A Case Study on David Fincher

David Fincher:

The link below is a video called 'David Fincher: a film title retrospective' this features a mixture of 9 films directed by Fincher. Including:

• Alien3 (1992)
• Se7en (1995)
• The Game (1997)
• Fight Club (1999)
• Panic Room (2002)
• Zodiac (2007)
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
• The Social Network (2010)
• The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo (2011)

http://vimeo.com/44890024

 1. Outline how Fincher approaches the creation of an opening title sequence for a film.
Fincher likes to use the name of the movie to create the opening title sequence. For example with the film The Game the first couple of credits which are titled: Polygram Filmed Entertainment Presents, A Propaganda Film Production, THE GAME all move on to the next slide by breaking the slide away with puzzle pieces this abides the name of the movie THE GAME and makes the viewer more interested. The title sequence then goes on to an old home video with the score (by Howard Shore) occuring a simple piano playing. The film starts off with a modern edge to the movie and then goes on to a memory. The contrast between them is that the game is the present time (the modern edge) and it may have something connected to the young boy and his father who frequantly pop up.
Reading the interview on http://www.artofthetitle.com Fincher had a lot of ideas himself for the title sequence on SE7EN but realised that none of them were as good as the ones, director Kyle Cooper had given him. Cooper gave Fincher ideas and Fincher was inspired by Cooper's previous creations and this is what they both came up with:

2. Deconstruct the opening of Fincher's film SE7EN (as shown above). Key words Denotation/connotation.

DENOTATION:

• The messy writing of the credits could be a denotation that the person the hands belong to are either very messy in their work or psychologically they are very messed up.
• The title SE7EN flashes and then disorientates this could be the denotation of the film being a psychologically disorientating film.

CONNOTATION:

• Flaking skin off fingers with a knife and then the high piched screech in the music could be a connotation of a woman screaming.
• The tea bag could be connoting blood as it leaks from the body just like the tea leaks from the bag.
• Dirty hands on clean paper connotes paedophilia-the cleanliness of the paper connotes an innocent young body and the dirty hand connotes the dirty mind of the paedophile or the dirty things that is going to happen to the body.

3. What kind of story world is signposted in the opening of  the film SE7EN?

I believe that the type of story world that is trying to be signposted in the opening of the film SE7EN is a psychological thriller/Horror. That includes a lot of murders because the books that are filmed during the opening have got pictures of dead, grey hands that are bent in the fingers and look slightly broken. Pictures of a man's head half shaven, pictures of naked babies, colouring in a man's face with a perminent marker, etc.
I think the "murderer" likes to document their victims. Or perhaps this isn't the murderer but a man that has had a family member murdered and is documenting all the other murders that could help lead him to the real murderer.

3 Saul Bass Beginning Titles with Explanations

We used the website artofthetitle.com to find 3 opening credits from movies created by Saul Bass.

Biography:

According to wikipedia Saul Bass was born May 8th 1920 and died April 25th 1996. He was a Graphic Designer and Film-maker. He worked for famous Directors such as:

• Alred Hitchcock-Psycho
• Otto Preminger-Anatomy of a Murder
• Billy Wilder-Some Like it Hot
• Stanley Kubrick-Sparticus
• Martin Scorcese-Mean Streets

I have looked at the following opening credits and analysed how these grip the audience in wanting to watch further:

1. The Man with the Golden Arm. Directed by Otto Preminger, as seen in the Video below:

The opening sequance starts off with a really jazzy and classy score (played by Shorty Rogers and his Giants with Shelly Manne). Then later in the title sequance the score quickens and finalizes with a picture of an arm pulling up the director's name.
The white rectangular blocks are supposedly paper cut out of a heroin addicts arm. Which abides with the title "The Man with the Golden Arm".
The movie was created in 1955 and I believe for a 50's film the credits are very graphic and Saul Bass liked to create things that are out of their time.

