Category: 2008. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Glasgow Film Theater – Cinemasters: David Fincher

Glasgow Film
February 15, 2023

After making his name creating iconic music videos for some of the biggest pop stars of the 20th Century, including George Michael, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, David Fincher made his feature film debut to mixed results, directing the third installment in the Alien series in 1992. Our celebration of this exacting filmmaker’s work begins with the film that came next, Se7en (1995), an unforgettable serial killer horror whose influence in style and tone is still felt across film and TV today.

Fincher’s subsequent films have made him one of the most sought-after and critically acclaimed (and occasionally divisive) directors working today. With his new film The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton, scheduled for release in late 2023, we are delighted to offer audiences a chance to dive into Fincher’s dark world on the big screen through March and April at GFT. The season includes several screenings on 35mm, our first chance to screen Fincher’s Oscar-winning Covid-era release Mank, and a special discussion around one of his most enduringly beloved and controversial films entitled ‘Yes, We Are Going to Talk About Fight Club’.

Films in this Season

Se7en: 15 – 19 March
Fight Club: 21 March – 26 March + panel discussion
Panic Room: 5 April
Zodiac: 29 March – 2 April
The Curious Benjamin Button: 9 – 10 April
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: 23 April
The Social Network: 16 – 19 April
Gone Girl: 26 April
Mank: 30 April – 3 May

CineMasters: David Fincher Ticket deal

Buy tickets to 6 or more different titles in the season and get one of those tickets free. Add all tickets in one transaction and the discount will be automatically applied to your basket at checkout.

Buy tickets

The Fincher Analyst Reporter-at-Large, Joe Frady, will attend and cover the whole season.

How Technology Made David Fincher a Better Director

Has there ever been a movie director who has taken more advantage of new technology than David Fincher? We look back on how digital production benefitted his movies so much.

Julian Mitchell
November 28, 2022
The Beat (Premium Beat)

When digital cinematography was in its infancy, around 2005, it was like the Wild West; new cameras were appearing seemingly every week, whether from University’ concept’ programs or start-ups with a movie making a revolution on their minds.

In this white heat of technology, director David Fincher started to craft his movie-making skills. He was a risk taker with new technology but driven by the promise it gave him. As much as Fincher and his crew were proud of the films they made, they were also proud of how they made them.

Zodiac’s Digital Gamble

Fincher had already used digital cinematography for his commercials and decided to commit early to this technology for his movies. But his long-time producer Ceán Chaffin brought some hard business sense to brace against his pioneering creative decisions.

Ceán had been involved more in costing this digital workflow out and had looked at introducing digital for a feature before Zodiac but found that it wasn’t cost-efficient at that time; Zodiac was different. “At the moment of Zodiac, storage was so cheap that we could push it; it was also about the savings at that point. The sticking point was really about storage for us up to Zodiac.”

Read the full article

Red Carpet Rookies: Lisa Beroud. VFX Producer

Eric Barba, VFX Supervisor, Lisa Beroud, VFX Producer, and Alex Wang, ILM VFX Supervisor, on the set of Terminator: Dark Fate.

Mike Battle
November 1, 2022
Red Carpet Rookies

Starting her career producing commercials Lisa Beroud transitioned to James Cameron‘s famous VFX house Digital Domain, where she worked on titles including TRON: Legacy, Oblivion, Her, 47 Ronin, and a multitude of David Fincher projects including Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl. Since leaving DD, she has been a VFX producer of hits such as Black Panther, Terminator: Dark Fate, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Listen to the podcast:

Red Carpet Rookies (with a transcript)
Apple Podcast
Spotify
Google Podcasts

Follow Red Carpet Rookies: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter

Follow Mike: Instagram, Twitter

Soundstage Access: Gwen Yates Whittle, Supervising Sound Editor

Brando Benetton
June 6, 2022
Soundstage Access

For this masterclass on the Art of Sound in film and TV, we welcome on the show Gwen Yates Whittle, a 2-time Oscar-nominated sound professional whose credits include this summer’s Jurassic World: Dominion, Saving Private Ryan, Top Gun: Maverick and the upcoming Avatar: The Way of the Water.

In today’s conversation, the Skywalker Sound member and I break down some of Hollywood’s biggest sound moments. We discuss Gwen’s beginning in the industry and why the prospect of sound editing intrigued her in ways that sound mixing never did; her relationship with detail-oriented directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and David Fincher (Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, Benjamin Button, Gone Girl); the process of layering animal sounds to create the dinosaur voices in the Jurassic World franchise—as well as how the pandemic suddenly impacted Gwen’s work. All of this… and much more!

