director jeffrey zablotny: 1999. still trapped in the celluloid age, here’s...

Feb 19, 2013
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1999. still trapped in the celluloid age, here’s david fincher ruling out an all-practical approach to the kitchen explosion in ‘fight club’. from cinefex:

fincher decided that he wanted to show the moment of the stove’s ignition in fine detail, excruciatingly drawn out. ”at fifty thousand frames per second, you’d see gas molecules catching fire, which would be a lot more interesting than cutting outside to see furniture flying into the trees.”

fincher considered all-practical approaches to the sequence that included oversized set pieces and motion control; but after reviewing PLF’s previsulaizations, the notion was dropped. ”it would have taken forever to eliminate camera shadows on the ‘macrotures’,” fincher stated, “and the chrome teapot and spatula in the shot would have reflected a snorkel lens. then there were the requirements for shooting it high-speed while still exposing properly for the propane explosion, which would blow out all the detail. the refrigerator door opened during the blast, which meant that i’d have needed a 10k refrigerator light to save the film stock from the lost foot-lumens.”