Shooting your first movie as a cinematographer is always a somewhat daunting prospect, but imagine your first movie is a 1930s-Hollywood set story about the writing of one of the greatest films ever made, boasting a cast of some of the best actors working today. Oh, and it’s in black-and-white. And the director?David Fincher.
That’s exactly what happened toErik MesserschmidtASC, who got the call from Fincher that the director behindZodiac,The Social Network, andFight Clubwanted him to be the cinematographer on his next film,Mank. The results? Absolutely stunning. Messerschmidt’s demeanor about the ordeal? Cool as a cucumber.
Messerschmidt first worked with Fincher as a gaffer on his 2014 filmGone Girl(an underrated entry in Fincher’s filmography, IMO) and then worked intimately with the filmmaker on the first two seasons of his Netflix seriesMindhunter. Messerschmidt shot nearly every episode ofMindhunter, and in doing so developed a short-hand with Fincher. Which may be one of the reasons the director hired Messerschmidt to tackle one of his most visually ambitious films yet.
Manktakes place in Hollywood throughout the 1930s as it follows screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) and the process by which he wrote the first draft for what would becomeCitizen Kane. The film alternates between Mank’s writing process and his trials and tribulations in Hollywood that would inspire some of the characters and situations inCitizen Kane, including a kinship with actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) and an association with publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance).
Mankis alternately jubilant and melancholic as it essentially tells the story of a talented, fun-loving writer with a knack for zingers who is somewhat changed by what he sees throughout the 1930s, and shoots his shot whenOrson Wellescomes a-calling.
The film is presented entirely in black-and-white with visual allusions toCitizen Kane’s groundbreaking cinematography, and when I recently got the chance to speak with Messerschmidt at length about his work on the film, he pulled back the curtain on the process through which he and Fincher brought this story to life in living monochrome.
During our 45-minute conversation, the cinematographer explained why he and Fincher never considered shooting on film, and discussed the lengthy testing process by which they ultimately found the winning formula to achieve a look that fits right in with the films made in the 30s and 40s. He also broke down the process of filming specific sequences, including Mank and Marion’s nighttime walk (shot day-for-night) and the two epic party scenes.
So what was your reaction when you were first asked to shoot not only David Fincher’s next movie, but a movie set in 1930s Hollywood about the writing of one of the greatest films ever made?
ERIK MESSERSCHMIDT: I was excited and thrilled, and it was unexpected. I knew about the project a little bit, but I didn’t know that that was what he was going to do next. I mean, I was unbelievably excited. I was also intimidated by it, you know?
I can imagine.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah. I was very conscious that we were treading on hallowed ground a bit, you know? So I was intimidated as well.
Well, and I know Fincher loves working with digital cameras not just because of look, but partly because it suits his workflow and the way he likes to shoot. So was shooting on film ever a discussion point? I know the idea was to kind of emulate or make a film that would look like it was released around the same time asCitizen Kane.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah. I mean, that was the idea. We didn’t feel that shooting on film was the way that we would best get there, to be honest, because we had very specific ideas of very specific effects we wanted in very specific instances, and film is a fantastic medium, but it’s not particularly good with trying to get very consistent, expected results time after time, you know? So yeah, it was never part of the discussion. The discussion was always “How do we get it to look like this?”
Was that a pretty intense testing process? I know you shot it in HDR, but then some work was done to kind of … I don’t know if degrade the image is the right word, but to make it look older.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah. We did extensive testing, weeks of it. I don’t remember the exact amount, but it was quite a bit. Some of that has to do with the HDR finish and the on-set HDR monitoring. Some of that has to do with the sensor selection. I mean, we considered color cameras. We considered black and white, monochrome sensor. Most of the testing was actually lens testing, because we were trying to find the lenses that would perform best when they were stopped down for deep focus. So there was a huge amount of work being done, sort of endeavoring to get it to look that very specific way, but it was a combination of things. It’s not just the post work. It’s not just the camera selection. It’s the whole kind of holistic approach. So we were looking for grain. We were looking for deep focus. We were looking for depth, things like that.
