Oscar winning Director of Photography, Erik Messerschmidt, takes us behind the scenes of the opening in David Fincher's new hitman thriller, 'The Killer,' starring Michael Fassbinder.
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00:00 Hello, my name's Eric Messerschmidt,
00:01 and I am the cinematographer for "The Killer."
00:03 [upbeat music]
00:06 I've now worked with David on several projects,
00:17 and we have, I think, a very refined shorthand
00:20 in terms of how we communicate.
00:22 We don't storyboard.
00:24 We generally don't have elaborate conversations
00:26 about the film, but we do talk about the broad concepts.
00:30 In the case of this film, we talked about scene structure
00:32 and the structure of the film and pace,
00:33 almost like we were having a conversation about editing.
00:36 We find the killer in his nest,
00:41 in his place of observation.
00:44 David wanted to explore the concept of subjectivity,
00:46 and part of the conversations that we had with him
00:48 evolved around the idea that this is a character
00:50 who never allows anyone in his personal space.
00:53 Our main camera for the film was the Red Raptor,
00:56 which was brand new at the time,
00:58 and I had been beta testing it for the team at Red.
01:00 So that was our principal first unit camera,
01:03 and the plates were a combination
01:05 of a Red Raptor and Red Komodo.
01:07 The Red Komodo was selected because it is so small.
01:09 We only had the opening where we could put our nine cameras
01:13 was only about a meter square,
01:14 so we had to figure out a way to put nine Komodos
01:18 in this very small space while still being able
01:20 to operate a camera above them with a long zoom lens.
01:22 So it was a bit of a puzzle to construct it all.
01:25 We changed aspect ratio on this film
01:27 from the prior two projects we'd done together,
01:28 and we decided to shoot two, three, five to one.
01:30 We thought it would be interesting to put
01:32 a bit of an anamorphic look on the film,
01:34 but we didn't want to shoot anamorphic
01:35 because we wanted to keep the lens and the camera
01:38 very close to Michael, and in many cases with anamorphic,
01:42 the close focus would not allow for us
01:44 to keep the camera that close without the use of diopters
01:47 and all sorts of optical tricks.
01:49 So we decided to shoot spherical,
01:51 and then the aberrations and lens flares,
01:53 we added in post.
01:55 Never been more involved in post in my career
01:58 than this film, and we're in there art directing
02:00 the flares and the barrel distortion and the bokeh,
02:02 and it became a really fun, interesting process.
02:05 We wanted to play with the rhythm of the audience
02:19 seeing him and then being inside his head
02:21 and seeing exactly what he's looking at.
02:23 So we have this subjective camera position,
02:26 subjective concept, and then the objective camera position
02:28 and the objective concept.
02:30 So we have these broad conversations,
02:34 and then we scout, and in the case of this film,
02:36 we scouted Paris looking for a location
02:39 that would fill the requirements, and we didn't find it.
02:42 So we had to construct it, and part of the reason
02:46 we didn't find it is that big, open windows like that
02:49 actually don't really exist in Paris,
02:51 at least not in the parts of Paris
02:52 that we wanted to shoot in old Paris,
02:54 and the interior on the other side
02:55 was not appropriate either.
02:57 The final scene is a combination
02:59 of actually three main elements,
03:02 the first of which, which we shot first,
03:03 are all the points of view and plates outside the windows.
03:06 So we had a nine-camera setup,
03:09 all jammed in one little window,
03:10 and those included wide shots of the square,
03:13 tighter shots of the square that are fixed,
03:15 lighting reference, straight shots across the street,
03:18 getting the plates of the apartment building
03:20 and the Pantheon in the sky,
03:21 and then an operated camera with a long lens
03:24 that serves as the scope points of view.
03:26 Then we built the interior on stage,
03:29 and that's the killer's nest, the WeWork space,
03:32 and outside that window is a combination
03:34 blue screen and LED panels,
03:35 the sort of LED virtual production wall,
03:38 which served as interactive lighting tools in our case.
03:42 Then finally, the Target's apartment
03:44 was a set that we built on stage,
03:46 and it had no glass, it had no facade,
03:49 it looked like a sitcom set almost,
03:51 just a line of buildings,
03:53 and we again rehearsed all of that action in advance
03:56 down to the position of the shot glass,
03:58 you know, the scotch glass rather,
03:59 and where the maid is cleaning up and opening the blinds
04:02 and where the security people are standing and all that.
04:04 We laid all that out in advance,
04:06 and then we shot it from the other side of the soundstage,
04:09 200 feet away on a long lens
04:11 so that all the distances matched,
04:13 and then that set was put into the plate
04:16 that we had shot in Paris and blended with the facade.
04:18 So it all is meant to appear as real
04:21 and as perfect as possible.
