I was talking about David Fincher with a friend the other day, and he reminded me of a famous quote of his – “People will say, “There are a million ways to shoot a scene”, but I don’t think so. I think there’re two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.” I remember hearing this quote when I was first getting into film and watching heaps of movies, and I assumed he was right because I thought he was a good director.

Now that I’ve been involved in making short films and studied it at Uni, that quote really irritates me. How ridiculously arrogant do you have to be to presume that you are the one person in the entire world who knows how to shoot a scene objectively right? No two directors will ever shoot a scene the same exact way, get the same exact coverage, but that doesn’t make either of them theoretically right or wrong.

The Night Train scene was filmed 3 times. Once by each group, and once in the original. While the original was obviously more technically impressive, as it was made by professionals with professional equipment, if our basic ideas were carried out more professionally, they would still be valid ways to cover a scene. They may not be as impressive or as inventive, but does that necessarily make them wrong?

If, say, Spike Jonze, for argument’s sake, was given the script to Fight Club, would the film be remotely similar? Probably not. Would it be as good? Maybe. Would it be objectively ‘wrong’? Not in any sense of the word. There are always going to be directors who see a scene one way and directors who would shoot it another. That’s the nature of art. Directors who have advanced film may not have been deemed ‘correct’ by Fincher had he been present in their day. Would he have agreed with Orson Welles’ coverage of Citizen Kane? Who gives a crap? It doesn’t matter what another director would do with a scene.