VFX Notes: Fight Club 25th Anniversary. CGI, photogrammetry, fat suits and soap

Hugo Guerra & Ian Failes
October 15, 2022
Hugo’s Desk / befores & afters

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

Holt McCallany Answers Every Question We Have About “Fight Club”

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.

Read the full interview

Cool Girl Catharsis: box-cutting open the deep impact of the titular “Gone Girl”, Amy Dunne

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.

Mia Lee Vicino
October 3, 2024
Letterboxd

This article contains spoilers for ‘Gone Girl’.

“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.

Read the full article

This Shot from “Seven” is Not a Visual Effects Shot

Todd Vaziri, VFX Compositing Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic
October 16, 2024
FXRant

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.

Read the full article

Frame & Reference Podcast: “Jim Henson: Idea Man” DPs Igor Martinovic and Vanja Černjul

Kenny McMillan
August 22, 2024
Frame & Reference

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.

Listen to the podcast:

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‘The Best of the Best’: Honoring the Magic, Guts, and Generational Talent of Cinematographer Harris Savides

Harris Savides (Jason McCormick)

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.  

Chris O’Falt
August 15, 2024
IndieWire

This article is part of IndieWire’s 2000s Week celebration. Click here for a whole lot more.

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.”

Read the full profile

Litepanels ‘Inspired By’ Episode 3: David Fincher

Garrett Sammons & Quinton Myricks
July 31, 2024
Litepanels

In this episode of Inspired By, we step into the meticulously crafted universe of David Fincher. Host Garrett Sammons welcomes director Quinton Myricks to lift the veil on Fincher’s signature chilling style.

Join us live as we uncover how he utilizes reverse key lighting, reflections, and harsh light to craft his hauntingly beautiful worlds.

03:15: Introducing Quinton Myricks
07:30: Scene breakdown 1
16:30: Scene breakdown 2
22:48: Scene breakdown 3

Products Discussed: Gemini 1×1 Hard, Gemini 1×1 Soft, Gemini 2×1 Soft

Follow Litepanels: Instagram, Facebook, Ex-Twitter

Follow Garrett Sammons: YouTube, Instagram

Follow Quinton Myricks: Instagram

‘Inspired By’ Episode 1: Roger Deakins
‘Inspired By’ Episode 2: The Bear

Gregory Crewdson Has Been Making Photographs for Almost 4 Decades. Now He’s Revisiting Them All.

In tandem with his first-ever retrospective at the Albertina, a new book pairs the prolific photographer’s work with writings from directors David Fincher and Matthieu Orléan, and novelist Emily St. John Mandel, among others.

Maggie Coughlan
August 7, 2024
Vanity Fair

“I’ve always said that I think every artist has one central story to tell,” photographer Gregory Crewdson says on a call from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he lives and works. “And they circle around that story, over and over again, over a lifetime, reinventing aspects of it and challenging others and trying to push things forward. But at the core of it, it’s like the central preoccupations remain fixed.”

The concept is particularly timely for the photographer, who for the past three-and-a-half decades has been constructing gripping images that call to mind film stills, as his first-ever retrospective opened in May at the Albertina in Vienna. Later this month, the eponymous exhibition takes new form with the release of Gregory Crewdson, its 280-page catalogue edited by the Albertina’s chief curator of photography Walter Moser and published by Prestel. The book features more than 300 photographs and production stills that examine the complexities of American suburbia, be it through someone wandering a parking lot, shirtless and unmoored, or a twosome’s forlorn gazes into a television as its glow illuminates a basement, paired with writings from directors David Fincher and Matthieu Orléan, and novelist Emily St. John Mandel, among others.

Gregory Crewdson – Walter Moser, Editor (Prestel, 2024)

For Crewdson, the process of revisiting nearly 40 years of work was “complicated,” but led him to draw parallels between his earliest endeavors and present-day work. “It’s interesting in that on some basic level everything’s changed and then on another level, nothing’s changed really,” he says. “When I look back at pictures I made when I was in graduate school, [those are] the first pictures in the show, they’re not that dissimilar in terms of the basic concerns—on a much more modest scale, of course.”

In advance of the catalogue’s release, Crewdson spoke with Vanity Fair about the possibility of making the switch from photography to directing feature-length films, and the story he’s been telling all these years.

Read the full interview

A sample of the writing by David Fincher, “A Difficult Truth”:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Buy the book through the publisher

“Zodiac” 4K UHD Blu-ray 3-disc Set

Paramount is releasing the 4K UHD Blu-ray + Blu-Ray + Digital Copy of David Fincher‘s Zodiac (2007) on October 29.

Based on the true story of the notorious serial killer and the intense manhunt he inspired, Zodiac is a superbly crafted thriller from the director of Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network. Featuring an outstanding ensemble cast led by Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chloë Sevigny, Anthony Edwards, and Brian Cox, Zodiac is a searing and singularly haunting examination of twin obsessions: one man’s desire to kill and another’s quest for the truth.

The 4K UHD Blu-ray + Blu-Ray + Digital Copy of Zodiac is available for preorder at Amazon.

It’s not yet confirmed if the Director’s Cut will be included in 4K UHD. The recent 4K UHD HDR release for streaming is the Theatrical Cut.

Going back in time to watch the filming of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

A set visit, shocks and discovering there’s no time like the present…

Nev Pierce
July 21, 2024
The Fall Will Probably Kill You (Substack)

Nothing else that is so certain is as surprising as age. This first struck me a few years ago when my eldest child turned 18 and, with spectacular solipsism, I thought: ‘Hang on, if my son is a man then that must mean I’m old.’ None of my own birthdays had hit so hard.

When I was a boy I used to believe – to hope, really – that one day I would, like Tom Hanks in Big, wake up and look in the mirror and find myself a fully formed adult, maybe with a caption saying, ‘10 years later’. Then you realise this is not a hope but basically a reality, as it’s a blink and you’re there (except I’d kill to have Hanks’ abs). As Jose Mourinho told Dele Alli, “I am 56 now and yesterday, yesterday, I was 20.”

I’m clinging to my mid-40s and realising the truth of this, as well as the reality that we’re never really adults – even our parents are not adults. Everyone is busking it. We never really feel grown up. As Martin Amis told Jude Rogers for Word magazine, in a quote she posted upon his death last year, “We’re like children all our lives, because every 10 years we have to acquaint ourselves with a new set of rules.”

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button deals with all of this, in a fantastical Hollywood romance, and at the time – certainly in my peer group – there was some confusion that David Fincher was interested in the heart rather than another head in the box. The film was grand, sweeping, and sad. Where was the bloodshed?

Read the full article, plus the 2008 set report for Total Film “History In The Making”, and the follow-up for Empire “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.

The Fall Will Probably Kill You is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support Nev Pierce‘s work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Watch the shorts by Nev Pierce, including Bricks, an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation starring Jason Flemyng and Blake Ritson, which David Fincher said about: “A morbid yet classy take on a morbid classic.”