On December 8, DGA members had the opportunity to view the Special Projects Committee’s virtual event, The Craft of the Director: David Fincher.
In a conversation moderated by DGA Special Projects Committee Chair Jeremy Kagan, Fincher discussed his personal directing process and shared how he approaches various areas of the craft, from pre-production through post.
During the conversation, Fincher spoke about his use of multiple takes to get a scene right. “I’m sure that somebody in front of a camera hearing me babble on about my nonsense for 24 takes, gets some impression of, ‘I just need to endure this. I just need to get to the end without crying.’” said Fincher. “But there is the thing that happens when something comes together. I don’t know how to explain it. The first five or six takes, for me, is very much about going, ‘Okay, I sort of start from the background and I move forward. So, we’ve done a rehearsal and we know where this person’s gonna be.’ If there’s only one person in the shot and there’s a window, we don’t shoot 60 takes of that.”
He also revealed how having his shots all mapped out can be a constraint to the creative process. “The thing that I thought was incredibly freeing, which is to have a map agreed to in advance of what all of these shots were gonna be, what it ended up doing was making the cast feel like they had been precluded from involvement. It’s not the business I wanted to be in.”
On the subject of directing suspense, he said. “The cinematic understanding of suspense has basically been gifted to us by Alfred Hitchcock. And it is, at its core, a kind of dramatic irony, right? Suspense exists when the audience has a certain understanding that the characters may or may not have. The taffy pull that ensues is a form of exquisite torture in the knowing of the stakes and the dire possibilities of how this can all end in tears.”
He also discussed his preference for a directorial team that can think on its feet. “I very much enjoy working with people who think three-dimensionally. And by that, I mean a lot happens on a film set. There’s a procedural chronology. It’s a very well and specifically ordered strand of pearls, right? I find that the ADs that I work best with are the ones that can say, ‘Normally, this pearl goes here, but right now — because here’s this link in the chain — we can’t necessarily turn it into an assembly line because there are certain people who need more time for this.’ Every day is different and it informs itself.”
Fincher’s directorial credits include the feature films Se7en, The Game, Panic Room, Zodiac, Gone Girl and most recently, Mank; episodes of the television series House of Cards and Mindhunter; and countless commercials and music videos. He has been nominated for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the latter two titles also garnering him Academy Award nominations for Best Achievement in Directing. In 2013, he was nominated for the DGA Award for Dramatic Series for House of Cards, “Chapter 1” and has twice been nominated for the DGA Award for his Commercial work with Anonymous Content in 2003 and 2008, winning the Award in 2003 for Beauty for Sale (Xelibri Phones), Gamebreakers (Nikegridiron.Com) and Speed Chain (Nike). He has been a member of the Guild since 1991.
The Craft of the Director: David Fincher
See photos from this event in the gallery below.
About The Craft of the Director Series
The conversation with Fincher was the eleventh in this series of events with master filmmakers that feature in-depth discussions about the directing process. The Craft of the Director series was inaugurated in 2015 with an evening with Christopher Nolan. It continued in 2016 with an evening dedicated to David O. Russell, in 2018 with Guillermo del Toro, in 2019 with Lesli Linka Glatter, and in 2020 with Ron Howard, Mimi Leder, Judd Apatow, Ava DuVernay, Ang Lee and Spike Lee.
About The Special Projects Committee
Special Projects is the educational and cultural arm of the Directors Guild of America, providing its members opportunities for creative exchange to advance their craft and celebrate the achievements of directors and their teams.
