Cinematic techniques

Below you can read about some of the cinematic techniques that are used in the movie Fight Club by David Fincher. Note that Fight Club is a long movie which makes use of a wide range of cinematic techniques, so we have chosen to focus on a few of the most interesting examples. 

Editing

The movie makes use of a range of cutting techniques, so below we will only mention a few of the most interesting ones.

The movie contains several montages, where it cuts quickly between a number of related scenes to present an overview of a situation or a process, or to signal the passage of time. For example, when the narrator gets in the habit of going to support groups, the movie shows a montage that cuts between a range of different support group meetings (09:31). This helps show that the narrator goes to many such groups and has been doing it for a long while. Similarly, once Project Mayhem begins there is a montage that cuts between their various missions (01:19:44), which helps show the scale of the Project and the fact that it slowly escalates towards more dangerous and violent missions. 

The movie also makes use of more unusual cutting techniques at various points. For example, we see a match cut near the b...