David Fincher reveals the “most thrillingly stupid fix” that allowed him to revive a scene for the 4K model of Se7en.
David Fincher is already making headlines in 2025 as he prepares to have a good time the thirtieth anniversary of his 1995 thriller, Se7en, with a 4K restoration on Blu-ray on January 3. Earlier than tackling the grim and gritty world of a deranged serial killer, Fincher shot music movies for artists like Madonna, Paula Abdul, Steve Windwood, Gypsy Kings, Billy Idol, and others. His moody and atmospheric fashion was too distinctive to be remanded to music movies alone, and with 1992’s Alien 3, Hollywood had a brand new premiere filmmaker. Studying about Fincher’s filmmaking strategies is one thing aspiring filmmakers and followers like to expertise, and because of Collider‘s Peri Nemiroff, we know where Fincher’s head is at with the restoration of Se7en, a movie many think about a pillar of the crime-thriller style.
Regarding Fincher’s strategy to restoring a traditional, he defined to Nemiroff the place he feels he should draw the road, cautious to not lose the integrity of the unique whereas providing one thing polished. There’s a lot of film magic that goes into restoration, and if the tips, you possibly can execute some intelligent workarounds. For instance, Fincher instructed Nemiroff a couple of scene the place two unnamed actors (wink) are assembly at a bar to debate their collective ennui in regards to the case in entrance of them.
“In this case, there was this unasked-for and unearned camera pan where a character moved, and then the camera panned over to follow them but followed them late and overshot them and ended up seeing more of the bar than was intended,” Fincher defined. “But the performance in it was so good that we went with it. Well, in this case, we can take that and go, ‘What’s the issue here with stabilizing this pan that happens at such an inopportune time?’ There was no issue in terms of the background. We had enough of the background, but at the beginning of it, we had cleaved off one of the actor’s shoulders, and he’s wearing a black leather jacket, and there’s no data. We don’t know how that shoulder connects to the sleeve and the kind of supple wrinkling and deformation of the leather in that jacket. So I asked, ‘Based on these other takes that we have, can we restore this jacket so that I can take this pan out because this pan happens at such a clumsy time? It’s right as I want to watch a reaction, and the camera’s moving.” And we didn’t know if we may.”
Fortunately, Fincher has roughly 4 or 5 nice pictures of the jacket. He used AI to duplicate the article of clothes, creating a whole search for the scene. Fincher says the method is the “most thrillingly stupid fix” for an issue that will have been more and more tough to remove earlier than superior AI methods. Whereas filmmakers can use AI for evil, particularly within the curiosity of artwork theft and generative artwork instrument coaching, it’s good to listen to there are much less nefarious makes use of for the know-how.
Will you watch David Fincher’s 4K restoration of Se7en when it hits cabinets? What different movie in Fincher’s library would you prefer to get the 4K remedy? Tell us within the feedback part under.
