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.
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.
Edward Douglas
January 9, 2024
Below the Line
The last few years have been a whirlwind for Erik Messerschmidt, ASC. He had been working his way through the camera department for nearly two decades, including as a gaffer on David Fincher’s Gone Girl, before he began acting as DoP on a number of high-profile shows, one of them being Fincher’s Mindhunter for Netflix.
When Fincher decided to make Mank, his biopic about Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, as played by Gary Oldman, he brought Messersschmidt along with him to shoot the film in black and white. The movie was slightly hobbled by the pandemic that kept it from playing theatrically, but Messerschmidt won the Oscar for Cinematography, as well as the feature film category for the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).
Last year, Messerschmidt reunited with Fincher for his adaptation of the graphic novel, The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender as an assassin on a streak of vengeance after a job goes wrong. He also teamed up with the great Michael Mann to shoot his racing biopic, Ferrari, starring Adam Driver.
Below the Line spoke with the cinematographer a few months back when he was in Poland for EnergaCAMERIMAGE, although we got on Zoom with him from the States.
January 9, 2024
EnergaCAMERIMAGE Festival
Watch our interview with Erik Messerschmidt – famous cinematographer, who presented the film Ferrari directed by Michael Mann during this year’s edition of EnergaCAMERIMAGE Festival. We also discuss his collaborations with David Fincher in Mindhunter and The Killer.
Rian Johnson
November 15, 2023
Netflix: Behind the Streams
Director David Fincher and actor Michael Fassbender discuss making The Killer with moderator Rian Johnson at The Academy Museum in Los Angeles.
Watch The Killer on Netflix
Elvis Mitchell
October 24, 2023
Netflix: Behind the Streams
Director David Fincher, Editor Kirk Baxter, Writer Andrew Kevin Walker, Sound Designer Ren Klyce, and Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt, discuss their film The Killer with moderator Elvis Mitchell at The Academy Museum in Los Angeles.
Watch the conversation with subtitles in French, Spanish, and Italian.
Watch The Killer on Netflix
Froilan Fuentes
Jim Hemphill
November 9, 2023
West Coast POPCast (YouTube)
The Egyptian Theatre re-opened in Hollywood with a special screening of The Killer, followed by a Q&A with Director David Fincher and Sound Designer Ren Klyce hosted by Jim Hemphill.
Frédéric Bonnaud, Director of the Cinémathèque française
Anaïs Duchet, Interpreter
October 13, 2023
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française (French Cinematheque) hosted a David Fincher Retrospective from October 13 to 22, 2023, in Paris (France).
Supported by Netflix, Patron of the Cinémathèque, it opened with a preview screening of The Killer followed by a Q&A with Director David Fincher, and Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt, ASC.
The next day, a screening of Zodiac was followed by a discussion with the director about the film and his career.
Erik Messerschmidt talks about his approach to very different but equally excellent new films: “The Killer” and “Ferrari.”
Jim Hemphill
December 28, 2023
IndieWire
David Fincher‘s “The Killer” and Michael Mann‘s “Ferrari” are two of the most visually sophisticated films of the fall season, though their approaches are as different as those two directors’ sensibilities. “The Killer” is icy and deglamorized where “Ferrari” is smoking hot and visceral; Fincher puts his character under a microscope for the audience to study like a microbe, while Mann wants the audience in the driver’s seat with his passionate and committed characters. What the two films have in common is an attention to light, color, and framing as expressive tools that is exceptional in its precision; few movies in recent memory have guided the viewer’s eye in such an intentional and affecting manner. That’s because of something else these movies share: cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt.
Just seven years ago, Messerschmidt was a respected gaffer on series like “Mad Men” and “Bones.” That changed when, on the set of “Gone Girl,” Fincher recognized Messerschmidt’s taste and talent; he promoted the gaffer to director of photography on his Netflix series “Mindhunter,” which led to Messerschmidt’s collaboration with Fincher on “Mank.” Messerschmidt’s shimmering black-and-white photography on that movie earned him some well-deserved attention — and an Academy Award for his first cinematography credit on a feature film.
Unsurprisingly, Fincher returned to Messerschmidt when the time came to make “The Killer,” though the director of photography says the initial conversations were quite different. “It was unique because we didn’t really talk about the way the movie was meant to look at all,” Messerschmidt told IndieWire. “We talked about pace and structure and how he wanted to handle the voiceover and structure the scenes. We talked about the movie much more abstractly than when we were talking about ‘Mank.’ The palette and aesthetic came much later in the process.”
Julian Mitchell, editor, media maker publishing
December 18, 2023
NAB Amplify
NAB Amplify caught up with cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt just as he was about to fly to the Camerimage film festival in Poland, where Ferrari, his first film with director Michael Mann, was in competition. “An extraordinary experience, once in a lifetime,” was his on-the-spot reaction to the question, “How was it?”
But we wanted to talk to him about The Killer, a Netflix movie with an appearance in selected theaters at very selective times. Most people would wait for the stream and live with the Internet compression artifacts for the treat of a Fincher film, this time about a man who kills for a living. Cue Michael Fassbender, with sociopathic personality traits and an attention to detail that leaves nothing to chance; some reviews suggested that this man was a depiction of Fincher himself.
If you have seen previous films or television shows from the Fincher/Messerschmidt duo, especially 2018’s Mindhunter, you would be in a comfortable place from the get-go of The Killer: An avocado-colored LUT, exquisite scene management, and meticulous coverage. “Is this all you?” the DP was asked.
“It’s a thing that David and I do together. I enjoy the process of camera direction; I view it as sort of my principal job, really. It’s thinking about the structure of the film and of each scene. Every director’s interaction in terms of coverage and camera direction is different. It’s the first thing David and I discuss: structure and pacing. It’s almost an editorial conversation in terms of what we’re going to provide Kirk [Baxter, the editor] and how each scene breaks down in terms of the pace,” he said.
The Fincher Analyst 