This is a cinematography experiment for fun and education. To explore Macro techniques, we recreate David Fincher‘s iconic MINDHUNTER title sequence and, of course, we give it our very own twist.
We also test & review the new Laowa Sword cine macro lenses. Macro Lenses open a whole world of technical possibilities and perspectives that are impossible to achieve with normal lenses. Macro and extreme close-ups can play an important role in cinematic storytelling, product videography, Stop-Motion work, and practical effects.
Then, we take you behind the scenes and show you how the different scenes were set up and lit. The LAOWA Sword macro cine lenses cover full frame and offer a wide range of focal lengths starting from 15mm all the way up to 180mm. We give you test shots and talk about our experience.
00:00: Intro & Contents 02:23: Extreme close ups in cinema 04:02: What is a Cine Macro Lens 07:52: Laowa Sword introduction 13:20: Laowa Sword Lens Test 18:15: Reimagining the Mindhunter titles 22:10: MACROHUNTER 25:48: Making of & Tutorial 29:10: Staging Marie – Skull shots tutorial 32:12: The Verdict 34:19: Laowa Aurogon introduction 37:19: Thank You
Here is our short with all MACROHUNTER sequences next to behind-the-scenes.
Disclaimer: we collaborated with LAOWA to bring you this episode. As always, we strive to give you our honest opinion based on our experience and our tests. If you are interested in buying the LAOWA Sword, please consider our affiliate link. It doesn’t cost you a dime more, but we get a little for the tip jar. Thanks a lot!
FROM ACCLAIMED DIRECTOR DAVID FINCHER,THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 4K RESOLUTION WITH HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE (HDR).
AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL AND 4K UHD DISC ON JANUARY 7, 2025.
EXPERIENCE THE FILM IN IMAX® FOR THE FIRST TIME, STARTING JANUARY 3, 2025 FOR A LIMITED ENGAGEMENT.
The film stars Academy Award Winners Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman,and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Burbank, Calif., November 19, 2024 – Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the psychological thriller SE7EN from New Line Cinema and acclaimed director David Fincher, the 1995 film will be available for purchase Digitally in 4K Ultra HD and on 4K UHD Blu-ray Disc on January 7, 2025.
SE7EN will be available to purchase on Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc online and in-store at major retailers and available for purchase Digitally from Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, Fandango at Home and more.
Additionally, to celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary, the newly re-mastered version of SE7EN will be offered theatrically worldwide with exclusive IMAX engagements in the U.S. and Canada beginning on January 3, and international theatrical engagements on select dates. To purchase tickets, or for further information, please visit www.imax.com/seven.
Directed by three-time Academy Award nominee David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, Mank) from a screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker, the film stars Academy Award winner Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood), Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby), Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love), along with John C. McGinley (Platoon), Golden Globe nominee R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket), and Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey (The Usual Suspects, American Beauty) as John Doe. The film is produced by Arnold Kopelson and Phyllis Carlyle.
SE7EN received an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing (Richard Francis-Bruce) at the 68th Academy Awards. The film was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay (Andrew Kevin Walker) at the 49th British Academy Film Awards.
The 4K restoration of Se7en was completed at Warner Bros. Discovery’s Motion Picture Imaging (MPI) and was sourced from the original camera negative. The restoration was overseen by director David Fincher.
About the Film
Two cops (Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) track a brilliant and elusive killer who orchestrates a string of horrific murders, each kill targeting a practitioner of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Gwyneth Paltrow also stars in this acclaimed thriller set in a dour, drizzly city sick with pain and blight. David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) guides the action – physical, mental, and spiritual – with a sure understanding of what terrifies us, right up to a stunning denouement that will rip the scar tissue off the most hardened soul.
SE7EN 4K UHD Blu-ray. DigiPack Case
SE7EN 4K UHD Blu-ray. SteelBook Case (Limited Edition)
Basics
Video: 4K UHD (2160p). 2.39:1 (OAR). HEVC/H.265 Codec. HDR 10. Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit) Languages: English, Spanish, Parisian French Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, Parisian French
Run Time: 127 minutes Rating: R for grisly afterviews of horrific and bizarre killings, and for strong language
Special Features
SE7EN Digital release and Ultra HD Blu-ray disc contain the following previously released special features:
Commentaries:
– The Stars: David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman – The Story: Richard Dyer, Andrew Kevin Walker, Richard Francis-Bruce, Michael De Luca, David Fincher – The Picture: Darius Khondji, Arthur Max, Richard Francis-Bruce, Richard Dyer, David Fincher – The Sound: Ren Klyce, Howard Shore, Richard Dyer, David Fincher
Deleted Scenes:
– Car Ride in from Gluttony – My Future – Raid on Victor’s – Spare Some Change? – Tracy Wakes from Light Sleep – Pride
Alternate endings:
– Animated storyboards of un-shot ending – Original “Test” ending
Still Photographs (featurettes):
– John Doe’s Photographs – Victor’s Decomposition – Police Crime Scene Photographs – Production Photographs – The Notebooks
Production Design (featurette)
Mastering for the Home Theater (featurette)
Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Early Storyboards (featurette)
Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Rough Version (featurette)
Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Final Edit (featurette)
Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Stereo Audio Commentary One – The Concept – Designer Kyle Cooper (featurette)
Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence: Stereo Audio Commentary Two – The Sound – Brant Biles & Robert Margouleff (featurette)
Fight Club is a cinematic time machine. The film captured the essence of 1999, and, 25 years later, filmmaker David Fincher‘s vision for Chuck Palahniuk‘s novel continues to resonate, cranking up its unsettling relevance in a commercialized and violent world.