What did you end up on, equipment-wise? Or was it a mixture of different things? Because there is the distinct way that the kind of 1939/1940-set story when Mank is writingCitizen Kane, the way that looks versus the flashbacks.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah, that was intentional. I’m glad you noticed that. We ended up shooting on the RED monochrome. That was the 8K HELIUM sensor. That’s set up as a monochrome camera. So the way they do that is they strip the color filtration off the front of the sensor so it just records … If you want to get very esoteric, it just records the luminance, and that’s how we get the black and white image. All color cameras have red, green, and blue filters on the front of the sensors. So the monochrome cameras remove those filters.
We had lots of discussions around how we were going to explain to the audience when we were in 1939 or 1940 and when we were in 1934 and 1936 or what have you, and one of them was through the use of these kind of Welles-style, Toland-style lighting cues to take the audience back in time, and the other one, which was something I was more focused on, was sort of trying to get the flashbacks to actually feel more period correct, and the quote-unquote modern-day stuff in the bungalow was actually kind of more modern lit, in a way. It still pays homage a bit, I guess, to black and white cinema, or at least black and white cinema of the period, but in technique and sort of approach, it was more modern, I would say probably. That was intentional. I’m not sure how well we succeeded, but that was the idea.
No I think you succeeded. I mean, it is kind of a striking difference, and the flashbacks do kind of have that kind of period film detail, whereas when you’re in the bungalow, it also makes the audience feel a little bit like you are in the bungalow with Mank. There’s something claustrophobic and psychological about it where you’re kind of spiraling a bit with him.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Oh, good. Thanks for saying that.
Obviously the movie includes a few allusions to the groundbreaking cinematography ofCitizen Kane, and I was curious what just kind of creating the visual language of the film, how the camera would move, the way to use light and shadow … What were those early discussion with Fincher like about how heavily to lean into that kind of Toland cinematography and how you were going to use light and shadow in those specific instances?
MESSERSCHMIDT: Well, I was really conscious of the temptation, sort of the seduction of black and white, and I was worried that I would find myself getting drawn into really stylized lighting because I felt like we could, you know? I was conscious of the reality that the risk of that is that it takes the audience out of the scene or that it draws attention to itself too much and that’s what the movie becomes about instead of what we’re really trying to explain to the audience, and so I was really worried about that. One of the things I did was I assembled a look book of imagery that I sent to David with paintings, lots of black and white photography, and not contextual, just like “These are images that speak to me about the movie,” and it was 300 pictures or something, and I sent them to David, and he got back to me. He was like “I love this. This works. Don’t do this. I like this. Can we expand on this idea? This is interesting for this scene,” et cetera.
But what it was was they were references throughout the entire spectrum of black and white cinema, all the way from early ’30s, sort of glamor photography, all the way up through noire and into French new wave and modern black and white, and obviouslyCitizen Kane, I suppose, was of course our kind of initial point of inspiration and something we wanted to lean into and pay homage to, but I was definitely more interested in it becoming a pastiche than a parody and conscious of that.
So I guess the movie as it sort of came to be is a bit of a combination of homage to classic cinema with elements of modern technique sprinkled in. The intention I don’t think was really like the audience, especially a really informed audience, would look at this and be convinced that the movie was made in 1930 or 1940. I mean, it’s obviously not, because it’s shot in wide screen. So it’s an homage.
Well, there are a couple of very specific nods to Kane, including Mank dropping the bottle off the bed, which mirrors the dropping the snow globe. Were those kind of fun things to get to?
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah absolutely. I mean, of course they’re nods. Dropping the bottle is obviously one, a little less on the nose as the hallway at the end with Hearst and Mank. It’s full of mirrors, which is similar to the Kane hallway of mirrors. But I mean, we were certainly focused on deep focus. We really wanted the photography to be deep focus, and I didn’t use it all the time, but I used it a lot. I shot most of the movie in 11, I think, on the lens, around there, and so we used focus as a storytelling technique with much more moderation than you normally would in a modern film, which was interesting. I mean, things like smoke in the air, and there are absolutely moments of dramatic shafts of light and things like that, which of course Toland was famous for. We didn’t recreate anything specifically, obviously.
