David Fincher Uses Artificial Intelligence in Se7en 4K Release for ‘Delightfully Stupid Fix’

In 1995, a few years after the critical failure of his debut feature film Alien 3, David Fincher released his second feature film and established himself as not just a great director, but one of the industry’s most promising new voices. That movie was “Se7en” where Morgan Freeman played veteran detective William Somerset and Brad Pitt’s detective David Mills. The two team up to investigate a series of brutal and twisted murders inspired by each of the seven deadly sins and thanks to just an iconic final scene“Se7en” has maintained its reputation as one of the greatest crime thrillers of all time.

recently, Collider’s Perry Nemiroff interviewed Fincher about the film 30 years later and the changes made to new IMAX and 4K physical media releases. Nemiroff noted that Fincher had previously said during a Tribeca talk that he would not make major changes to his films for 4K release, but he wondered if he had changed anything for “Se7en.” This is where Fincher’s attention to detail really kicked in, as he discussed fixing a problem that hardly anyone else noticed. It’s a series where two actors meet in a bar to talk, and despite the 14 or 15 takes of each production, “every now and then you pick the ones that mean the most to you in terms of the performance, you’ll have a technological breakdown “.

The result was what Fincher called “this unwanted and undeserved camera pan, where the character was moving and then the camera turned to follow them, but belatedly followed them and overshot them, and ended up seeing more of the streak than intended.” This minor mistake must have bothered him for years, because he jumped at the chance to fix this scene with AI.

Fincher told Nemiroff that the execution of the scene was too good to use other takes, which is why the panel ended up in the final cut at all, but he was determined to make it work. “We had enough backstory, but at the beginning we cut off one of the actor’s shoulders and he’s wearing a black leather jacket and there’s no data,” Fincher explained. “We don’t know how that shoulder connects to the sleeve, and we don’t know how elastically the leather in that jacket wrinkles and deforms.” So Fincher asked if footage from other shots that day could be used to “restore” the jacket so he could get rid of the pan shot. He continued:

“We did three or four different shots before that had a jacket that we liked, and then we brought that in, and then we brought out the AI, and then we took the background from where the camera landed and just put it together. So, this the most exciting fix in the world because we didn’t do our job and you probably won’t know it happened, but you look at it and you just think to yourself, “It’s so good that we can fix things like this today” .

People reading this headline probably cringe at the mere mention of “AI”, but what a filmmaker with a history of vocal opposition to technologythis certainly sounds like an example of AI being used as a tool rather than a replacement method. He also added that while working with cinematographer Darius Honji, raw moments were used in the same scene. In the restoration for the new release, artificial intelligence was used “to at least make the focus in the eyes soft, but not completely useless,” he explained.

But will anyone notice the change? We’ll have to wait and see when people get their first look at “Se7en” in IMAX from today or through The 4K Ultra HD release will be released on January 7th and can be purchased here.