The movie hits just as hard today as it did back then.
Fight Club remains as overwhelming as the narrator’s life. The sound is relentless; the world almost never quiets down. It’s a controlled yet unrelenting experience for the eyes and ears. Much of the credit goes to sound designer Ren Klyce, who is once again working on the film, remastering it with Fincher & Co. Before attending MPSE Presents: Fight Club 25th AnniversaryScreening, Klyce spoke with Immersive Media about his past and present experiences with Fight Club.
Or so says the mysterious account that discreetly appeared on Instagram on October 15, the 25th Anniversary of Fight Club.
Now, New Regency and 20th Century Studios have officially announced that the subversive film, based on Chuck Palahniuk’s satirical novel, has been “meticulously remastered” in 4K under the supervision of David Fincher, “offering audiences the chance to experience the film with sharper detail than ever before.”
We will be able to experience the new remaster in 2025, in a theatrical re-release and 4K UHD HDR Streaming and Blu-ray releases.
Insight Editions, in partnership with New Regency, is releasing a companion art book (announced on THE FINCHER ANALYST last year), “a collector’s piece, that includes new interviews, unearthed visuals, original artwork, and rare behind-the-scenes material, offering fans the deepest look yet into the making of the film and its enduring legacy.”
“Fight Club is an enduring symbol of cinematic innovation, with its exploration of identity, masculinity, and consumerism continuing to resonate with audiences.”
David Fincher’s glorious, mysterious, spectacular Fight Club has just turned 25! A new VFX Notes episode with Hugo Guerra and Ian Failes looks back at the film, and breaks down the incredible, invisible visual effects work.
We dive deep into the photogrammetry side of things from BUF, and look at the variety of work from Digital Domain, the penguin from Blue Sky (!), plus VFX from other vendors. It was an extraordinary achievement from visual effects designer Kevin Tod Haug to oversee this work.
Check out the video below which includes a whole range of behind the scenes and VFX breakdowns.
Chapters: 00:00:00: Intro 00:00:40: A word from our sponsors 00:01:50: The podcast begins 00:04:52: Our first viewing of FIGHT CLUB 00:11:56: The DVD is like film school 00:28:47: Jeff Cronenweth and the visual style 00:37:23: The manny takes of Fincher 00:41:27: Kevin Tod Haug’s amazing work 00:43:20: It would be nominated if it was today 00:45:24: Shaders and radiosity 00:48:03: Photogrammetry and BUF 00:53:07: Previz 00:57:08: The virtual camera moves like the kitchen scenes 01:00:45: BUF VFX and the sex shots 01:06:19: The age of CG tests 01:09:48: The plane crash 01:13:48: High rise collapse 01:21:49: Having fewer artists for a longer time 01:23:49: Peter Ramnsey’s animatics 01:24:23: The cave animal 01:27:08: One of the first behind the scenes featuring HDR spheres and grey balls 01:31:03: The Titanic breath leftovers 01:33:15: The gunshot 01:37:14: The Furni shot 01:39:44: The opening credits 01:45:43: Meat Loaf’s Fat Suit 01:50:00: Members and Patreon credits
Watch the “age-restricted” Fight Club VFX breakdown by BUF: YouTube BUF.com
By Roxana Hadadi, a Vulture TV critic who also covers film and pop culture October 16, 2024 Vulture
Holt McCallany can talk for a long time about filmmaker David Fincher, with whom he’s worked three times. On the beloved crime-thriller series Mindhunter, which was unexpectedly canceled by Netflix after its second season. On Alien 3, the prison-planet sequel that was Fincher’s directorial debut and so plagued with interference from 20th Century Fox that Fincher wouldn’t talk about the movie for years. And on Fight Club, the cult classic that has been misinterpreted in bad faith since it came out 25 years ago. McCallany can mimic Fincher’s tone and jokingly recites his advice from years on set together. And he can just as vividly recall a grudge he’s harbored since the movie’s release.
“I remember sitting in a dentist’s office, and the TV happened to be The Rosie O’Donnell Show. She’s talking about Fight Club and she says, ‘Whatever you do, don’t see Fight Club. It’s demented, it’s depraved. I don’t think I’ve ever hated a movie more.’ I’m thinking, Gee, Rosie. Do we go on TV and bad-mouth your show?Is this really necessary, this kind of abuse?” McCallany says. “It angered me. I won’t pretend otherwise, because we were very proud of the film, we had worked very hard on the film, and we were very loyal to David.”
