Michael Tran/AFP (Getty Images) via ABC News
February 8, 2024
Hollywood Walk of Fame
Mark Ruffalo receives the 2,772nd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
MC: Hollywood Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Steve Nissen
Guest Speakers: Actor Tim McNeil, Director David Fincher (min. 22:29), and Actress Jennifer Garner.
Mark Ruffalo Rewatches 13 Going on 30, Poor Things, The Avengers, Zodiac & Spotlight
January 8, 2024
Vanity Fair (YouTube)
Gene Nagata
February 5, 2024
Potato Jet
Huge Shoutout to Claudio Miranda & the Crew.
Claudio Miranda, Director of Photography, ASC ACC: Instagram
Josh Davis, Gaffer
Yong Ok Lee, Production Designer
Robert Smathers, 1st AC
Angie Su, Director
Phone rigged by TILTA Khronos (still in development) but will be available publicly soon.
Two characters, four minutes, a brief exchange: Seven’s diner scene may be the most pivotal in the whole movie.
Ryan Lambie
February 6, 2024
Film Stories
Spoilers ahead for 1995’s Seven. Spoilers also ahead for 1995’s Se7en. Whichever way you spell it, consider yourself warned.
When Seven came out in 1995, it finally put David Fincher on the map as a filmmaking talent after the production nightmare he endured with Alien 3 only three years earlier. A mid-budget thriller elevated by its top-notch performances and unremittingly tense, grim tone, it also – as most readers will know – contained one of the most celebrated and discussed endings in film history.
Amid all the despair and violent murders, though, one quieter scene may be Seven’s most pivotal. It’s the moment where Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), the young wife of hot-headed detective Mills (Brad Pitt) surreptitiously meets Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) in a busy downtown diner. Ostensibly, she’s there to vent her feelings about moving from the comfort of the suburbs to a noisy and rundown metropolis (the city in Seven is never named, but it’s implied to be New York).
As the pair talk, though, Somerset astutely figures out that something more serious is bothering Tracy. She then reveals that she’s pregnant, and is unsure whether she wants to keep the baby, given they’ve just moved to a cramped apartment and her husband’s just taken on a demanding new job.
February 2, 2024
Failure On Command
David Fincher’s The Killer is a masterclass in filmmaking, particularly through its sound design, which does much to distinguish itself from modern mainstream movies. In this video essay, I discuss how The Killer’s sound design aids in its storytelling, allowing it to communicate information in a unique, gripping manner. I’ll also briefly touch on what makes this movie so competent and effective on a technical level.
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.
Follow Creative Industry Insight on Ex-Twitter and Instagram.
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.
The Fincher Analyst 