“We Don’t Find Shots, We Build Them”: DP Erik Messerschmidt on Mank, Lens Flare Painting and Native Black and White

Matt Mulcahey
December 22, 2020
Filmmaker

In 1941, a 25-year-old Orson Welles made one of cinema’s most auspicious debuts by directing, co-writing, starring in and producing Citizen Kane. With Mank—David Fincher’s look at the evolution of Kane’s screenplay—cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt makes an impressive feature bow of his own. 

After working his way up through the ranks of grip and electric and earning DP credits on the shows Legion, Mindhunter and Fargo, Messerschmidt’s very first fiction feature has landed him in the midst of Oscar conversation. With Mank now streaming on Netflix, Messerschmidt spoke with Filmmaker about deep focus, high ISOs and painting in lens flares; and how even when working with David Fincher you “start compromising when you get out of bed in the morning.”

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‘Mank’: How the Cinematography of David Fincher’s Film Took Inspiration From ‘Citizen Kane’

Gary Oldman, as Herman J. Mankiewicz, holds forth at a dinner party at William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon home, created at Los Angeles Center Studios. “The room is dark and it’s made to look musty and cold,” says cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt.

While legendary DP Gregg Toland and the indelible images he created for Orson Welles’ masterpiece inspired the new movie, the director and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt aimed for a look that suggests an echo, not a copy.

Carolyn Giardina
December 22, 2020
The Hollywood Reporter

Gregg Toland is one of the most influential cinematographers of all time, and his work on Orson Welles‘ Citizen Kane (1941) — with innovations including deep focus, which keeps the foreground, middle ground and background all looking sharp — is iconic. So when director David Fincher and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt set out to make Mank, the Netflix drama that stars Gary Oldman as screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz in the throes of writing Kane, Toland’s efforts had to be carefully considered.

“David and I talked at length about it. That was something we wanted to echo and reference and pay homage to, but we weren’t really trying to emulate it,” says Messerschmidt, who earned an Emmy nomination this year for Fincher’s Netflix crime series Mindhunter. “We didn’t want people to necessarily look at the film and be like, ‘Oh, it’s Gregg Toland’s work.’ We were trying to keep the photography story-driven and within the narrative of what we were trying to translate to the audience.”

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HPA NET Critical Conversations with Peter Mavromates

Two Decades of Inventing Digital Workflows: Lessons from One of the Masters

Mark Chiolis
December 20, 2020
HPA

The new David Fincher movie, Mank, released on Netflix on December 4th of this year, was originally scheduled to be produced in 1999 but didn’t happen due to a number of factors. In 2007 Fincher released Zodiac which was one of the first major theatrical features to be shot in a digital environment around a completely new file-based workflow that would revolutionize the industry over the next decade.

Peter Mavromates, the post production supervisor on Zodiac and a number of other Fincher projects over the years, including a co-Producer credit on Mank, joins Critical Conversations to discuss how digital workflows have grown and evolved over the last 15 years. Peter will talk about helping to design the early workflows on Zodiac, continuing to build it with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the ongoing developments created for Mank, and what’s next for the future.

Peter Mavromates has worked in post production for more than 35 years.  He saw the future of “film” when he walked into a high-end video facility in New York called Charlex.  Working at Charlex while still in “film” school in the NYU Grad Film Program, he saw the beauty of film (read ACETATE) and the power of electronic (read ANALOG VIDEO transitioning to DIGITAL) and watched as those two processes merged and mutated throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s.  Peter produced his first DI on Panic Room in 2002, and his first DI of a digitally acquired movie on Zodiac in 2007. Most of the last 25 years have been spent working on projects with David Fincher, but he has also worked with Quentin Tarantino, Stephen Gaghan, and George Clooney.

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Film Roundtable: Jeff Cronenweth, Erik Messerschmidt, and Phedon Papamichael

Matthew Woolf
December 18, 2020
Film Roundtable (Instagram)

In our latest Film Roundtable discussion we talked with Jeff Cronenweth, Erik Messerschmidt, and Phedon Papamichael about how the love of the image fosters the collaborative relationship amongst Cinematographers.

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Composers of the Year Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: “It’s Been an Intimidating Journey”

With Mank and Soul, the two musicians stepped out of their comfort zone in 2020

Michael Roffman and Spencer Kaufman
December 18, 2020
Consequence of Sound

Our Annual Report continues today with the announcement of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as our Composers of the Year. Stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles in the days and weeks to come about the best music, film, and TV of the year. If you’ve missed any part of our Annual Report, you can check out all the coverage here. 

“You’re naming us Best Composers of All Time, right,” Trent Reznor asks over the phone. His partner-in-crime Atticus Ross laughs on another line. He’s joking, of course, but he’s also not exactly out of his element. While all-time might be a stretch — at least, for now — the two are certainly in contention for the last decade. After all, it’s been a wild 10 years for Reznor and Ross, one that began with a deafening bang.

That big bang arrived at the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011, when Reznor and Ross triumphed over the likes of Hans Zimmer and Alexandre Desplat to win Best Original Score for David Fincher’s The Social Network. Their debut score wound up being an opening salvo as Hollywood came calling — and fast. Since then, they’ve amassed an eclectic resume that most composers spend decades building up.

They’ve worked with veterans (Peter Berg, Susanne Bier), they’ve gone indie (Jonah Hill, Trey Edward Schulz), they’ve even found success on television (HBO’s Watchmen). Yet none of their collaborations have felt more succinct than their ensuing work with Fincher. They’re the Bernard Herrmann to his Alfred Hitchcock, the Giovanni Fusco to his Michelangelo Antonioni, the John Williams to his Steven Spielberg.

