Mis-en-Scene

Fight Club

Fight Club was directed by David Fincher and released in 1999. The movie was considered a box office failure but developed a significant cult following. The movie features an all-star cast, including Brad Pitt as Tyler, Edward Norton as the narrator, and Helena Bonham Carter as Marla. All three of them give fantastic performances, and the casting of singers Jared Leto as Angelface and Meat Loaf as Bob actually works well. Fincher clearly understands the satirical tone of the novel and has a blast using visual gags to heighten the comedy already existing within the scene.

I loved this movie when it came out, it seemed real to me in an undefinable way. The DVD for this film is also the only one I have ever watched with Audio Commentary on. Great watch. 5 Stars from me. I chose this scene from the film for its outstanding attention to detail and willingness to experiment.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJMtkaY6dlM

So much effort and time went into this brief scene. There is a mixture of practical and special effects which made this quick clip happen. While you cannot tell unless you watch this frame by frame, there is a great deal of debris that was constructed digitally that passes by the camera. Each piece of debris has depth and form, texture and even label packaging for some. The actor had to undergo a traumatic encounter with a wind generator that put him in some danger.

___Analysis___ 

An awful lot of work went into pulling this scene off. Creating the physical context of the airplane, seats, passengers, crew, fuselage, equipment an miscellaneous debris. The source of illumination is realistic to the inside of an airplane. The actor's emotions written on his face, his curiosity at this scene is evident. The elements of effective visual communication are plainly visible. Plenty of contrast, balance, harmony, texture, color, figure/ground, pragnanz, proximity, similarity and closure are demonstrated throughout the scene. 

___Background___

Fight Club works as a movie because it’s funny, it’s dark, it’s absolutely gorgeously shot, and it uses the medium to most fully execute the story’s punchlines. Director David Fincher spliced single frames of pornography into the film, just as the character Tyler does within the film and movie. There are splices of Tyler just long enough to make the viewer feel uneasy. There’s product placement everywhere, ironically done to further expand on the story’s themes of consumerism.

Fincher used the Super 35 format to film Fight Club since it gave him maximum flexibility in composing shots. He hired Jeff Cronemweth as cinematographer. The filmmakers used heavily desaturated colors in the costuming, makeup, and art direction. Fincher and Cronenweth drew influences from the 1973 film American Graffiti, which applied a mundane look to nighttime exteriors while simultaneously including a variety of colors. The crew took advantage of both natural and practical light at filming locations. The director sought various approaches to the lighting setups, for example choosing several urban locations for the city lights' effects on the shots' backgrounds. He and the crew also embraced fluorescent lighting at other practical locations to maintain an element of reality and to light the prostheses depicting the characters' injuries.

Fincher hired visual effects supervisor Kevin Tod Haug, who worked for him on The Game, to create visual effects for Fight Club. Haug assigned the visual effects artists and experts to different facilities that each addressed different types of visual effects: CG modeling, animation, compositing, and scanning.

___Credits___  

Directed by 

David Fincher

Cinematographer  Jeff Cronenweth 

Visual effects supervisor Kevin Tod Haug 

Writing Credits (WGA)  

Chuck Palahniuk	...	(novel)
Jim Uhls	...	(screenplay)

Cast

	Edward Norton	...	The Narrator
	Brad Pitt	...	Tyler Durden
	Meat Loaf	...	Robert 'Bob' Paulsen (as Meat Loaf Aday)

Helena Bonham Carter

...

Marla Singer

___Sources___  

http://fandom.wikia.com/articles/page-screen-fight-club
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club