Of our contemporary film directors, David Fincher fascinates audiences through his ambition to push the language of cinema while sculpting cinematic stories that engage viewers through the emotional and the psychological. Whether it’s Seven or The Social Network, Fight Club or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in Fincher’s works the craft of filmmaking meets the urgency to provide the spectator an experience only founded in cinema. He draws in the filmgoer by emphasizing his or her senses, emotions, and intellect, and what makes the pull powerful and often irresistible is that it is based in the gravity of aesthetics. Thus, it is safe to say that learning about cinema through the director of Gone Girl is much the same as going to film school. Film lovers and filmmakers, welcome to film school with David Fincher.
The director of modern film classics shows masterful directing skills in his works and, though directing is in of itself grounded in the subjectivity and personality of the filmmaker, there are many insights to filmmaking one is able to learn from him. Like some of the greats, Fincher searches for the right elements that will justify his vision: he banks on the idea that necessity is law. In David Fincher - And the Other Way is Wrong by video essayist Tony Zhou, the director claims his process is one of understanding “not what I do, but what I don’t do.” An exploration through Fincher’s technical virtuosity, the video essay proves how Fincher values the right execution of elements that will push his cinematic storytelling in its proper direction, that is to say that Fincher values the communication of information. Expression comes through detail, and since detail informs the viewer, it is important to focus on your control of the language of cinema. From the use of close-ups and exposition and camera movement, it is key to make everything count.
The following content from filmschoolthrucommentaries further evaluates David Fincher’s style and approach to filmmaking. In David Fincher on Filmmaking (Parts I & II), we learn that though making a film is exciting, it is also a laborious task that demands that excitement to interplay with a responsible focus on the endeavor. Expectations differ from one stage of filmmaking to the next, from pre-production to production and finally post-production. For this reason, preparation is vital to Fincher since it eases the complexity of creating a film. He claims to rather be prepared and “bored” than excited and hemorrhaging during the film process. In addition, being specific and knowing your intention makes way for a storytelling of urgency and necessity. Making movies, ultimately, is a wholly subjective thing…There is no way of making a movie that is not subjective. You have to make decisions about what the behavior is, and you have to work with what dramatically works. Make conscious decisions, present behavior and see where it leads the viewer, cut where it serves the story the best, deliver information without leading the audience to the wrong conclusions, and, very importantly, do all of this with a respect for the audience.
In David Fincher’s Film Theory, the director states that his aesthetic has always been tied to filmmakers like Gordon Willis and Conrad Hall, visionaries who took risks. Similar to their way of thinking about film, Fincher relates that the film’s story becomes context for the light and light creates context for story at the same time, resembling closely to Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s understanding of form and content. He entrusts in the emotional responses to light and scene, a sensibility and sensitivity to the action and story. Moreover, Fincher believes in building off of limitations. For him, it is essential to realize the rules to determine the things not to do: embrace your limitations. My process is the process of limiting: it’s the blinder’s you put on. What I try to do is, instead of thinking of everything that I’m going to do, is trying to figure out the rules to determine the things that I’m not going to do, the things I’m not going to be able to do. You have to embrace your limitations, not only as an individual but also as your budget, what it can do. To accept those limitations is to then learn to be specific. Making commercials emphasized this for him: knowing your goal and mapping a way to get there within a time constraint. Thus, through limitations one learns “the discipline of defining the reason you’re here today.” Finally, David Fincher expresses his point of interest in filmmaking:
I’m interested in a different kind of cinematic experience…If you feel something, and if you are engaged intellectually, and you see something in the people on the screen that you recognize in yourself and what they’re trying to do makes sense to you, then that’s a good movie experience.
As technology develops, it is inevitable that people could develop robots to kill people, similar to a scene from “Robocop” or Terminator. However, scientists are taking a stand to warn the world before that happens.
