January 26, 2024
andrewkevinwalker.com
Download the Screenplay and Beat Sheet for Love, Death + Robots: Bad Travelling from Andrew Kevin Walker’s website (links in the top right of the script pile).
Winner of the 2022 Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement for Writing in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production.
Follow Andrew Kevin Walker on Instagram
Bobby Miller
January 11, 2024
Creative Industry Insight
In this episode, we welcome VFX Editor Casey Curtiss who joins us to talk about his work on The Killer. Casey walks us through what the role of a VFX editor entails and how those skills were used on The Killer.
Listen to the podcast:
Executive Produced by Daniel Miller and Monika Ditton. Artwork Designed by Piotr Motyka. Music by ELPHNT.
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January 19, 2024
Ollin VFX
Visual Effects By: Ollin VFX
Executive Producer: Alejandro Diego
Visual Effects Supervisor: Yabin Morales
Visual Effects Executive Producer: Álvaro González Kuhn
Visual Effects Producer: Denisse Garcés
Visual Effects Sequence Supervisor: Isaac Camacho
Visual Effects Project Manager: Edgar Ortiz
Visual Effects Production Coordinators: Andrea Manzano, Luis González, Ursula Salas
CG Lead: Oscar Paz
CG Artists: Aislinn Alcaraz, Tlacaellael Cedillo, Alberto Gaona, Jerónimo Martínez
Lead Artist: Argenis Dionisio
Associate Visual Effects Supervisor: Xany Méndez
Compositors: Ramón Monsanto, Francisco Contreras, Eduardo Grandizo, Gabriel Zamora, Alberto Carmona, Alejandro Saavedra, Ariel Picone, Elena Amador, Martin Villareal, Dereek Alcubilla, Edwin Leger, Jonathan Silverio, Paula Andrada, Nikita Guliaev
Matte Painting Artist: Wellinthon Simeón
Visual Effects Editors: Daniela Ramírez, David Malvaez, Héctor Ramírez
Head of IT: Alejandro Gutierrez
Pipeline Developer: Eric Campos
Systems Administrator: Manuel Macedo
Systems Assistant: Luis Urrutia
Accounting Manager: Claudia Domínguez
Talent Acquisition Manager: Alicia Álvarez
Jon Burlingame
January 13, 2024
Variety
Sometimes directors don’t want you humming the music as you leave their film.
More than ever, filmmakers are seeking fresh musical approaches, especially when the subject matter is dark or fantastic. Three late-2023 releases demonstrate this with music that catches the ear in unusual ways. […]
For “The Killer,” their fifth film with director David Fincher, double Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (“The Social Network,” “Soul”) faced a new and unexpected challenge: Fincher informed them that he wanted to see “how far we can go in the edit with no music at all,” Reznor recalls.
So the composing partners from Nine Inch Nails were on standby for months until the call came to supply music — but in only high and low frequencies, leaving the middle portion of the audio spectrum for the ongoing narration of the assassin played by Michael Fassbender.
January 9, 2024
Wylie Co.
The Killer digi-double visual effects sequence & breakdown. This is our first of many breakdown reels we’re going to post on X for our VFX work on The Killer.
For this particular sequence in The Killer, Eric Barba, Peter Mavromates and David Fincher approached us with an extremely difficult task, to create close-up, photoreal digi-double shots of Michael Fassbender riding a scooter.
The quality of the work had to seamlessly cut back to back between live-action shots of The Killer on set. Extra complexity was added because the original plan to shoot these shots on a virtual stage didn’t live up to what Fincher had envisioned.
Because of this, there were no HDRI’s or usable array footage and sparse reference photos. The lighting and lookdev had to be dialed in by eye. We began with the Killer asset, adding fine facial detail and cloth simulations.
We then used photogrammetry to assist with cascading streetlight timing and travel speed. The final result was high res meticulously crafted nearly full CG shots cut into the live-action sequence with the ultimate goal of nobody noticing.
Advancements in software, hardware, and artist skill enabled us to create The Killer digi-double with a team of 7 artists using Lenovo workstations, AMD processors, NVidia GPUs, Nuke, Maya, Houdini & Redshift software. And months of time!
All of our work in David Fincher’s The Killer involved digi-doubles. Here are 3 breakdowns of digi-double gore that we provided for the film. Full CG shots, cut between live-action shots. They include particle fx, fluid dynamics, various hair, cloth, and bone simulations, and good old-fashioned animation by hand.
