Two-time Academy Award nominee, Jeff Cronenweth has been perfecting modern realistic cinematography for years. His last few films such as The Social Network (2010) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), have taken place in modern times and the cinematography in them further the audience's belief that the films take place in present time. Cronenweth, alongside frequent collaborator, David Fincher teamed up to bring forth another modern film with a deep interpersonal, psychological, thriller genre attached. Gone Girl (2014) is a stylistic film that has these filmmakers names written all over it, from their choice of camera to their choice of lighting to the lenses they used, Gone Girl was masterfully crafted.
Before filming this movie, …show more content…
The murder scene takes place in a bedroom where Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) kills her supposed kidnapper (Neil Patrick Harris). Cronenweth explains how they lit this scene: “the first two-thirds of this scene are to lull the audience into a sense of romance so we chose to light it almost like a fashion shoot – a single source built into the bed’s headboard which was the motivation for all of the light in the room and then we let the walls and everything else fall off.” (Cronenweth, 2015). The lighting plus the use of close-ups and shallow focus in this scene bring the audience into what appears to be a love scene but then the scene is completely flipped when she murders her ‘captor’. The reason the scene is so shocking is because Cronenweth plays off of what the audience thinks about when they see a particular cinematic image, in this case, it was an inviting warm soft light. The murdering also causes a change in pace and scene geography because the camera seems to have a new setup on every cut, and it is cut fairly quick before returning to a more conventional style of setups and shot
Before filming this movie, …show more content…
The murder scene takes place in a bedroom where Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) kills her supposed kidnapper (Neil Patrick Harris). Cronenweth explains how they lit this scene: “the first two-thirds of this scene are to lull the audience into a sense of romance so we chose to light it almost like a fashion shoot – a single source built into the bed’s headboard which was the motivation for all of the light in the room and then we let the walls and everything else fall off.” (Cronenweth, 2015). The lighting plus the use of close-ups and shallow focus in this scene bring the audience into what appears to be a love scene but then the scene is completely flipped when she murders her ‘captor’. The reason the scene is so shocking is because Cronenweth plays off of what the audience thinks about when they see a particular cinematic image, in this case, it was an inviting warm soft light. The murdering also causes a change in pace and scene geography because the camera seems to have a new setup on every cut, and it is cut fairly quick before returning to a more conventional style of setups and shot