It’s a fitting marriage, not only in sound, but also in mind. Fincher is a perfectionist — meticulous for details, particular with pictures — and that ideology is right in line with Reznor and Ross (see: Nine Inch Nails, How to Destroy Angels). The two parties are carnivorous for challenges, and their working relationship has been nothing but a series of hurdles. Hurdles that have only notched higher and higher as the years pass them.

Mank is by far their most arduous collaboration yet. As if making a movie about the greatest movie of all time wasn’t tough enough, Reznor and Ross tasked themselves in using only period-authentic instruments from the 1940s. It’s a major departure from anything the two have done up to this point, eschewing their industrial minimalism for a dusty assortment of horns, swinging tempos, and nostalgia-tinged sounds.

Yet Fincher wasn’t the only call Reznor and Ross received, as far as 2020 movies are concerned. Pixar also rang for their latest spirited venture, Soul. Working alongside Inside Out director Pete Docter, the two composers dove headfirst into the sprawling, animated underworld. Together, they dreamed up a specific piece of music for each one of the film’s imaginative locales: The Great Before, The Great Beyond, The Astral Plane, and The You Seminar.

So, yes, it’s been a year for Reznor and Ross. In celebration, Consequence of Sound spoke to the award-winning composers about their outstanding run through the past and purgatory. Together, they weighed in on their long-storied history with Fincher, flexing new muscles with old instruments, the differences in working with animation, and past scores that inspired them. Needless to say, there are many decades to come.

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Mank Cinematography with Erik Messerschmidt ASC

Ben Consoli
December 18, 2020
Go Creative Show

David Fincher’s highly-anticipated Netflix film MANK is here! Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt ASC explains how modern equipment and techniques were used to create an authentic-looking 1930s black and white film.

Erik and Go Creative Show host, Ben Consoli, discuss why they chose not to shoot on film, how shooting & lighting black and white is different than color, Erik’s philosophy on camera coverage, and so much more!

What you will learn in this episode:

  • Prep and working with David Fincher (03:31)
  • Authentic black and white visual approach (16:02)
  • Shooting with deep focus (21:44)
  • Lighting for black and white (23:15)
  • Lighting dissolve transitions in Mank (26:24)
  • Transforming 8K footage to look like film (30:43)
  • Why shooting on film was never considered (35:43)
  • Filtration used on Mank (40:30)
  • Philosophy on camera coverage (44:40)
  • Filming and lighting the election party (53:12)
  • Using ND filter contacts for actor eyes (57:40)
  • Production design in black and white (01:04:24)
  • And more!

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Mank Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt on Why He Didn’t Shoot on Celluloid, Classic Influences, and Modern Touches

Joshua Encinias
December 17, 2020
The Film Stage

Beginning his collaboration with David Fincher as a gaffer on Gone Girl, cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt’s third collaboration with the director has now arrived nearly a decade later. Mank follows alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz in his mad dash to finish the script for Citizen Kane, and Messerschmidt’s playful interpolation of Gregg Toland’s iconic cinematography is a sight to behold in every frame.

I spoke with Messerschmidt about his work with Fincher on Mindhunter organically leading to Mank, how Fincher doesn’t accept “much of anything he can’t control,” emulating the look of 1940s cinema without trying to perfectly recreate it, and he provides a list of movies he studied in preparation for Mank. 

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Classic Movie Musts: Mank (2020) with special guest Sydney Stern

Max Baril
December 15, 2020
Classic Movie Musts

In this episode we welcome back Sydney Stern, author of the book The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics, to help discuss David Fincher‘s new film, MANK (2020), starring Gary Oldman.

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Support Classic Movie Musts on Patreon and get access to our weekly exclusive podcast, Classic Movie Musts: Double Feature, and our monthly exclusive podcast, Max’s Movie Musts.

The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics.
By Sydney Ladensohn Stern:

Front Row: David Fincher

John Wilson
December 17, 2020
Front Row (BBC, Radio 4)

Visionary director David Fincher on Mank, his new film about 1930s Hollywood, as seen through the eyes of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) as he races to finish Citizen Kane with Orson Welles.

Mank‘s screenplay is by Fincher’s father Jack Fincher, who started writing it in the early 1990s and died in 2003.

David Fincher’s other films, which have earned thirty Oscar nominations, include Fight Club, Se7en, The Zodiac, The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Gone Girl, and Panic Room.

Fincher also talks about the future of cinema, streaming, and his early career as a director of iconic music videos such as Madonna‘s Vogue and George Michael‘s Freedom.

Mank is released on Netflix.

Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Timothy Prosser
Studio Manager: Emma Harth

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Front Row (BBC, Radio 4)
BBC Sounds

So, Why Does Bill Nye Play Upton Sinclair in Mank?

Nate Jones
December 16, 2020
Vulture

One of the big surprises of David Fincher’s Mank is that it turns out to be just as much about Upton Sinclair as it is about Herman Mankiewicz. In this version of Hollywood history, Mankiewicz was spurred to write Citizen Kane due to his guilt over the Hollywood dirty-tricks campaign that sank Sinclair’s 1934 campaign for governor of California. The Jungle author makes a brief appearance at a rally in Mank, at which point we get another of the film’s big surprises: Sinclair is played by none other than Bill Nye. Yes, the Science Guy. It’s unconventional casting, but it works. Stripped of his lab coat and bow tie, Nye is a little hard to place. He comes off as an avuncular, trustworthy orator; it’s only afterward when you realize, Wait, was that Bill Nye?

We naturally had some questions about how the whole thing came out. Luckily, Nye was happy to jump on a Zoom call and discuss the story behind his cameo.

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