Gone Girl : Television shutter

Ryan Patrick O'Hara

Ryan Patrick O'Hara

Veteran
Good movie.


Why oh why do you think they let the televisions go uncorrected for flicker? Considering the rolling scan lines only happen when a camera films a screen, I can't fully understand how it was motivated in the film...

Why not just set the shutter to 144* and get rid of it? One of the oldest tricks in the book when filming a screen in the USA. It was obviously intentional, and I'm still wondering why.

Thoughts?
 
Because by studying how tvs actually behave when recorded, their compositing artists were able to fool even you into thinking any of that was shot practically.

I was marveling at the quality of the screen replacement. Never thought I'd write those words.

What was up with the sound mix, though?!
 
Just yesterday to emulate a really old peace of film footage (shot in 1894) i recorded some super 8mm frames with blank film passing through the projector. We shot at 1/50 and 1/60. At 1/60 we got lots of flicker but it also worked better to replicate that old footage. SO yeah, reality is about what works best while engineering is about what's mathematically correct.
 
I of course understand some of the thinking behind it, but I feel like it does not mesh well with the approach to the rest of the film.

I would agree that adding digital effects that replicate real life, can hide a comp screen... if that is what people would see with the naked eye... but we only see televisions like that when we record them with a camera, so at the same time we are breaking the wall to the audience, right? I felt like it was calling attention to the camera-work in a film where doing so wasn't a motif anywhere else.

If they are suggesting a camera is recording the television, they are suggesting we are watching footage from a camera that is in the same room as the Dunne siblings, and nowhere else in the film is any camera work suggestive that we are watching somebody film what is going on, ala, 'The Office', 'End of Watch' or 'Chronicle' . Not saying it was ever supposed to be anything like a docu-style or found footage genre, but that is what the rolling refresh suggests. It suggests we are watching the film through a camera recording in the room.

It was a great film, and besides some reflections with filters in the MB, it was technically very well shot.



...Of course this isn't the first time Fincher has done something that has sucked me out of the film by calling attention to the camera work over story.

Spectacle over purpose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qh7jFJ6zWw

I love the long take idea. I love the idea of multiple points of attempted entry and the slow move from place to place. It's chilling, and calm, and anxious. However, I make the point that the camera could have simply floated through space, and achieved the same chilling effect. Fincher totally distracted me from the mood of the scene by adding a Disney-esque 3D ride like computer effects, having the camera fly through a coffee pot handle and shallowly escaping a kitchen chair; not to mention the key hole. I don't mind going through floorboards or doors, having the camera be omniscient and free to show us this amazing shot, but the gravity of the situation was lifted by excess spectacle of 'look what i can do with CG'. I want to put on 3D goggles, and wait for the house dog to sneeze on me. (Honey I Shrunk the Kids 3D ride reference for those who don't know)

Anyway, back to Gone Girl, it was an awesome film, but by doing this, he suggests the camera is more physically in the world during this scene than the rest of the film.

My .02
 
Just because he's a genius doesn't mean every choice he makes is great, and it certainly doesn't mean everyone will agree with his choices.

I thought it worked. The movie is so over-the-top and ridiculous in other respects that it needed to be grounded in reality wherever possible. Given that the whole thing was super crisp and de-grained there's not much you can do to sell a composite beyond adding what artifacts would be there in reality. I think most audience members just saw it and thought "that looks like he really shot a tv." And if they did, it works.
 
any breakdown of those panic room shots, they are quite insane (even though completely taking you out of the movie for absolutely no reason)
 
I believed the tv screen effect fed into the focus on levels of reality/perspective. He wanted us to be aware that it was completely a show. I agree it took me out for a second too but then again we're not their target audience either. I believe he was driving home the fact that this was not real. It also after a second added a feeling of nostalgia for all the people the media has destroyed the lives of. :)

From the moment that film opened the whole thing seemed fake. I remember watching thinking why is this all ADR? Holy s@@@ this sucks b-hole whats with the dialogue? Who talks like that? Is this a dream? In the end I took those early moments to be her visions of what happened. And those elements of who's perspective is this and where are we reality wise have had me watching Gone girl over and over. I really enjoy it. Every time I watch it tho I look at those tv screens and think I get it already. Geez.
 
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