David Fincher: The Importance of Previsualisation

The job of a storyboard artist is an underrated one in my opinion. Previsualisation of a scene is one of the most important aspect of production, as it lays the groundwork for what the audience is going to see in the final product. One notable director who views previsualisation as essential to the process is David Fincher, director of some of the most acclaimed and subversive hollywood films of the last 20 years such as Fight Club, Seven and The Social Network.

Fincher is a very technically minded director who exercises a lot of creative control in his movies and got his start working for ILM and later founding Propaganda films, directing advertisements and music videos in the early 90s before getting a foot in feature film and these visually oriented occupations have informed Fincher's style as a film maker.

Fincher is a firm believer that movies are made in the previsualisation process, stating that often times he feels like he makes the same movie multiple times over the course of production and usually gets bored of the idea by the time it comes to actually filming because he feels like he's already made the movie. Personally as somebody who enjoys dissecting the technical aspects of a film, putting thought into shot framing and directorial decisions, I am a huge admirer of Fincher's work ethic. Despite working with some amazing writers such as Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network, Fincher is a very visually oriented director. He can show the shifting of a power dynamic in a scene through simple shot framing and mise en scene, exercising a degree of subtlety rarely seen in auteur directors.