In 1995, a few years removed from the critical failure of his debut feature, Alien 3, David Fincher released his second feature film to the world and proved to be not only a terrific filmmaker, but one of the most promising new voices in the industry. That movie was Se7en, which stars Morgan Freeman as veteran detective William Somerset and Brad Pitt's eager detective David Mills. The two are paired together to investigate a series of brutal and twisted murders inspired by each of the seven deadly sins, and thanks to a downright 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 for the film 30 years later, and the changes that were made for the new IMAX and 4K physical media releases. Nemiroff noted that Fincher had previously said during a Tribeca talk that he wouldn't be making major changes to his films for 4K releases, but was curious if there was anything he changed for "Se7en." This is where Fincher's attention to detail really picked up as he discussed fixing a problem that he doubts anyone else actually noticed. It's a sequence where two actors meet in a bar to talk, and despite having 14 or 15 takes of each set, "when you choose the ones that mean the most to you in terms of performance, every now and then, you're going to have technical glitches ".

The result was what Fincher called "this unsolicited and unearned camera pan where one character moves and then the camera shifts to follow them, but it follows them late and runs them over and ends up seeing more of the tape than intended ". This minor mistake must have bothered him for years, as he took the opportunity to fix this scene with AI.

Fincher told Nemiroff that the performance in the scene was too good to use other footage, so the pan ended up in the final edit first, but he was determined to make it work. "We had enough of the background, but at the beginning we cut off one shoulder of the actor, and he's wearing a black leather jacket and there's no data," explained Fincher. "We don't know how that shoulder connects to the sleeve and what kind of elastic wrinkling and deformation of the leather in that jacket. So Fincher asked if it was possible to use footage from other shots of the day to "restore" the jacket, so it could be released from the frame. He continued:

“We did three or four different shots from before that had a jacket in them that we liked, and then we brought that in, and then we spit out the AI, and then we took the background from where the camera landed and it just came together. Together, it's the dumbest solution in the world, because if you see it, we haven't done the work, and you probably won't even be aware that it happened, but you look at it, and you just think, "It's so cool that we can let's fix that kind today."

People reading this headline are probably grimacing at even the mention of "AI", but how a filmmaker with a history of vocal opposition to technologythis certainly sounds like an example of using AI as a tool rather than a replacement method. He also added that while working with cinematographer Darius Honji, there were mixed and matched moments of raw material being used in the same scene. In the revamp for the new release, the AI ​​was used to "at least make the eye focus on the soft side, but not completely useless," he explained.

But will anyone even notice the changes? We'll have to wait and see when people check out "Se7en" on IMAX for the first time starting today, or via The 4K Ultra HD release arrives on January 7 and can be purchased here.