BSA 206 - Semester 2 (Week 1)

Presentation Assignment

David Fincher


Born in Colorado in 1962, David Fincher made his directorial debut with Alien³ in 1992. He continued directing music videos and commercials as well as winning a Grammy Award in 1994 for the Rolling Stones video "Love Is Strong." He then found success with Fight Club and in 2010 he found more success with The Social Network, which won three Academy Awards and was up for five others.

Selected Film

The film that I’ve selected for this assignment one project is Fight Club. The story follows a man who had trouble with insomnia and was advice to join a support group. He then meets Tyler who is actually his split personality and formed “fight club”. When the main character was exposed to the hidden agenda of Tyler’s fight club, he found out that Tyler may not be who he say he is.

 Figure 1. Fight Club Poster (1999).

Importance of scene to the story

I believe that in the scene where the narrator found who Tyler Durden truly was played an important part in the story. It adds an unexpected twist into the story line which in my opinion played a crucial role, it also made more sense to who Tyler Durden was and how things in the movie was actually lead by the narrator.


Director’s Intensions

Because Fight Club was an adaptation from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, I think that the director’s intension for this scene was to end with a huge reveal of who Tyler Durden was in a way that it blows the viewer’s mind and that everything was actually the narrator having a split personality of who he wants to be but can’t in which case he saw himself as Tyler Durden.

Techniques Used

By watching the scene over and over for a few times, I’ve noticed that before the scene started, there was a conversation between the narrator and the bartender which somewhat explains who Tyler Durden might be with Medium Shots of the narrator and Medium Long Shots of the bartender with the narrator in shot which then moves into a Close Up of both characters and eventually a slow Dolly into the narrator’s face.

Figure 2. Fight Club (Fincher, 1999).

It then builds up with an upbeat song to the main scene that I’ll be focusing on. The narrator runs into his hotel room and runs towards the phone to call Marla. I believe in this shot it was a high angle with one light source and probably a reflector to light up his back to prevent the shot from going into complete black.


Figure 3. Fight Club (Fincher, 1999).

I also noticed that in this scene, the director used a lot of static, high angle and low angle shots from medium long, medium and close up shots.
   

Figure 4. Fight Club (Fincher, 1999).

In another shot of where Tyler Durden and the narrator had a conversation, the lighting in this seemed like there was a light source coming from outside the window with a Blue Gel on it to replicate daylight/moonlight. I also believe that they had the lamps on to act a fill lighting to generally make the room brighter and light the characters well.


Figure 5. Fight Club (Fincher, 1999).

And in the background a soft snare kind of beat was playing to make the situation more intense and which eventually trippy and echoic sound effects during his flashback of him in Tyler Durden’s place.

Propose experimental work

In my experimental work, I would like to apply these techniques in where I’ll explore the camera and lighting techniques in an intense situation. A dolly shot into a character where it provokes fear, anger or confidence of the character. For example a music video work I did last year, a dolly out shot of the dancer.

I think when it comes to lighting, I could use a few of his tricks to light up a room in a way that I could use lamps rather than a redhead or divas itself to fill and light the characters. Other than that I think I could learn and experiment a lot with how David Fincher does a certain scene in a movie to strengthen the storyline of it.