Visual Effects By: Wylie Co. Culver City, California
Visual Effects Supervisor: Jake Maymudes
Visual Effects Executive Producer: Kris Drenzek
Digital Effects Supervisor: Josh Hatton
Visual Effects Animation Supervisor: TJ Burke
Lighting & FX Artist: Liam Jurkowich
Animation Lead: Sashdy Arvelo
Animators: Li Li, Taylor Cooke
Compositor: Nick Kaye
Lookdev Artists: Bora Jurisic, Richard Bridge
3D Tracking Artists: Tommy Ibanez, Nallely Gomez
Pipeline TD: Roberto Cadena Vega
Coordinator: Sofia Beroud
Matt Mulcahey
January 11, 2024
Filmmaker
The Killer begins with an assassin (Michael Fassbender) in a half-completed WeWork office awaiting the arrival of his latest target. As he waits, he details his vocational mantras for the audience in voiceover: stick to the plan. Don’t improvise. Never yield an advantage. Forbid empathy. Fassbender proceeds to miss his shot and spends the rest of the film breaking each and every one of those tenets in the chaotic aftermath.
Many of the pieces written about the film have pointed out perceived similarities between the film’s methodical, detail-oriented titular character and the perfectionist reputation of its director, David Fincher. However, what makes Fincher’s approach to filmmaking so fascinating is the way it combines the fluid with the obsessively regimented. For The Killer, the illusion of handheld camerawork, anamorphic lens characteristics and glass filters were all created in post, where they could be minutely modulated. Conversely, Fincher often prefers to design coverage on the day after blocking rehearsals and is open to the spontaneous comedic possibilities of the cheese grater.
On Fincher’s Mindhunter, Mank and now The Killer, cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt has been the director’s partner in that duality. The Oscar-winning DP graced this column for a fifth time to discuss his latest work.
Jack Giroux
January 10, 2024
Below the Line
Costume designer Cate Adams convinces audiences a guy like Michael Fassbender can walk through the world unnoticed. That’s not an easy task. The costume designer makes the titular character in David Fincher‘s The Killer an assassin who blends into his surroundings, almost like death himself in the big cities.
It’s a Fincher film in which the craftsmanship shines without drawing attention away from the story at hand.
Or, in the case of The Killer, the character. It’s more about point-of-view than plot, thanks to Andrew Kevin Walker‘s cold yet intimate, clockwork-like script as well as the impeccable work from crew members such as Adams. She makes the killer’s world and his wardrobe more tangible, both mundane and poppy.
Recently, the costume designer spoke with Below the Line about her beautiful, subtle work in David Fincher’s latest film.
Edward Douglas
January 9, 2024
Below the Line
The last few years have been a whirlwind for Erik Messerschmidt, ASC. He had been working his way through the camera department for nearly two decades, including as a gaffer on David Fincher’s Gone Girl, before he began acting as DoP on a number of high-profile shows, one of them being Fincher’s Mindhunter for Netflix.
When Fincher decided to make Mank, his biopic about Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, as played by Gary Oldman, he brought Messersschmidt along with him to shoot the film in black and white. The movie was slightly hobbled by the pandemic that kept it from playing theatrically, but Messerschmidt won the Oscar for Cinematography, as well as the feature film category for the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).
Last year, Messerschmidt reunited with Fincher for his adaptation of the graphic novel, The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender as an assassin on a streak of vengeance after a job goes wrong. He also teamed up with the great Michael Mann to shoot his racing biopic, Ferrari, starring Adam Driver.
Below the Line spoke with the cinematographer a few months back when he was in Poland for EnergaCAMERIMAGE, although we got on Zoom with him from the States.
January 9, 2024
EnergaCAMERIMAGE Festival
Watch our interview with Erik Messerschmidt – famous cinematographer, who presented the film Ferrari directed by Michael Mann during this year’s edition of EnergaCAMERIMAGE Festival. We also discuss his collaborations with David Fincher in Mindhunter and The Killer.
Tomris Laffly
October 28, 2023
David Fincher discusses the making of The Killer with Sound Designer Ren Klyce, Editor Kirk Baxter, and Writer Andrew Kevin Walker, after the screening for the press in New York. Hosted by Tomris Laffly.
(Video clips recorded with a phone from the audience, with not very good audio and, for some reason, with each video clip edited in twice).
The Fincher Analyst 