David Fincher’s Explains The Henley Royal Regatta Tilt-Shift Scene From ‘The Social Network’
The Social Network might be David Fincher’s least visually show-offy film to date. But the one sequence that most everyone talks about coming out of the movie is the Henley Royal Regatta race, which Fincher employs a tiltshift-like focus effect.After I screened the film, Ihad a chance to e-mail Fincher a few questions. The resulting interview wasn’t too interesting (e-mail Q & As don’t usually turn out so great) but one of my questions was about the sequence.
Question:I’m interested to hear your thoughts in the tilt/shift isolated focus you employed in the boating sequence. It is unlike anything I’ve ever seen on the big screen before and would love to learn what inspired it.Fincher:We could only shoot 3 races at the Henley Royal Regatta; We had to shoot 4 days of boat inserts in Eton. The only way to make the date for release was to make the backgrounds as soft as humanly possible. I decided it might be more “subjective” if the world around the races fell away in focus, leaving the rowers to move into and out of planes of focus to accentuate their piston-like effort.
While The Social Network won’t hit Blu-ray/DVD shelves until January 11th (preorder here), Columbia Pictures have already sent some critics and guild members the final release. Brad Brevet has posted a transcript of the entire audio commentary from the Henley Royal Regatta Scene, which gives us even more insight into Fincher’s unquie visual choices.
The sequence:
Here is an excerpt from Fincher’s commentary on the Regatta Race sequence:
