David Fincher
Born in Denver in 1962, David Fincher started his career in commercials and music videos. He worked at Propaganda Films, directing memorable spots for Nike (“Instant Karma”) and big-name artists, including the award-winning “Love is Strong” for the Rolling Stones and several for his pal Madonna. His first break in features came as a hired gun to direct the third installment in the hugely popular ALIEN franchise, but studio meddling made the experience a frustrating one for perfectionist Fincher.
He recovered with 1995’s SE7EN, which established him as a director to watch. When the specter of studio interference reared its head again, star Brad Pitt used his influence to insist on Fincher’s cut. The result was a huge box-office success and the beginning of a successful actor/director collaboration that would continue with FIGHT CLUB (1999), which became absorbed into the American lexicon (“The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club”), and The Curious case of Benjamin Button (2008), which brought Fincher his first taste of Academy accolades, garnering 13 Oscar nominations including Best Director and Best Picture.
Starting with ZODIAC (2007), the underlying themes of Fincher’s films have begun to mimic the director’s notorious precise perfectionism and self-admitted obsessiveness: the dogged attempts, laid out in explicit detail, to unmask the killer in ZODIAC; the meticulous business of engineering success in The Social network (2010); the razor-sharp dissection of buried secrets in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011).
I am going to look at 9 Inch Nails - "only" as a specific example of David Finchers work. The reason I have gone with this one is because it is one of his most recent pieces of work (2005).
I am going to look at 9 Inch Nails - "only" as a specific example of David Finchers work. The reason I have gone with this one is because it is one of his most recent pieces of work (2005).
I particularly enjoy this video due to the supreme use of editing and cinematography, along with the originality displaying by Fincher.
The song begins with a confident statement, "I'm becoming less defined...kind of drifting into the abstract" That entire stanza reveals that the artist feels as if he once was focused, or had his mind set on "reality" and such, but that more and more he finds himself slipping away into the unknown, or the mysterious.
I feel that the editing perfectly represents the feeling of abstractness as soon as the first words are spoken.
There is a perfect relationship between the video and the lyrics. We can see the artist singing the words, except its not actually him, but a projection of him through a different medium. It gives the idea he cannot return to the normal world, and is therefore stuck "drifting into the abstract". The editing looks fantastic visually, but at the same time has such strong relevance to the bands perception of the song.
The underlying idea of this song is the isolation of artist from society, and his falling grip of reality, I feel the mise-en-scene strongly depicts this. Technology today is strongly criticized for the anti-social behavior that is causes, therefore the laptop and wires help to emphasize the artists isolation. Not only are they prominent objects that are causing the artists anti-social behavior, but he is in fact stuck inside them. The coffee is untouched which suggests the artist is simply unable to drink from it as he is stuck in a material world. Fincher carefully picks his props to make sure they have absolute relevance and strengthen the theme of the song.
Fincher also puts a lot of care into the lighting of the video. It is generally low-key which helps intensify the gritty mood/atmosphere of the songs theme. The colours are prominently tones of gray to rid of anything that could depict happiness.
Its difficult to mention on aspects such as a costume and make-up, because are no costumes or make-up. The performance is effectively the edited singers face. The singers face is generally void of much colour to fit into the songs depressing, underlying theme.