Gwen’s newest movies Jurassic World: Dominion and Top Gun: Maverick are now in theaters across the world, with Avatar: The Way of the Water opening in December 2022.

Listen to the podcast on:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Soundcloud
Google Podcasts
Stitcher

Soundstage Access on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Conversations with Sound Artists: Dialogue Editing and ADR with Gwen Whittle

Glenn Kiser, Director of the Dolby Institute
September 21, 2015
SoundWorks Collection / The Dolby Institute

Editing dialog and working with the original recordings from the set is one of the most under-appreciated arts in cinema sound. In this episode of “Conversations with Sound Artists,” two-time Academy Award nominee Gwen Yates Whittle talks with the Dolby Institute’s Glenn Kiser about why George Lucas thinks dialog editing is one of the most important parts of the process, why she loves working on low-budget independent films (“They talk more,”), and why David Fincher and Meryl Streep love doing ADR.

VFX Notes: The Art of Matte Painting and Invisible VFX with Craig Barron

Hugo Guerra (Twitter) & Ian Failes (Twitter)
November 24, 2021
Hugo’s Desk (YouTube, Patreon, Twitter, Facebook) / befores & afters

On this episode of VFX Notes, Hugo Guerra from Hugo’s Desk and Ian Failes from befores & afters are joined by Craig Barron. Barron is creative director at Magnopus, and previously worked as a matte painter at ILM and co-founder and visual effects supervisor at Matte World Digital. Barron won a VFX Oscar for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and was also nominated for a VFX Oscar for Batman Returns.

They talk about his amazing career and his work in Zodiac, Casino, Empire Strikes Back, Batman Returns, and so much more, what those original days of matte painting in the optical era were like, and how the transition to digital happened. Matte World Digital’s work on Zodiac, amongst other films, was also discussed in a previous episode.

This episode is sponsored by ActionVFX Black Friday sale. It begins November 25th at 8 PM EST and will end on December 3rd at 11:59 PM EST. All VFX elements in the library will be 55% off the first 24 hours, & 50% off the remaining days of the sale. All Annual Subscription Plans (Individual & Studio Plans) purchased during the sale will receive 2x the amount of monthly elements. Learn more here.

Chapters:
00:00:00 – Intro
00:04:30 – David Fincher and DVD extras
00:05:35 – Craig’s career
00:08:16 – Ray Harryhausen and influences
00:12:08 – Matte paintings in Empire Strikes Back
00:18:13 – Physical correct vs artistic direction
00:32:07 – Matte paintings in Batman Returns
00:34:12 – Casino and the first radiosity render
00:43:37 – 3D projections in Zodiac
00:55:02 – Blade Runner VR
00:59:48 – The Criterion Collection and history
01:07:05 – Patreon, Twitch Subs and YouTube members credits

Listen to the podcast:

befores & afters
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Google Podcasts

The Film Comment Podcast: The Mind Games of David Fincher

David Fincher by Michael Avedon

Devika Girish and Clinton Krute
November 23, 2021
Film Comment

This week’s conversation focuses in on David Fincher—a director whose decade-spanning body of gritty Americana—from the grim moral drama of Se7en to the revisionist Hollywood tale of the recent Mank—has inspired both obsessive fandom and derisive dismissal.

A new book by Adam Nayman, David Fincher: Mind Games (out November 23 from Abrams Books), offers a canny and timely appraisal of the director’s filmography. Adam writes that, “Over the past thirty years, Fincher has cultivated and maintained a reputation that precedes him of formal rigor and technocratic exactitude, of moviemaking as a game of inches.” Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited Adam and critic, filmmaker, and former NYFF director, Kent Jones—who’s written about Fincher many times over the years in FC—for an illuminating deep-dive into the Fincherverse.

Listen to the podcast

Buy the book David Fincher: Mind Games. By Adam Nayman

Adam Nayman on David Fincher’s Complicated Auteurism

David Fincher by Jack Davison

Nick Newman
November 23, 2021
The Film Stage

Few film books in recent memory made waves like Adam Nayman’s Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks, a too-rare melange of authorial talent, topical interest, and opulent presentation. Last year Nayman and I spoke at length about the tome that no doubt you’ve seen in bookstores (big and small alike) since.