04:23 In the interior, it needed to be dark
04:28 because he's in hiding.
04:30 He still probably would have some sort of work light
04:33 so that he can assemble the gun
04:34 and he doesn't stub his toe on the table.
04:36 For me, I always feel like the lighting
04:37 has to come from reality.
04:39 90% of it should be real,
04:40 it shouldn't come from off camera,
04:42 the light should be in the frame if they can be.
04:44 So the lighting in the sequence
04:46 is almost exclusively driven
04:47 by the practical in the background.
04:49 You know, we wanted the apartment across the street
04:53 really to be the brightest thing in the scene.
04:54 Those lights are on, and gun in there
04:56 and turn every light on,
04:57 so the audience is focused on that environment.
04:59 So we're hopefully feeling that shift
05:02 and that focal point of the scene.
05:04 I liked the idea of the killer being in silhouette
05:13 as much as possible.
05:15 Oftentimes we will put backlight on somebody
05:18 in the event that they're silhouetted
05:20 or we side light them,
05:21 we sort of make sure there's light on their face.
05:23 And I thought, maybe in this film
05:25 we don't really do that as a technique.
05:27 We actually light the background
05:28 and we keep him in true silhouette as much as possible.
05:31 That led to conversations around the costume
05:34 and the wardrobe and making sure
05:35 that his profile is very distinct.
05:37 The bucket hat, for example,
05:39 becomes an excellent tool
05:40 in sort of describing the character in silhouette.
05:44 - If I'm effective, it's because of one simple fact.
05:48 I don't give a fuck.
05:54 - We shot all of the scope points of view
05:57 on a long zoom lens, a 75 to 400 Fujinon.
06:00 I love that lens.
06:01 And they were shot at the correct distance
06:03 on the soundstage.
06:04 So we shot the scope POVs from the same distance
06:06 that it would have been away from the apartment
06:08 had it really existed.
06:09 And then we had a scope there as reference,
06:12 and I remember standing there with David
06:14 and looking through the scope.
06:16 And gun scope has a couple of
06:17 very interesting characteristics.
06:18 One of the things is when it's not perfectly
06:21 in parallel with your vision,
06:22 it has these aberrations and sort of artifacts in the edges.
06:26 And it has to do with your eye position
06:29 relative to looking down the barrel of the scope.
06:31 So we sent the scope to post-production.
06:33 We said, "Look, we need you to look through this
06:35 "and look at how this interacts with your vision."
06:38 And they used it as reference
06:39 when they made the scope points of view.
06:42 So the scope points of view even have little dust
06:44 on the ground glass, and you can see little hair
06:47 and hairs and stuff in the optics
06:49 because that's what the scope looks like.
06:50 And they would send them to David,
06:52 and we would look at them again and say,
06:53 "Oh no, maybe there's a little,
06:55 "can you add some dust here?
06:56 "Can this be a little bit more distorted at the edges?"
06:58 And things like that.
06:59 So it became a process.
07:01 It's central to the storytelling of the film.
07:04 [upbeat music]
07:06 - Trust no one.
07:08 - The killer as a character is a character
07:10 that is always in control of his environment.
07:13 He's confident, he is secure,
07:15 he's going through the motions,
07:17 he's executing a plan that he knows will be successful.
07:21 So we wanted the camera to reflect that theme.
07:24 So when the killer is in control,
07:26 when he's confident, when he's secure,
07:29 the camera is perfectly secure.
07:32 It's in lockstep to his position.
07:34 We're not following him.
07:35 We are moving exactly with him.
07:37 The frames are rigid and structured like the character.
07:41 We certainly put an enormous amount of energy
07:44 into making sure that when his mental state
07:46 was in that state, that the camera was in the same.
07:49 [gunshot]
07:52 - Fuck.
07:56 - Then when he's not, and he becomes frantic and confused,
08:01 and he's surprised, and he's failed,
08:02 the camera breaks free.
08:04 And the camera is no longer steady with him.
08:06 The camera is handheld.
08:08 The camera is frenetic.
08:10 The camera is confused.
08:11 Hopefully the audience gets a little of that out of it.
08:14 They see, okay, this is not normal.
08:16 [dramatic music]
08:19 I think the thing I'm most proud about with this film
08:28 is essentially every shot that we shot is in the cut.
08:31 There's very little waste.
08:32 But everything is very much from a place of intention.
08:35 Really, we're thinking about what we're including
08:37 in each frame and setting up each shot deliberately
08:39 and operating under the assumption
08:40 that it would be in the movie.
08:42 Fortunately, I'm thrilled that I think everything we shot
08:45 is in the film somewhere.
08:47 So it's nice to see that.
08:48 [upbeat music]
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08:59 (upbeat music)