With Rachel Morrison the first woman cinematographer nominated for a Best Cinematography Academy Award, we’re running today online from our current print issue David Leitner’s interview with her about shooting her nominated film, Dee Rees’s Mudbound. When Dee Rees’s Mudbound premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, the director was returning to the fest six years after her feature debut, Pariah, launched there. The same year also marked DP Rachel Morrison’s first feature to be included in the festival, Zal Batmanglij’s Sound of My Voice, and she returned the following year with Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station; Mudbound is her eighth […]

When mere mortals gear up for a job, they are restricted to selecting cameras currently in existence. Not David Fincher. Fincher has long hated all the gak required to make a digital cinema camera functional: a wireless transmitter to get signal to video village, the add-ons to provide wireless iris and focus control, the assistant camera’s onboard monitor hanging off the side — all the things that turn a small, lightweight camera body into a labyrinth of cables and breakout boxes. Red Digital Cinema responded by making Fincher his own set of custom Weapon Red Dragons for use on the […]

Why is David Fincher’s work so hypnotic? This video essay from The Nerdwriter argues that he matches camera movement exactly to the speed of the characters, placing you more in sync with them both physically and emotionally.

The first two episodes of Netflix’s Mindhunter, directed by David Fincher, are slightly stylistically diluted but still distinctively his. Fincher also directed the last two episodes of the ten-episode first season, which has already been renewed for a second prior to dropping this Friday — whether I make it to his bookending episodes I have no idea, but fans should at least take a look at this starting point. “Peak TV,” or at least the limited-run series, has increasingly accommodated one director who wants to do it all: this year has seen airings of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Big Little […]

David Fincher is famously a technical wizard, but most of his special effects use is designed not to be perceived. Kristian Williams dives into some of his most inconspicuous applications of VFX.

In his latest video, Jacob T. Swinney inspects David Fincher’s approach to the long shot. Clips from Fight Club, Zodiac and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, among others, serve as examples of the filmmaker’s use of distance. Supplementally, you can also watch Swinney’s previous video, David Fincher’s Extreme Close-Ups.

The emphasis in this edited series of highlights from David Fincher’s recent BFI talk is, refreshingly, more on the actors than on his much-dissected, formidable technical acumen. One key takeaway from this brisk trot through his career is Fincher’s take on his infamous penchant for endless takes. “My philosophy is, you spend $250,000 on a set,” he explains. “Put it on a soundstage, it costs you $5,000 a day. You’re gonna put $8,000 of lights and you’re gonna bring a $150,000 crew in. You’re gonna bring actors in from all over the world, you’re gonna put them up in hotels, […]

Gone Girl marks d.p. Jeff Cronenweth’s fourth feature film collaboration with David Fincher, a stretch that began with Fight Club in 1999 and has continued through The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (He also worked 2nd and 3rd unit on Se7en and The Game.) It’s a partnership that has transitioned the pair to digital cinematography, with Cronenweth creating cool, precisely visualized environments for stories plumbing the complexities of life in our globalized, media-saturated information age. To speak with Cronenweth, we asked Jamie Stuart, whose short films have frequently appeared on this site, and who has interviewed […]

The video’s issued by Adobe itself, so take the endorsements contained therein with more than a few grains of salt. Still, for those interested in David Fincher’s ever-evolving post-production process, here’s a little over five minutes of his Gone Girl post-production team talking about their all-Adobe workflow. The big takeaway is how this integrated workflow has made it easier to incorporate f/x into the image sooner rather than later, eliminating the sprawl of coordinating efforts from special effects houses spread out all over and accelerating everybody’s timeline.