there was a more collaborative process in my view. Oh well, you live and you learn. Personal bias: I have enjoyed pretty much every one of David Fincher's movies.
morley 6y ago

rainworld 6y ago

Speaking of Fincher and streaming, I found Mank, as released by Netflix, completely unwatchable because of overwhelming compression artifacts induced by artficial grain. I hope there will be a Blu-ray release at some point.

billjings 6y ago
Surprising. What platform? How much bandwidth? Now I need to watch Mann....was the artificial grain just pure noise of some kind?
- rainworld 6y ago
  Netflix Ultra HD at the highest bitrate. The 1080p version on the standard plan appears to be heavily DNR’d. It’s not really surprising, though. Think of the HBO ident; noise just does not compress well. I’ve encountered (supposedly well-encoded) 40+GB BRs of old b/w movies with obvious, distracting artifacts. But then, most people can’t tell the difference. As for the source of the problem, I’m sure it looked a lot like real film grain on the reference monitor, but on my screen it looks a bit embarrassing.
  - billjings 6y ago
    I can't imagine a director like Fincher ever taking it into consideration, but compressibility is a real issue that modern filmmakers should aspire to keep in mind. I ran into this dealing with marketing folks at [bigtechco] where bitrate restrictions were more severe: certain visuals got them very excited, but we had to tell them they just weren't achievable. I don't know much about the video production process, but in the audio world it's standard practice to preview media on a range of devices. Creators would need something similar for video bitrate to avoid the situation Fincher is in here.

Grakel 6y ago

This article feels written for a high school audience in both reading level and content knowledge, it's a bit strange.

l33tbro 6y ago

A director in many ways is just a curator - assembling the right artists who they feel will be capable of recognising and contributing to a stated sensibility. Establishing and empowering those artists, while, simultaneously, ensuring the thematic and aesthetic coherency of the finished work is the craft. Fincher's technical acumen and understanding of screen performance is exceptional. While his work can be hit or miss (just my opinion), he is almost inarguably one of the finest directors to practice in this medium of all time.

pas 6y ago
So ... how do producers factor into this? Isn't the production team that brings in the artists? Or they try to bring in the artists that the director wishes? Or the director has a soft veto during casting?
- megameter 6y ago
  Producers are the more influential overall, in terms of the business metrics(budget, schedule, box office). They get to make a lot of key decisions, if only through vetos. What a director does is more akin to structuring the day-to-day focus. A director who has taken to relaxing intent on some broad aspects of the production is going to have a smoother production, be more agreeable, be easy to hire again. But a director who is more stringent may deliver a product that coheres better. It's a kind of balancing act on the part of the producer to not end up with a staff full of prima donnas fighting for control and wasting money through indecision and résumé-driven development.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/mutpV https://archive.is/mutpV