David Fincher reveals the “most thrillingly stupid fix” that allowed him to restore a scene for the 4K version of Se7en.
David Fincher is already making headlines in 2025 as he prepares to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his 1995 thriller, Se7en, with a 4K restoration on Blu-ray on January 3. Before tackling the grim and gritty world of a deranged serial killer, Fincher shot music videos for artists like Madonna, Paula Abdul, Steve Windwood, Gypsy Kings, Billy Idol, and others. His moody and atmospheric style was too unique to be remanded to music videos alone, and with 1992’s Alien 3, Hollywood had a new premiere filmmaker. Learning about Fincher’s filmmaking methods is something aspiring filmmakers and fans love to experience, and thanks to Collider‘s Peri Nemiroff, we know where Fincher’s head is at with the restoration of Se7en, a film many consider a pillar of the crime-thriller genre.
Concerning Fincher’s approach to restoring a classic, he explained to Nemiroff where he feels he must draw the line, careful not to lose the integrity of the original while offering something polished. There’s lots of movie magic that goes into restoration, and if you know the tricks, you can execute some clever workarounds. For example, Fincher told Nemiroff about a scene where two unnamed actors (wink) are meeting at a bar to discuss their collective ennui about the case in front of them.
“In this case, there was this unasked-for and unearned camera pan where a character moved, and then the camera panned over to follow them but followed them late and overshot them and ended up seeing more of the bar than was intended,” Fincher explained. “But the performance in it was so good that we went with it. Well, in this case, we can take that and go, ‘What’s the issue here with stabilizing this pan that happens at such an inopportune time?’ There was no issue in terms of the background. We had enough of the background, but at the beginning of it, we had cleaved off one of the actor’s shoulders, and he’s wearing a black leather jacket, and there’s no data. We don’t know how that shoulder connects to the sleeve and the kind of supple wrinkling and deformation of the leather in that jacket. So I asked, ‘Based on these other takes that we have, can we restore this jacket so that I can take this pan out because this pan happens at such a clumsy time? It’s right as I want to watch a reaction, and the camera’s moving.” And we didn’t know if we could.”
Thankfully, Fincher has roughly four or five great shots of the jacket. He used AI to replicate the article of clothing, creating a complete look for the scene. Fincher says the process is the “most thrillingly stupid fix” for a problem that would have been increasingly difficult to eliminate before advanced AI techniques. While filmmakers can use AI for evil, especially in the interest of art theft and generative art tool training, it’s nice to hear there are less nefarious uses for the technology.
Will you watch David Fincher’s 4K restoration of Se7en when it hits shelves? What other film in Fincher’s library would you like to get the 4K treatment? Let us know in the comments section below.