Autonomous weapons select and engage targets but have no human intervention in warfare, according to the open letter signed by scientists and researchers including physicist Stephen Hawking, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, philosopher Noam Chomsky and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The initiative was coordinated by the Future of Life Institute, a volunteer-backed research group with artificial intelligence researchers, and it was presented at the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence on Monday in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Experts say technology has reached the point where the stakes are high, as autonomous weapons have been described as a third revolution in warfare following the development of gunpowder and nuclear weapons. In the future, it could be feasible to see artificial intelligence, which could include “armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions.”
Scientists argue that there’s essentially one large, lingering debate left for our society:
“The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow.”
In contrast with nuclear weapons, autonomous weapons do not require costly or hard-to-find raw materials, and they are cheap for military powers to mass-produce.
“It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity. There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people.”
One of the letter’s signatories, Jonathan D. Moreno, Ph.D., bioethicist and author of “Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century,” spoke to ATTN: about what this could mean for future warfare. (Editor’s note: Jonathan D. Moreno is the father of ATTN: co-founder Jarrett Moreno.)
“The concerns are that—first the idea that you could take a human being completely out of the loop and have it kill a human being, but also the technology as it develops, is going to be very accessible,” Moreno told ATTN:. “It’s not going to be like making an atomic bomb. This is stuff that people are going to be able to do on their own, a rogue state or a terrorist group.”
Accountability is another major problem that autonomous weapons could present.
“If you take the human being out of the decision-making process or at least the moment at which a decision is made to use a weapon, it’s very hard to know who’s accountable,” Moreno explained. “Does it go all the way back to the systems engineer or the legislator who decided to fund it? Was it the officer who set it up? Where’s the accountability? There are lots of these kinds of problems.”
Auditory Learners- Learn best when actively listening.
All auditory learners should aim to ask questions during a lecture. Even a simple question will greatly increase information retention. This way, your teacher will put an idea into words, or paraphrase what they’ve been saying.
Auditory learners can greatly benefit from recording lectures and taping their notes once they’ve written them. This will force you to say out loud what they’ve just learnt in a way that makes sense to them – cementing it into their head.
Tell others, or your pets live or stuffed, what you are learning in class. Teaching new information to others can help cement it in your memory.
Work in quiet areas to reduce distractions, avoiding areas with conversation, music, and television.
Visual Learners-
learn best through what they see.
Sit in the front of the class so that you can clearly see the teacher. This will allow you to pick up facial expressions and body language that provide cues that what your teacher is saying is important to write in your notes.
Create graphic organizers such as diagrams and concept maps that use visual symbols to represent ideas and information.
Study in a place that is free from visual distractions.
When using flashcards, limit the amount of information on a card so that you can form a mental picture of the information.
Watch videos about topics you are studying in class.
When reviewing information, rewrite or draw the information from memory.
When trying to remember information, close your eyes and visualize the information.
Include illustrations as you take notes in class.
Use highlighter pens of contrasting colors to color code different aspects of the information in your textbooks.
Tactile Learners-
learn best when they discover things by doing them.
Get hands on-in labs for example- don’t just watch someone else do it.
Draw charts or diagrams of relationships.
Skim through reading material to get a rough idea of what it’s about before looking for details.
Use finger or bookmark as a guide while reading.
Write, copy, underline and highlight with bright colors.
Be physically active while you study. Rather than just sit at your desk, occasionally walk back and forth with your textbook or notes as you read the information out loud.
Use your finger as a guide while reading.
Act out things you have to learn whenever possible.
Construct models of things you have to learn whenever possible.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t fit perfectly into one of the three learning style categories( I seem to be all 3). So explore different ways of learning and choose to use the ones that you find most useful.
Bree Newsome from Charleston, North Carolina, wore climbing gear and scaled the flag pole in Columbia, South Carolina, while capitol police called for her to climb down. Once she reached the top, Newsome spoke out against the Confederate flag and what it represents. She brought the flag down, then was taken into police custody.
