David Fincher is known for his distinctive directorial style, which is on full display in Fight Club. Some of his trademarks include dark, moody lighting; long takes with fluid camera movements; and cryptic opening sequences that set the tone. In Fight Club, he uses desaturated colors and low lighting to create a gritty, hyperreal world for the characters. The opening sequence takes the viewer on a trip through the main character's brain. Fincher shot on location in decaying urban areas to further immerse the audience in the nihilistic worldview of the story.

1. Film Style in Fight Club
DAVID FINCHER AS AUTEUR

2. David Fincher

3. David Fincher Trade Mark
• Single frame insert: His movies often features several single frames that
flash on the screen in the middle of a scene
• Fluid tracking camera which can access anywhere; a digital age innovation in
camera movement pioneered by David Fincher and Kevin Tod Haug along with BUF
Paris
• Silhouettes: Frequently has characters in the shadows where you cannot make
out their face (Kevin Spacey in Se7en (1995) and Brad Pitt in Fight Club
(1999)).
• His films often end in a suicide, either attempted or successful
• His films often have low-key lighting with green or blue tinted colour
temperature.
• Wide shots
• Frequently casts Brad Pitt (Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999), The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button (2008)).
• Downbeat endings
• Often displays end credits as slide shows (Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button) or scrolling downward (Se7en) rather than the
traditional upward scroll.
• Low angles
• Backstories filled with flashbacks
• Stationary shot, unfocused background with character walking into focus
• Posters almost always feature close-ups of characters' faces
• Frequently collaborates with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for musical
scores (Social Network & The girl with the dragon Tattoo)

4. The following videos are from film critics Matt Zoller Seitz
and Aaron Aradillas takes a critical approach to the opening
credits/title sequences to the films of American auteur David
Fincher
Panic Room, Alien 3, Se7en, Fight Club & Zodiac
http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/keywords/credit%20sequence
David Fincher, is a master of form; there's usually a reason behind
every shot and cut in his movies—a big-picture sensibility that
explains every choice. That includes credit sequences, an aspect of
Fincher's filmmaking that's examined in this five-part series of video
essays. From the brazenly spectacular sequences that open Se7en and
Fight Club to the more sedate, elegant openings of Alien³, Panic Room,
and Zodiac, Fincher cements his reputation as a big-budget utility
infielder, trying his hand at many different genres, but always
letting the story dictate how he tells it

5. • What do they opening sequences tell us about Fincher's approach to film
making?
• Why do you think he invests so much time and creative energy into the opening
sequences of his films?
• How well do they capture the essence of his films and establish key themes?
To understand the ideological complexities of Fight Club we need to seriously
consider Fincher's status as an auteur and if the film does represent a repeated
concern with specific themes and characters

6. • Studio executives Mechanic and Ziskin planned an initial
budget of $23 million to finance the film, but by the start
of production, the budget was increased to $50 million.
• Half was paid by New Regency, but during filming, the
projected budget escalated to $67 million.
• New Regency's head and Fight Club executive producer Arnon
Milchan petitioned Fincher to reduce costs by at least $5
million.
• The director refused, so Milchan threatened Mechanic that New
Regency would withdraw financing.
• Mechanic sought to restore Milchan's support by sending him
tapes of dailies from Fight Club. After seeing three weeks of
filming, Milchan reinstated New Regency's financial backing.
The final production budget was $63 million.

7. • The filming lasted 138 days, during which Fincher shot
more than 1,500 rolls of film, three times the average
for a Hollywood film.
• The locations were in and around Los Angeles and on
sets built at the studio in Century City. Production
designer Alex McDowell constructed more than 70 sets.
• The exterior of Tyler Durden's house was built in San
Pedro, California, while the interior was built on a
sound stage at the studio's location.
• The interior was given a decayed look to illustrate
the deconstructed world of the characters.
• Marla Singer's apartment was based on photographs of
the Rosalind Apartments in downtown LA.
• Overall production included 300 scenes, 200 locations,
and complex special effects.

8. • Fincher hired Jeff Cronenweth as cinematographer and they applied a
lurid style, choosing to make people "sort of shiny".
• The appearance of the narrator's scenes without Tyler Durden were
bland and realistic.
• The scenes with Tyler were described by Fincher as "more hyper-real
in a torn-down, deconstructed sense—a visual metaphor of what [the
narrator is] heading into".
• The filmmakers used heavily desaturated colours in the costuming,
makeup, and art direction.
• Helena Bonham Carter wore opalescent makeup to portray her romantic
nihilistic character with a "smack-fiend patina".
• Fincher and Cronenweth drew influences from the 1973 film American
Graffiti, which applied a mundane look to night-time exteriors while
simultaneously including a variety of colours.

9. • Fight Club was filmed mostly at night and Fincher purposely filmed
the daytime shots in shadowed locations.
• The crew equipped the bar's basement with inexpensive work lamps to
create a background glow.
• Fincher avoided stylish camerawork when filming early fight scenes
in the basement and instead placed the camera in a fixed position.
• In later fight scenes, Fincher moved the camera from the viewpoint
of a distant observer to that of the fighter.

10. • The scenes with Tyler Durden were staged to conceal that the
character was a mental projection of the nameless narrator.
The character was not filmed in two shots with a group of
people, nor was he shown in any over the shoulder shots in
scenes where Tyler gives the narrator specific ideas to
manipulate him. In scenes before the narrator meets Tyler,
the filmmakers inserted Tyler's presence in single frames for
subliminal effect. Tyler appears in the background and out of
focus, like a
"little devil on the shoulder".
Fincher explained the subliminal frames:
"Our hero is creating Tyler Durden in his own mind, so at this
point he exists only on the periphery of the narrator's
consciousness."

11. The film's title sequence is a 90-second visual effects composition that
depicts the inside of the narrator's brain at a microscopic level; the
camera pulls back to the outside, starting at his fear centre and
following the thought processes initiated by his fear impulse. The
sequence, designed in part by Fincher, was budgeted separately from the
rest of the film at first, but the sequence was awarded by the studio in
January 1999. The company mapped the computer-generated brain using an L-
system, and the design was detailed using renderings by medical
illustrator Katherine Jones. The pullback sequence from within the brain
to the outside of the skull included neurons, action potentials, and a
hair follicle. Haug explained the artistic license that Fincher took with
the shot,
"While he wanted to keep the brain passage looking like electron
microscope photography, that look had to be coupled with the feel of a
night dive—wet, scary, and with a low depth of field."
The shallow depth of field was accomplished with the ray tracing process.

12. Other visual effects include an early scene in which the camera flashes past city streets to survey
Project Mayhem's destructive equipment lying in underground parking lots; the sequence was a
three-dimensional composition of nearly 100 photographs of Los Angeles and Century City by
photographer Michael Douglas Middleton. The final scene of the demolition of the credit card office
buildings was designed by Richard Baily of Image Savant; Baily worked on the scene for over
fourteen months

13. His visual style is unique, always dark and gothic. Always
flashy - and Fight Club is his masterpiece in that account. Its
story might be not as straightforward as the one of Seven but
the style just carries you away - from the masterful opening
sequence to the end. Fincher uses a couple of really cool
ideas:
• Voice over: Done a lot, but seldom this well. Ed Norton
comments the scenes, explains - and makes fun of characters
etc.
• Back jumps: Within the movie, the film sometimes just stops
for Pitt / Norton to explain something. E.g.; "let me tell
you something about Tyler Durden".
• Freaky inserts: we see Brad Pitt for just one frame about 4
times in the movie. Blink and miss.
• Special Effects: Some neat effects like a penguin, collapsing
buildings, the interior of a brain, a plane crash - and Ed
Norton inside an Ikea-catalogue.

14. What is David Finchers Visual Style? Comment upon
1. Opening sequences- Why are they important?
2. Lighting- How does it set the mood?
3. Narrative- What are the similarities between the films he has made and fight club?
4. Colour – What is his colour palette? Why is this important?
5. Camera work – Fincher uses repetative camera techniques, what are they? And what
effect do they have on the audience?
6. Location – There is a pattern in Finchers choice of location. What are his locations and
what is the importance of them?