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.
Erik Messerschmidt, ASC shoots two stories about men whose business and private lives spin out of control.
Patricia Thomson
January 2024
American Cinematographer
A pair of films shot by Erik Messerschmidt, ASC premiered at the Venice International Film Festival last August, and both were collaborations with leading directors: David Fincher’s The Killer and Michael Mann’s Ferrari. Messerschmidt recently spoke with AC from Spain about his work on each production.
The Killer | A Devil of a Job
Fincher and Messerschmidt didn’t discuss the look of The Killer as much as its tempo and structure.
Adapted from a graphic-novel series, the film follows a methodical, nameless assassin (played by Michael Fassbender) whose life spirals out of control after a job goes horribly wrong in Paris. He tries to restore a sense of order by punishing those responsible.
Messerschmidt won an Academy Award for Fincher’s Mank (AC Feb.’21), and his collaborations with the director span the Netflix series Mindhunter and the feature Gone Girl — with Messerschmidt serving as gaffer for Jeff Cronenweth, ASC (AC Nov. ’14) on the latter.
“David is fastidious,” he says. “He is very prepared, but very collaborative and considerate of what it is everyone’s bringing to the project. He shares his goals for the film with you, and he shares the techniques that he wants to use in a really elegant way. So, you begin to understand quite quickly what he’s looking to achieve on a given shot, a given scene or even on a given film.
“On this film, David was particularly interested in exploring The Killer’s state of mind through the camera’s perspective,” recalls Messerschmidt. “The Killer in his natural state is very much in control of his environment — nothing surprises him, and we wanted the audience to immediately connect to his confidence.”
Read the full double feature in the January Issue of American Cinematographer
Jake Ratcliffe, Joe Cannon
December 8, 2023
CVP
Leitz SUMMILUX-C lenses and RED V-RAPTOR and RED Komodo cameras.
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Notice the VFX foliage in the out-of-focus foreground.
The Killer: Michael Fassbender
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC UNIT
Director of Photography: Erik Messerschmidt, ACE
A Camera Operator: Brian S. Osmond
A Camera First Assistant: Alex Scott
B Camera First Assistant: Brian Wells
A Camera Second Assistant: Jonathan Clark
B Camera Second Assistant: Matt Gaumer
A Dolly Grip: Dwayne Barr
B Dolly Grip: Mike Mull
Idea and BTS Video: Cate Adams, Costume Designer
Location: Dominican Republic
Editor: Leonard Zelig (The Fincher Analyst)
Jazz Tangcay
November 17, 2023
Variety
‘The Killer’ Cinematographer on the Opening Scene of David Fincher’s Thriller and Making Michael Fassbender’s ‘Nest’
Valerie Wu
November 18, 2023
Variety
How do you get into a killer’s head?
It starts with situating yourself within their perspective, as “The Killer” cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt says.
That perspective was firmly established in the film’s opening sequence where subjectivity was key. The Parisian opening scene features the titular character — the assassin known only as “The Killer” played by Michael Fassbender who readies himself to kill a target in the building across from him.
Messerschmidt who sat down with Variety expressed that his familiarity and previous work with “The Killer” director David Fincher shortened the process of bringing the script to life. For Messerschmidt and Fincher, the goal was to hone in on the core themes of the story, and then start delving into the details from here.
Wally Pfister, ASC
November 16, 2023
American Cinematographer
In this episode, cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, ASC is joined by interviewer Wally Pfister, ASC to discuss his work on The Killer — the neo-noir thriller from director David Fincher that follows an assassin on the run after a botched hit job.
In The Killer, the titular antihero misses one of his intended targets for the first time in his career, and is forced to flee and survive the inevitable consequences. The film marks the second Fincher-directed feature shot by Messerschmidt, following the 2020 film Mank, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
In this interview, Messerschmidt discusses the film’s Paris-inspired color palette; how he shot scenes “loosely” or “rigidly,” based on the main character’s degrees of control over varying situations; how he approached the lighting for a complex fight scene; how he incorporated planned postproduction decisions for lighting, flares and camera destabilization into his workflow; and what he learned about what an audience sees versus what it hears.
Erik Messerschmidt, ASC first emerged as a filmmaker when he was hired by Society member and mentor Mark Doering-Powell on several features as a grip and later gaffer. After Messerschmidt served as Society member Jeff Cronenweth‘s gaffer on the David Fincher-directed Gone Girl (2014), Cronenweth encouraged Fincher to hire Messerschmidt to photograph the Netflix series Mindhunter. Messerschmidt would reunite with Fincher for their 2020 feature Mank, which earned him an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
Wally Pfister, ASC is a filmmaker whose cinematography credits include the Christopher Nolan features Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010). He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography for all of these works, winning one for Inception in 2011.
Jack Giroux
November 14, 2023
The Credits (MPA)
David Fincher’s lean, mean The Killer is a film stripped down to its bare essentials, much like the work of its titular assassin. Based on a French graphic novel and adapted by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en), Fincher’s adaptation tells the story of an unnamed killer (Michael Fassbender) and the strict, self-imposed protocols of his trade. It’s the rules of the process that concern the titular character, not moral dilemmas, yet they become unbearably intertwined after he botches an assignment, and the fallout affects someone he loves.
On the surface, The Killer is a revenge story. Once the job goes terribly wrong and his partner, Magdala (Sophie Charlotte), suffers violent consequences, Fassbender’s nameless assassin breaks his own rules to track down those responsible. The Killer is a world of shadows, sociopaths, and the people they prey on. For Fassbender’s antihero, feeling like the prey is a novel concept, and he’s determined to do anything to realign the world so he fits back in as a proper predator.
Once again, the director collaborates with cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, who has been Fincher’s DP on Mindhunter and Mank. With The Killer, Messerschmidt helps Fincher place the viewer into the cramped, icy perspective of the titular character with a grace that belies the chaos he creates. We spoke to Messerschmidt about his working relationship with Fincher and what it was like to bring The Killer to life.
The film reflects the muted yellow and green colour palette of its graphic novel inspiration.
Oscar-winning DP Erik Messerschmidt ASC reteams with David Fincher for a live-action comic book adaptation that required a meticulous approach to its cinematography.
James Mottram
November 2023
British Cinematographer
When Erik Messerschmidt ASC got the call from David Fincher to work on his new film The Killer, it was an offer that arrived almost as stealthily as its lethal protagonist. “He only ever [asks] once he knows he’s going to make the film,” says the American-born cinematographer, who previously collaborated with Fincher across two seasons of the Netflix series Mindhunter (2017-2019) and the acclaimed Hollywood-set period tale Mank (2020), which won Messerschmidt an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. The Killer, an adaptation of the French graphic novel, written by Alexis “Matz” Nolent, offered a whole different set of challenges, however.
This tense, taut thriller follows a nameless assassin, played by Michael Fassbender, who is fighting for his life after a job he undertakes in Paris goes disastrously wrong. “When I first read it, I was so excited about how little dialogue is in the film. It’s all voiceover,” explains Messerschmidt. “Normally, when you shoot a scene in a narrative film, you’re shooting actors predominantly talking to each other. And this film… on the set it was quite a quiet place. Which is really, really interesting. And it changes the dynamic enormously.”
To borrow the film’s cunning tagline, “Execution is everything”, and making The Killer became a meticulous experience for Messerschmidt and his team. Choreographing the camera to reflect the perspective of Fassbender’s killer, as he watches from the shadows, required absolute perfection. “It became very much about precision,” he says. “It’s an enormous amount of pressure on the camera operator [Brian S. Osmond] on this film.” Every step of the background artists was accounted for, like an elaborate dance. “So, it’s all sort of in concert…[that] is the intention most of the time.”
