Here's Why David Fincher's Such A Fantastic Director—It's What He 'Doesn't' Do That Matters

With his new project Strangers, a modern take on Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 suspense classic Strangers on a Train possibly in the works it's a great time to revisit some of David Fincher's earlier films via way of movie essayist Tony Zhou.

Zhou looks at Fincher's craftsmanship as a director, his cinematography, mastery of mise en scène, stylistic trademarks and everything else that makes him one of the best directors working in Hollywood today.

David Fincher - And the Other Way is Wrong uses scenes from Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network and revealing how Fincher uses framing, dialogue, camera movements, character and every other weapon in the filmmaker's arsenal—then goes over them with a fine tooth comb dissecting how Fincher does what he does.

It's another insightful and thoughtful video essay from Zhou in his Every Frame A Painting series, which has covered everything from Michael Bay to Edgar Wright and Martin Scorsese.

The title, incidentally, of this particular video comes from none other than director Stephen Soderbergh: "There's potentially a hundred different ways to shoot something, but at the end of the day there's really only two, and one of them is wrong."

And in Zhou's own words:

For sheer directorial craft, there are few people working today who can match David Fincher. And yet he describes his own process as “not what I do, but what I don’t do.” Join me today in answering the question: What does David Fincher not do?