“May I help you? What is it? What?”
The Game (David Fincher, 1997)
While sitting in an airport lounge awaiting his departure, Nicholas Van Orton eyes every stranger as a potential key-bearing player in the tailor-fitted game that CRS has created for him. The sequence is constructed so the audience shares Nicholas’ perception of the events unfolding around him, skillfully hiding specific details while still maintaining a precise sense of the spatial relationships within the scene.
01 - 02: A wide objective shot and punched-in CU (from the same angle) introduce Nicholas waiting in the airport lounge surrounded by other travelers. The off-screen sound of a woman’s laughter catches his attention, his head turns to the source of the sound.
03: Nicholas’ P.O.V. of a man and woman talking in the corner of the lounge.
04: Medium 2 Shot of Nicholas and the businessman sitting next to him. The man gets up to leave and drops a newspaper down on his chair.
05: ¾ Low-angle CU of Nicholas looking down at the chair. This camera position is close to where the newspaper was dropped.
06: CU Insert of the paper laying on the chair next to, what appears to be, a keychain with a clown* head on it. *note: A life sized clown doll (with a hidden camera) was left at Nicholas’ home as a means to spy on him in a previous scene.
07 - 09: Using the same camera set ups from 01 and 05, we see Nicholas looking up at the man walking out of the lounge and then back down to the items on the chair. As he begins to lean in for a closer look we cut to:
10: The action continues in another Low-angle CU (the camera now positioned closer to Nicholas and the shot framed a bit wider). The new composition hides the initial entrance of the woman walking a stroller. As we begin to see her emerge from behind Nicholas, we cut to:
11: Same as 04. The woman leans in over the chair to pick up the clown item, which we can now see (and hear) is a baby rattle.
12: Same as 01/08. Nicholas watches the woman walk away.
13: Same as 02. As Nicholas turns his head forward, the focus racks from the back of his head to the man sitting across from him, who is now staring at him. When this shot first appeared in the sequence the man was out of focus. The focus has now shifted to follow Nicholas’ viewpoint.
14 - 21: Cutting between a CU of Nicholas and a reverse of the man across from him (not a ‘true’ reverse as it’s actually a medium shot), Nicholas irritatedly prods the man as to why he is staring at him. The man tries to subtly hint that Nicholas needs to notice something, finally tapping his finger on his shirt pocket.
22: Medium of Nicholas sitting in his chair. His shirt is stained from a leaking ink pen (the motivation behind the man’s stare). We now notice that Fincher has cleverly and subtlety avoided showing Nicholas’ left pocket in all previous shots of him. Because those previous shots were driven by Nicholas’ subjective discoveries, the effect is well-hidden. He tosses the pen on the table in front of him.
23: CU Insert of the pen landing with a splatter of ink on a napkin next to his coffee.
24: Same as 01/08/12. Nicholas gets up to leave.
Fincher successfully mixes the narrow, subjective viewpoint of the protagonist — created using POV shots motivated by head turns and changing eyelines — with the objective, geographically-grounding wider view. The contrast of these two viewpoints highlights the inherent tension between Nicholas’ experience and the larger stage we see him traverse — a place where a designed complication can begin to congeal at any moment, all in the service of affecting change in his specific experience. The fact that Fincher is able to accomplish this sequence using little to no camera movement reveals a sophisticated understanding of how to use camera placement to separate narrative beats while maintaining continuity of action and geography.
Vfx Lighting & Look Dev Artist