I do have to ask, were the scene transitions practical? Were you literally turning the lights down as you were moving out of a scene?
MESSERSCHMIDT: They were. They were. Yeah.
That’s fantastic.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah. It’s like a theatrical lighting cue. It’s not an uncommon thing to do, lighting cues when people walk into rooms and turn lights on and off and things like that, but I think, to a degree in black and white you have a little bit more leniency with the audience to use more theatrical stuff like that. So I hadn’t done a lot of that before, but the technology obviously exists. I mean, we adapt so much theater technology in the movie business anyway. So the methodology for cuing the lights away like that is really simple to put together, but it was fun. It’s interesting to kind of work on which sections would cycle out first, and where do we linger. Those sorts of things were fun, and we spent a lot of time on that, and with David as well of course, picking the parts of the frame we wanted to stay on longer than others.
I wanted to talk about a couple of sequences specifically, and the first one is the first dinner party, which is a really fun, really interesting scene, but also I couldn’t help but think, especially working with David Fincher, that must have been really tough to put together. You have tons of coverage, various speaking roles, a bunch of different angles, but you’re also getting kind of a really heavy amount of information that’s crucial to the storytelling, both verbal and physical. You’re looking at the politics of Hearst and Mayer, but also kind of where Marion fits into Hearst’s life and how Mank sees Marion fitting into Hearst’s life. What was that sequence like to craft and shoot?
MESSERSCHMIDT: Sure, sure. Well, that was a set that we built on stage, and David had described… He wanted all the Hearst’s castle scenes to feel kind of castle-like and musty and a little cold and vast, and so it was all kind of top lit, and I knew that we would have lots of coverage in there, and certainly from my experience working with David onMindhunter, he and I had built a kind of vocabulary or a working practice in terms of how we broke scenes down and how we would break coverage down, and I really like that part of the process.
I love the camera direction of sequencing, and so we rehearsed it in advance. We kind of knew that Hearst would be sitting in front of the fireplace, and he experimented with a couple different places to put Marion, and Marion has to see Mank. She has to look over her shoulder and see Charlie Chaplin. So she’s on that sofa, and then Mayer and Thalberg are off in the corner with their families. The geometry of that set was to a large degree just kind of dictated by the script, and it’s like “Well, who needs to see who and when?”
It took us a couple days to shoot that scene, I think, two or three days. I can’t remember exactly, but yeah. There’s a lot of coverage and lots of eye lines and stuff, and I mean, I just love that part of the process, the puzzle of it, and fortunately Don Burt had built a set that had a tremendous amount of depth, and it was very difficult to make a bad shot in that set. There was always something in the background. There was always depth to play with. So we shot most of it, I guess, on the 15 millimeter lens or the 25 millimeter lens. So it’s for the most part pretty simple coverage. It’s just there’s just lots of pieces of it. I mean, David and I kind of pre-visualize that stuff pretty quickly these days, and we’re able to put it together relatively quickly. I love that scene.
Well, speaking of Don, I mean, the sets in the film are incredible. What was your relationship with the production designer on this film and kind of putting it together? Because it looks fantastic, but you also had to verify it fit with black and white photography.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah. He did a fantastic job. We worked really closely together. I spent more time in Don’s office than I did in mine, in the prep anyway, and [costume designer] Trish Summerville as well. What we learned early on in the prep was that the colors we thought would be great on the set turned out to not be. So we did a lot of testing with costumes and fabrics and paint colors and tile and different tones of wood grain and things like that on the black and white camera to sort of get an idea of how things would render, because it was really important that the film have some tonal depth and that it would not come out flat.
We certainly learned early on that there were certain colors of green, for example, that would show up incredibly dark, and other colors. All these colors that David hated, like salmon and pink and red and teal blue, turned out to work really well in the camera for whatever reason. I mean, Don and I did a lot of testing. I think for like a week or something we spent a bunch of time looking at different tile for the bathroom scene at Paramount where he first meets Joe Mankiewicz, and we tested all these different colors of green tile trying to find the one that would show up the best.
So yeah, we were very close. I mean, initially that dinner party scene that we were just talking about was a location actually, and we got there to scout it, and it just didn’t really work logistically for the kind of lighting I needed to do in there. I didn’t have access to the ceiling. I couldn’t hang lights from the ceiling, and we didn’t have the ability to pull any walls, obviously, so it affected our focal length choices, and Don understood that, and he went back to the drawing board, and we ended up building it actually. So Don is incredible. He’s a real talent, and he’s also a really good partner, sort of helping the process move forward.
The sets are incredible. I also wanted to ask about, so immediately after that first dinner party, the sequence in which Mank and Marion go for a walk around the grounds. If I’m not mistaken, did you guys shoot that day for night?
MESSERSCHMIDT: We did. Yeah. I’m glad you noticed that.
It looks great.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Well, actually I’m not sure I’mgladyou noticed. I’m always curious if people notice that.
Only movie nerds, probably.
MESSERSCHMIDT: There you go.
What was that like to shoot?
MESSERSCHMIDT: Well, it’s funny. That scene is a combination of a couple different locations. Most of it was shot at the Huntington Gardens at Pasadena, and then the scene where they see the elephants is in the garden of a mansion in San Marino, I think. Both those locations worked extremely well for scenery and stage and what we wanted to see and the screen direction David had in mind for what direction they would go, but none of them worked particularly well logistically to be lit at night. I didn’t have access with heavy equipment. It would have been incredibly expensive because we wanted the scope of it … We wanted the audience to understand that Hearst’s castle is this unbelievable estate.
I had done some day for night on the TV seriesRaised by Wolves, which I did for Ridley Scott, and I had sent Fincher some frame references of what we had done there, and he liked the idea, and obviously day for night is really … It’s a golden-age-of-cinema technique. It’s certainly nothing new. So it seemed appropriate for that scene, and so we did that scene that way. I mean, there’s other night scenes in the movie that are obviously night for night, but that one was day for night.
Then we did a tremendous amount of testing. We built lookup tables for the camera with the colorists, and we found a contrast balance that we liked, and what I learned in the testing process particularly for the black and white version of day for night was I had to add so much fill light to the actors' faces to read them that in many cases they were uncomfortable and they would end up squinting. So we had sunglass-tinted contact lenses made for both of them for that sequence.
Oh, wow. Yeah, it gives this kind of magical quality to it that’s really beautiful. This is a very specific question, but when Mank tracks Marion down in the car at the lot and he’s trying to convince her to convince Mayer to pull the propaganda ads, when the shot’s on Amanda Seyfried, how did you get Mank’s reflection in that back window as he was also performing? Because I know Fincher likes to stitch a ton of stuff together, but that looked seamless.
MESSERSCHMIDT: No. That was actually accidental.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah. It was one of those things that was like “Oh. Look at that.” The car interiors were shot on stage with LED walls. So we shot plates at Warner Bros. That’s the scene where she’s taking the bungalow away, which is true, by the way. When she left MGM, she took it with her to Warner Bros., and I think it’s now Joel Silver’s office is her bungalow. Somebody told me that. But anyway, yeah. We were setting up her shot in the interior of the car, and we brought Gary in for the eye line off camera, and there he was in the window, and I was like “Oh, wow. That’s cool. We should put a little bit more light on him.” But it wasn’t something that we planned. It just kind of happened.
It looks great. Another really striking sequence that also feels unique in the film is the election night sequence. Mank is a little despondent, and it’s got kind of this dark and foreboding vibe to it. I was wondering if you could kind of talk about putting that together and using slow motion in that way.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Sure. Well, that was one of the scenes where I felt we could be a little bit more gestured and dramatic with the lighting. There’s a couple instances in the movie where it kind of went there, and that’s one of them. That set was fantastic, and we had lots of pieces in that scene, and there’s a lot of coverage around the table, and he’s dancing with Sara on the dance floor. We shot all over that set, and we didn’t have a lot of time actually. We shot it in just two days, I think, all of those sequences.