2. Vertigo. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, as seen in the Video below:

The score (by Bernard Herrmann, conducted by Muir Mathieson) starts the opening credits off with a fast and edgy pace even throughout the movie production names (when the opening credits hadn't even started) as if the movie is undermining the movie producers and making the movie sound more important even though the credits have not yet begun.
The writing is quite bland as if to not take the interest away frrom the ladys facial, like all the moves and flinches the actor makes is so important. Every time a credit appears the score is menacing then when the credit fades away the music fades to be quieter but sinister. There is an ECU bridge shot being used of the eye to show the title VERTIGO fastly coming closer to the audiences view.
Then the music becomes hypnotic just like the swirls in the sequence. The opening of the title sequence is exactly the same as the ending of the title sequence. The whole sequence lasts for about 3 minutes but because of the length, especially with the swirls, the whole opening sequence is slightly boring although I would want to watch it just because of the score is so thrilling it draws you into the movie, ironically like hypnosis.
To finalize the film we come out of the lady's eye in yet another bridging shot, as if she is the person that's deluded or hypnotized. There is an ironic use of connection to the title: VERTIGO as 'Vertigo' is a type of illness that can cause dizziness and loss of sense of motion. The eye and the swirls are starting off the mise-en-scene in the movie.

3. Cape Fear. Directed by Martin Scorcese, as seen in the Video below:

The Universal Studios logo comes up and stays there for about 3 seconds then becomes disorientated to look like lake water.
We come to see the top of the water of a lake. The score (by Elmer Bernstein) is very intimidating then makes you jump with a quick violin screech and then an Eagle's reflection coming closer to the water's surface (in which the camera is focused on) the audience expects the Eagle to land in the water but we get and flash of wing and then it flies off screen.
The camera gets closer to the water's surface and a big chorus of the score makes everyone jump when the title 'Cape Fear' comes up. Then we have a searching eye which is reflected in the water, which the camera is always focused on.
The Screen is always disorientated by water even when there is reflections of body and facial parts. Finally we see a water drop and as it falls (still disorientated by the water's surface) the screen turns blood red this type of mise-en-scene could infuse some kind of murder or burden in the film.
The title CAPE FEAR could be a summer camp for children/ families to go to thats why the camera is focused on the lake and that's why there was a blood red stained onto the disorientated screen because it could perhaps happen in the lake.

Preliminary Task

Foley music

When we made our version of a foley movie we chose the song WAKE UP BOO by the Boo Radleys here is the official song that we based the short movie on:

 

 

My Foley Video-draft!!!

We were split into groups to produce a video for our Foley Project our one was based around the song by the Boo Radleys unfortunately I was unable to download the song so this is only a draft video when I can I will upload the proper version!
The Foley that we used was a door handle squeaking when the actress is opening the door and when she walks through the door we have a hand tapping on the orange skin.
If I was to improve this in any way I would probably have had the music playing when there is no speech and when the speech is about to come up I would turn the music down.

Foley Workshop

Today we had a Foley Workshop first of all we drew a table of Diegetic sounds for example a diegetic sound is something heard by the characters like a ring tone. But a Non-Diegetic sound is a sound heard by the audience like a soundtrack/score. Secondly we watched some videos that recreated sounds for movies like Toy Story here is a short documentary that we watched on YouTube:

After watching this it inspired me to think of different things to use for different sounds; like using gravel in a box to recreate the sound of footsteps. Also using the segments  of an Orange as the sound of Dinosaurs breaking out of the egg. This was used in Jurassic park. This is shown in the video below:

I enjoyed watching the 'behind the scenes' of the Foley industry and how not everything is made technically the majority of it is made by things you would find in a supermarket.

Shot Reverse Shot-second edited film

This is my second edited film. We used:

• Master shot:-

• Shot Reverse Shot:-

• Close Ups:-

This Film I found hard editing as there were a lot more different angled shots to cut and link together. Smoothing over the video was hard because there were different videos but with different shots all saying the same thing that annoyed me and I struggled with cutting them and adding effects so the film had an easy flow.  Especially when I was trying to use the different angles of shot Reverse shot. I don't think this was as good a film as the opening movie that I'm going to make because I thought that the editing was difficult and annoying.