If you are a subscriber, read the full profile in issue 120 of British Cinematographer
Seth Emmons
November 2023
Cinematography World / Leitz Cine
American cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt ASC reunited with director David Fincher for The Killer, the pair’s third collaboration following the Academy Award-winning feature film Mank (2020) and the critically-acclaimed series Mindhunter. The new Netflix Original neo-noir thriller is adapted from the eponymous graphic novel by French writer Alexis “Matz” Nolent and follows an unnamed assassin played, by Michael Fassbender, on a global hunt for revenge, only to find himself the subject of an international manhunt after a after a hit goes wrong.
Principal photography on the film began in November 2021 and wrapped in March 2022, with filming taking place in Paris, Dominican Republic and New Orleans, Louisiana, and St Charles in Illinois. Messerschmidt is quick to point out that The Killer is not a caper, but an exercise in observing the journey of a fascinating character, a professional who considers himself separate from the masses. But, when his meticulous planning goes wrong, the framework of his world gets knocked off balance as well.
The Killer exemplifies the decisive filmmaking style that Fincher has become known for and Messerschmidt embraces this methodology when working together.
“The Killer is probably the most precise movie I’ve ever worked on,” he says. “There’s something to be said for spontaneity and the moments between the moments that you capture in an unexpected way, and I would never want to detract from the value of that. But, to me the most satisfying way of filmmaking is trying to be as sublime as possible. It’s hard work and you have to know where you’re going at every step to achieve it. It’s all about previsualisation and the pursuit of those ideas.”
“Sculpture is a great metaphor for how David works. He strips away anything extra – from the camera movement to the performance to the set dressing – and focusses on what the audience needs to learn from each scene. There’s no showing-off because it’s all about telling the story in the clearest, most effective way. The artistry presents itself in the micro decisions. This frame or that frame? Should the camera be here, or a foot further back? It becomes much more nuanced.”
Read the full profile on the Leitz Cine website
Read the full profile on Cinematography World (soon)
Oscar-winner Erik Messerschmidt, ASC, draws a bead on the mind of an assassin in David Fincher’s The Killer.
Kevin Martin
October 26, 2023
ICG Magazine
Consider this promotional material for the 1969 assassin-at-a-crossroads film Hard Contract: “Everything they do is 97 percent control and 3 percent emotion.” Compare that with the mantra from the nameless lead character in The Killer, director David Fincher’s newest feature for Netflix, shot by Oscar-winner Erik Messerschmidt, ASC. “Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don’t improvise. Trust no one. Never yield an advantage. Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight.”
It sounds pretty much the same, right? Both help illustrate the heart of a broad subgenre of films that includes Anton Corbijn’s The American (shot by Martin Ruhe, ASC), the aforementioned Hard Contract (shot by Jack Hildyard, BSC), The Eiger Sanction (shot by Frank Stanley, ASC, former IATSE Local 659 president) and Fred Zinnemann’s The Day of the Jackal (shot by Jean Tournier.) The common locus revolves around the assassin as a high-functioning sociopath, able to operate effortlessly in various circles without being found out. Given the inherent complexity of such a character type, it is easy to see how Fincher was able to attract Michael Fassbender to take the lead role.
Derived from a long-running graphic novel series by author Alexis “Matz” Nolent, The Killer had been in gestation by Fincher for close to fifteen years. Depicting a murder-for-hire gone awry and its aftermath, the film is viewed through the eye of a seasoned assassin (Fassbender), who now finds himself a target and must seek out not only his erstwhile employers but also those they have deployed against him.
Messerschmidt’s history with Fincher began as Chief Lighting Technician on Gone Girl [ICG Magazine October 2014] before going on to shoot his Mindhunter series and then, in 2021, winning the Oscar for Mank. Messerschmidt had also shot episodes of Fargo, Legion and Raised by Wolves, and, more recently, the WWII aerial epic Devotion [ICG Magazine December 2022]. “What I initially found interesting about the script was how it is almost wholly absent of dialog,” Messerschmidt describes. “There is a significant amount of voice-over, a lot of which was present in the first script, but very little is spoken on screen – so in a sense, it’s like a silent film. This meant the way we told the story with the camera was that much more important. It’s an adaptation of a graphic novel, which are told in a similar way. I was fascinated by that kind of challenge.”
The Fincher Analyst 