Analysing opening sequences of Thrillers- Fight Club

Fight Club

David Fincher (1999)

I have chosen to analyse this film Fight Club as it is a very interesting one and one of my personal favourites. It focuses mainly on the psychological aspect of thrillers and ties in nicely with Fincher's other well-known thriller: Se7en (1995). I didn't go into much context of the film for fear of spoiling the plot line for those who have not yet seen the film, as it really is one that will never be the same watching it the second time, as it was the first, however, I have done some extra research into the narrator's character, relevant to the plotline which is on the right.

It also explains why such an opening sequence was used, that the character of the narrator has very deep psychological issues rooting from the idea of humans living a consumerist lifestyle, the fact that us as humans are expected to be born and go to school, to learn and to pretend we like what we are learning and to be pushed into a job which society deems successful and to start a family which all result to the same fate you have and then to die without much purpose, only to begin the cycle again and again. Our narrator challenges this by creating a new persona for himself: Tyler Durden. A carefree hallucination as real as any human, who lives life as if he would die the very day. The narrator becomes him and to cope with the stress and reality of all this, creates his own club to relieve it and when things get out of hand, the audience are put into a realisation of what all this violence has actually all been about. There is such a disease in a mental illness which is often confused with another one so to draw up some differences, I did some research.

I have also used a different process to create the narration video for this which is outlined below.

1. I used a software called OBS Studio which is used for screen and audio capture. I first ensured that the file format my captured video would save in was MP4 so I could later input it to Window's movie maker.

2. I used a YouTube video which already existed (provided on the left) of the opening sequence to pause when necessary to speak.

3. I saved the file and uploaded it to Windows Movie Maker onto which I added a video of me talking about the context of the film, though it wasn't as long as my previous one for fear of revealing too much of the plotline.

4. I then inserted captions for the sound in the appropriate places and made final cuts of areas not necessary to the video e.g accidental pauses and the beginning and end where excess screen time was recorded.

The problem with using this as a method of recording the video is the easy mistakes such as the mouse being in the way and the annoying pause icon and YouTube bar popping up when the video is paused. I also pressed pause at the wrong time once through the video, however, I just cut this out in the editing process.

Order of Credits

Regency

Fox 2000 Pictures and Regency Enterprises present

a Linson Films production

A David Fincher Film

Brad Pitt

Edward Norton

Helena Bonham Carter

Fight Club

Meat Loaf

Jared Leto

Zach Grenier/ Holt McCallany/ Eion Bailey

Casting by Laray Mayfield

Costume Designer Michael Kaplan

Special make-up effects supervisor Rob Bottin

Sound designer Ren Klyce

Music by The Dust Brothers

Film editor James Haygood

Production designer Alex McJowell

Director of photography Jeff Cronenweth

Executive producer Arnon Milchan

Based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk

Screenplay by Jim Oals

Produced by Art Linson/ Cean Chaffin/ Ross Grayson Bell

Directed by David Fincher