In Fincher’s adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, McCallany plays The Mechanic, a devoted follower of anarchist philosopher Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) whose unflinching glare and menacing physicality are always in service of Durden’s anti-consumerist ideas. McCallany exudes such certainty of self that once you notice the Mechanic cheering in the background of fight scenes, doing chores in The Narrator (Edward Norton) and Durden’s dilapidated mansion, or threatening to “take” a police commissioner’s testicles with a knife, you’ll keep looking for him, wondering what those wild eyes and set jaw are getting up to. The Mechanic tightened McCallany’s relationship with Fincher (who had previously wanted him for a small role in Se7en), and his melancholy-yet-adamant delivery of the film’s iconic mantra — “His name was Robert Paulson” — indicated how fully he could inhabit heavies with a heart.
As Gone Girl rings in ten years of Amazing Amy’s disappearing act, Mia Lee Vicino probes the mystery-thriller’s deep impact, from annual Valentine’s Day rewatches to the catharsis of the Cool Girl monologue.
“Cool Girl is hot. Cool Girl is game. Cool Girl is fun.” With this incisive diatribe, Rosamund Pike as Amy Elliot Dunne articulates the previously inarticulable. The moment comes at the midpoint of Gone Girl, pulling the rug out from under first-time viewers, while devoted Amazing Amy acolytes mouth the sacred words along with her: “Cool Girl never gets angry at her man. She only smiles in a chagrined, loving manner and then presents her mouth for fucking.”
It’s been ten years since we were first visually exposed to the exquisite Cool Girl monologue; twelve since author Gillian Flynn initially published it across seven blistering pages of her bestselling source novel. David Fincher, Pike (who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance) and Ben Affleck as Amy’s “lazy, lying, shitting oblivious husband” Nick Dunne then brought this ice-pick sharp vision to life, crafting a simultaneous indictment and endorsement of marriage, of revenge, of feminine rage.
A filmmaker friend reached out to me with a question about one of our shared favorite movies of all time, so I did what I sometimes do – I went totally overboard to find a satisfying answer and then wrote a long-winded article about it.
Near the end of David Fincher‘s 1995 masterpiece Seven, John Doe takes Somerset and Mills to the middle of nowhere to reveal his final surprise. They drive to a desolate area surrounded by high-tension power lines and towers. A combination of long lenses and wide lenses were used to alternate between images of long-lens compression of the space, and scattered wider lenses to illustrate the desolation of the environment.
Then comes this gorgeous shot. A simple, slow tilt down of the car racing down the road, filmed with a long lens. It’s breathtaking because it looks other-worldly, and some of that is due to the visual “compression” that happens to a scene filmed with a telephoto lens: objects that are far apart from each other “compress” in depth to look like they’re actually existing very close together in real-world space. Filmmakers make lens choices to give a scene a deliberate, artistic feel. It’s one of the many tools in a filmmaker’s toolbox.
Frame & Reference is a conversation between Cinematographers hosted by Kenny McMillan. Each episode dives into the respective DP’s current and past work, as well as what influences and inspires them. These discussions are an entertaining and informative look into the world of making films through the lens of the people who shoot them.
Igor Martinovic (Man on Wire, House of Cards: S02, The Night Of) and Vanja Černjul (Orange Is the New Black: S01, Marco Polo, Crazy Rich Asians), who grew up together in Croatia, talk about their experiences working with David Fincher in House of Cards: S02 (Igor), shooting a big production like House of the Dragon (Vanja), and making together the documentary Jim Henson: Idea Man directed by Ron Howard.
Sofia Coppola, Gus Van Sant, Noah Baumbach, Jonathan Glazer, David Fincher, and today’s best cinematographers reflect on the giant hole in the heart of cinema that was left when Harris Savides died in 2012.
When cinematographer Bradford Young was fresh out of Howard University, he would have done anything to get near the set of his idol Harris Savides. He eventually found a way to shoot behind-the-scenes footage for the French director Fabian Barron, who hired Savides to shoot an Armani fragrance commercial in Hawaii. When Young got to the forest set, with shafts of light streaming through the trees, he became confused when he flipped on his DV camera to capture the scene.
“The model came on set, and I was like, ‘How’s he going to light her face?,’” recalled Young, who couldn’t believe what happened next: Savides walked on to set with a flashlight in hand and shined it at the model. “He was completely secure with this little flashlight on this million-dollar set. With my eye on the day, I didn’t understand what was happening, ‘How’s he still getting exposure?’ And then I saw the commercial. It was that God particle thing that Harris had. This was complete technical mastery and a complete mystery to observe.”
David Fincher and Harris Savides, Zodiac (Merrick Morton, 2007)
There was a sense of magic surrounding what Savides was able to do. When discussing what his go-to cinematographer was using to light a scene, director David Fincher used to joke, “I don’t know, Harris’ got a jar of fireflies.”
“Beyond the technical process, there was always something else going on in the picture that I couldn’t account for, something that was only him,” writer/director Noah Baumbach told IndieWire. “Something that I guess we call genius.”
The Fincher Analyst 