Nayman has returned with David Fincher: Mind Games, another Abrams-published doorstop on another double-capital-A American Auteur, lined again with essays that surprise in their capacity to find new perspectives and provocative readings on films for which there seemed no more room. Finally able to talk in person—thus, you’ll (please) read, at greater length—we sat down for a talk on writing thousands of words on someone for whom a consistent critical standing is tougher than meets the eye.

Read the full interview

Buy the book David Fincher: Mind Games. By Adam Nayman

Adam Nayman Talks David Fincher’s Adman Past (And Present)

A conversation with the author about his new book, “David Fincher: Mind Games”

Sydney Urbanek
November 17, 2021
Mononym Mythology

Adam Nyman is a fellow film critic and the author of several books about films and filmmakers, including but not limited to The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together (2018) and Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks (2020). (Though we’ve never crossed paths in person, he also teaches in the department where I did my Master’s program.) He opens Mind Games with a dedicated discussion of the decade or so before Fincher ever made his narrative feature debut with ALIEN³ (1992), but then continues to come back to his commercial and music video work for the remainder of it, wisely treating his adman past as, well, more of an adman present. A few weeks back, Adam and I chatted for an hour about Fincher’s short-form oeuvre, but also his features because—again—the two aren’t as discrete as a lot of people believe. Our conversation has been edited for clarity, but not really so much for length.

Read the full interview

Buy the book David Fincher: Mind Games. By Adam Nayman

Because We Love Making Movies: Screenwriter Eric Roth

Eren Celeboglu
Because We Love Making Movies (Instagram, Facebook)

Part 1

May 22, 2021

Today, I sit down with legendary screenwriter Eric Roth.

We talk about his life and his craft and why we should all be more generous of spirit. Truth be told, Eric has been involved in creating so many iconic films that it would have been impossible to try… so I asked him about the films of his that meant the most to me, and he held court and digressed in the loveliest of ways. I hope you have as much fun listening as I did recording this interview. Enjoy! 

Eric’s credits include: The Nickel Ride, The Drowning Pool, The Onion Field, Forrest Gump (for which he won an Oscar), The Postman (for which he won a Razzie), The Horse Whisperer, and then one of my favorite films ever, The Insider, followed by Ali, Munich, The Good Shepherd, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He’s also worked in Television, and seen not one but two sea changes, first with HBO, and then with Netflix and House of Cards. And much more recently he wrote A Star Is Born, Dune, and the new Western being Directed by Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon. He was also a producer on the Oscar nominated Mank, directed by David Fincher, from a script by Fincher’s father.

Listen to the podcast:

Because We Love Making Movies
Apple Podcasts
Spotify

Part 2

October 18, 2021

Today we welcome back the legendary Eric Roth. An Oscar-Winning Screenwriter & Producer.

We talk about how he writes, and blends craft with pure inspiration. He talks about working with Robert Redford. We re-visit Munich & The Good Shepherd. He talks about being re-written, and his unique creative partnership with Bradley Cooper & Lady Gaga on A Star Is Born. And last but not least, we talk about writing the new Dune film which he thinks just might be something very special.

It’s a wonderful conversation with one of the very best working in Hollywood today, whose generous not only with his talent, but his spirit. Dig it!

Recommended Viewing: The Horse Whisperer, Munich, The Good Shepherd, A Star Is Born (2018), and Dune (See it in IMAX on October 22, 2021)

Listen to the podcast:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify

VFX Notes: David Fincher and the rise of invisible VFX

Hugo Guerra (Twitter) & Ian Failes (Twitter)
October 2, 2021
Hugo’s Desk (YouTube, Patreon, Twitter, Facebook) / befores & afters

On this episode of VFX Notes, Hugo Guerra from Hugo’s Desk and Ian Failes from befores & afters dive deep into the visual effects in David Fincher films. We take an especially close look at Digital Domain‘s work for Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Chapters:
00:00:00 – Intro
00:04:20 – Zodiac and the rise of invisible VFX
00:09:09 – The rise of D2 and Foundry‘s Nuke
00:18:31 – David Fincher’s methods and Zodiac‘s murder scenes
00:30:03 – Environments by DD and Matte World
00:43:41 – The VFX of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
00:57:27 – The VFX of The Social Network
01:03:15 – The VFX of Mindhunter
01:09:51 – Wrap up
01:12:45 – Patreon, YouTube members and Twitch Subs Credits

Listen to the podcast:

befores & afters
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Google Podcasts