I was trying to find a way to light it where I wouldn’t have to be moving a lot of lights around on the floor the entire time, so we built those practicals with Don Burt, and Jan Pascale, the set decorator, helped with those practicals on the center of the table to kind of light the actors when they’re sitting at the table, and then he built that fabulous sign, the 1934 sign, and the room is kind of lit just with those fixtures, basically, and the followspot on Mayer.
I can’t remember if both those montage sequences were in the original script or if that was something that [editor] Kirk [Baxter] and David put together afterwards, but we shot those elements there, Gary watching the clock, and all of those vignettes of the party-goers flirting with the cocktail waitresses, and the guys out back, the wait staff smoking cigarettes by the kitchen, and all these sort of pieces, knowing that Kirk was going to put the montage together. Then some of that was later shot on stage, the champagne fountain and things. We had a little bit of fun with it. It’s got this kind of Fellini almost like German expressionist moments. We were leaning into that quite a bit there.
It does, yeah and I think it works really dramatically as well, because at that point in the story, you’re starting to see really exactly the wheels that turn that connect to make Mank kind of go after Hearst in the screenplay and stuff.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Right, right for sure. The exterior as well was something that we planned heavily with the Trocadero sign in the foreground.
Yeah. Right from the get-go, you know you’re entering a set piece.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah. Totally.
Well, speaking of set pieces, I also wanted to ask about the final dinner sequence, which is just really tremendously put together, but again, like that other dinner party, I imagine was really difficult to shoot not only for the actors, but probably for your team as well. I was wondering if you could kind of walk through kind of the creation of that sequence, how you guys talked about putting it together, and then practically putting it together.
MESSERSCHMIDT: David had done extensive table reads with Gary, Arliss [Howard], Amanda, and Charles [Dance] just in the production office around a conference table, and everyone really understood the beats of that scene and what was important, and then we went to the set a few days before we shot it, and he put it up on its feet and started walking with Gary. Everyone else was sitting essentially, but Gary’s the one that’s moving, which made it simpler of course, but because he’s doing this orbit around the table, the coverage gets quite complex, because who’s looking at him when, and what pieces can Kirk use when?
So David was very specific with Gary about making sure that when he said certain lines of dialogue that he was in the same place at the table take to take, which is hard to do. So they rehearsed it for hours and really figured out where each thing was being said and who would look at who when, and when you do it that way, obviously it makes the coverage design a lot easier because you kind of know “Okay. Well, we got to get Hearst to look here when he’s at this end of the table. He’s got to look here when he’s at this end of the table, and he has to react to him here,” et cetera.
Then David and I just kind of mapped out the coverage. We figured out different ways that we would cover Gary, and some of it was tracking shots. Some of them were POVs from Hearst or from Marion. Some of them were these, obviously, wide shots that set the table of the scene, so to speak. But we shot Gary first, did all of Gary’s coverage first and got that really where David wanted it, and then we went around the room and cleaned up the rest of the coverage with everybody looking at each other.
There were sort of moments where we discovered interesting things that we hadn’t expected, like there’s a long-lens shot kind of close up of Amanda before she pours herself a glass of gin that is a little bit out of the language of the rest of the scene, and she’s kind of in her head a bit, and it’s this kind of glamorous profile. So we did moments like that. Trish Summerville used to send me all of the costumes. At least she would send me fittings or she would send me iPhone photos of the actors getting dressed that day. She’d send me images of them in costume, because typically the actors come in and they’re in their pajamas when they rehearse the scene at 6:00am, you know? And then they’d go off for three hours and we set it all up, and then they come back and they’re all done up and they obviously look completely different.
But in that instance, that was a costume that I actually hadn’t seen. I joke with Trish now that maybe that was intentional, that it was meant to be a surprise. But I hadn’t seen Amanda in that white outfit, and she walked in, and I had lit the whole scene kind of soft and top lit as if it’s coming from the chandeliers, and it’s very kind of drab, and I went to David when I saw her in the costume. I said “Hold on. Let me light her a little bit more,” and so we made her the brightest thing in the room, because he’s kind of orbiting her. Suddenly she walked in in that costume, and I said “Oh, okay. We have to make a couple adjustments.”
That’s funny. Well, with that scene, I’ve heard Gary had a little bit of adjusting to Fincher’s style of working with so many takes. How many cameras are you using? So after you get Gary’s coverage, when you’re getting those reaction shots, is Gary still performing? Have you been able to capture reaction shots while also getting Gary’s coverage? I’m kind of curious about that workflow.
MESSERSCHMIDT: It’s a combination. I mean, Gary worked incredibly hard, and David pushed him hard for sure. We shot primarily with two cameras. There are some instances in that scene and in other scenes where we shot with three, but it wasn’t very common, and Gary did his entire performance for every piece of coverage, even when he was off camera. It was remarkable. He did everything. He did the entire performance, and we very rarely did pickups with David. We don’t typically break the scene apart. We almost always run it from the top. So even the featured extras, the party-goers, where we had closeups on them, Gary did the entire performance, and part of that was because we wanted to verify that the eye lines were correct. We also wanted to make sure that they were reacting properly, that we weren’t asking them to make believe too much, and also just the continuity of when he crosses behind, and so yeah. God, I don’t remember how long it took us. Two or three days to shoot the scene, quite extensive, and he did every take. It was amazing.
That’s incredible. What was it like working with Gary and kind of getting a front-row seat to that performance? Because it’s a really remarkable performance.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Well, Gary’s fantastic. He’s incredibly gifted, obviously, and it’s fun for me as well because Gary’s quite a skilled photographer actually, and so he had his Widelux camera, and he’d always ask “Hey. What F-stop should I set my camera at?” But he really understands the role of the camera, and he’s obviously incredibly experienced, and he understands the importance of hitting marks, and he knows how to help the camera department and how to help me, so that’s a joy, obviously. From a fan perspective, it was amazing to watch him work and watch him develop the character and experiment with different performances and work with David and take the direction and then adjust. He, like most of the cast, kind of elevated everybody around him. He works incredibly hard, and it was a joy for sure.
Well, I’m curious specifically with Fincher, and you guys have done two seasons of a TV show and a feature film now, and clearly if anyone knows anything about Fincher, you know that he knows how pretty much every job works on a set, and I imagine that’s true of cinematography as well. So I was curious, because he also has a really distinct way of telling stories visually, just how heavily involved he is in the visual design of each individual shot and kind of what that collaboration is like with you as you’re breaking down literally what each scene looks like.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah, I mean David’s involved in everything. He’s involved in the costumes, the set design, the script. He injects himself in the conversation, and I think it’s great. I wish more directors were like him, and what is fantastic about David is he’s incredibly collaborative and supportive and encouraging, but he also understands the challenges we’re all under, and so when I’m setting up a shot or struggling with a choice or trying to figure out how to accomplish something, he understands the physics of what I’m up against. It’s not just conceptual to him. So it’s fantastic as a cinematographer because you can … It’s very rare that you can explain to a director the practical considerations of a shot and why you’re struggling to set something or why something isn’t working and how you intend to solve it and they understand you, you know?
So that’s fantastic. I mean, he and I now, especially afterMindhunter, have a really good shorthand, and sometimes he’s very specific. Sometimes he says “I want to see a 29 millimeter lens here, and it should move from here to here,” and other times it’s looser. It depends on how much bandwidth he has at the moment or what he’s dealing with. For all of us, myself, Don, Trish, whoever’s the collaborator at the second, we do our best to support his process.
He’s fantastic to collaborate with, because it’s very rare that you don’t have an answer to a question, and he always has an opinion, positive or negative, about what you do. So it’s easy to understand what he’s going for, and he’s a really good communicator, so we are able to come to those conclusions very quickly about how to approach certain things. A lot of the conversations I have with David are not so much around the lighting or the visual approach, but it’s how we’re going to break the scene apart sequentially, and what pieces of coverage we’re going to shoot, and how we’re going to break it apart, and what will exist as oners, and how we’ll do the transition pieces, and when we need closeups, and all of that conversation. That’s mostly what we talk about.
Well, and something that he does in all of his films is this use of shot stabilization and also how the camera always follows a character’s movement. So if a character leans in, the camera kind of moves with them. Or if a character bends down, the camera moves down with them. I was curious if you’re involved in that and how that kind of affects your work.
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah. Absolutely. That’s something that he’s been doing for a long time. I think David is interested in the pursuit of perfection. He would never suggest that we ever get anywhere close to that, but we’re certainly always reaching for it, and I think unfortunately I agree with him. I think that camera operating is a bit of a lost art, that we as filmmakers are far too accepting, and we accept mistakes or bobbled camera movement or preemptive tilt-ups or mid-shot adjustments as “Well, that’s just what camera operators do.” But of course, part of the way we accomplish that is through extensive rehearsal and practice and cooperation with the actors. The actors have to be on board with that technique.
I think, just more conceptually, he’s interested in the idea that if the camera is completely in sync with the actors, whether it’s moving or panning or tilting or what have you, that the audience is less aware of the operator in the room and they’re more connected with the story because the camera almost doesn’t have any humanity in it at all, and just that requires tremendous skill. Then of course there are mistakes, because it is a human operating a camera, and it is a human moving, so getting those things to perfectly line up is close to impossible, even when you have incredibly skilled people on the camera.
So there is always some element of post-stabilization or compensating for those mistakes. It’s fun trying to explore how to do those shots under those conditions when otherwise 98 percent of other filmmakers would accept them as great, just leads to the challenge. All of us, myself, Brian Osmond, A operator, Will Dearborn, the B operator … We would be incredibly critical of our work. We would look at it, try and figure out how we can improve it. It’s mostly just practice.
This may be a question for me and like 10 other people, but I’m obsessed with the making-of documentaries on Fincher’s Blu-rays and stuff. I was curious if you knew if there was … Was someone documenting the making ofMank? I mean, after I watched this, I was really hoping to see one of those kind of David Prior documentaries that cover the all-encompassing nature of it.
MESSERSCHMIDT: I don’t think there was. I mean, we took lots of still photographs. There’s still photographers on the set, you know? The crew was actually relatively small, and it was pretty contained. We were working relatively quickly, and yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know that there’s much of that actually, unfortunately.
I would be remiss if I didn’t ask aboutMindhunter. I mean, you were heavily involved in that show. I know David has saidMindhunter’s on a bit of a break right now and he may revisit it at some point down the road, but is that something you’re eager to go back to eventually, maybe at some point, if Fincher decides he wants to move forward with a season three on that?
MESSERSCHMIDT: Yeah. I mean, I loved my time onMindhunter. It was a really important period in my life. It was an incredible experience. I love all the cast and the crew. I had a fantastic time making that show. I’m really proud of what we did. So yeah. If he wanted to do it again, I would jump at the chance, of course. But in the same way, you’ve got to respect where he’s at and where Netflix is at and look forward to whatever the next thing is.
What’s next for you? What are you working on now?
MESSERSCHMIDT: I’m prepping a film calledDevotion, which is in Savannah, Georgia, and it’s a Korean War story. It’s cool.
I was also a big fan of your work onRaised by Wolvesas well. I thought that show was a lot of fun and really visually striking. What was that like?
MESSERSCHMIDT:. It was great. I mean, it was completely different from anything I had done before and with a whole new set of people to collaborate with, which is always really interesting and fun, and you sort of have to flex different muscles, and you learn to attenuate your taste to everyone else, and there’s a bit of a learning curve, of course, but yeah. I loved that whole group of people, and we had a fantastic time making that show. It was really interesting, and of course being in Africa and working there and shooting there was exciting and different in all positive ways.
