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For Zodiac, Fincher sought to create a unique look to tell the story, which follows investigators and reporters on a search for the Zodiac serial killer in San Francisco. The workflow, "born from doing commercials," again centered on the Viper Filmstream camera and S.two portable drives.
"Hopefully Viper doesn't look like film and doesn't look like video," Fincher explained. "It has its own patina. It's appropriate for what I want to do with the movie.... It's about the cinematography. It has a beauty to it anchored in being a realistic image and appropriate to the story; I didn't want to make a beautiful movie, it wasn't that kind of a film."
Angus Wall of Los Angeles-based Rock, Papers, Scissors edited Zodiac, while incorporating a tapeless post workflow that was assembled for the production. The overall goal, Fincher explained, was to figure out how to produce the highest quality work, make the images accessible to the team, easily incorporate media and give Warner Bros. an archiving medium.
"Angus fell in love with Final Cut Pro, and we felt it was forward thinking," Fincher recalled. "It's off the shelf and it was inexpensive, and people could work remotely from home on a laptop. That was extremely important to decentralize the workflow space. That was one of the things that was really attractive."
From the portable S.two disk recorders, the team was able to produce the needed formats. For instance the images were converted to DVCPRO HD from which QuickTime files were produced and loaded via Firewire for use in editorial. Also, images were backed up and archived uncompressed on data tapes.
"So we had dueling masters and were able to work flexibly, inexpensively." Fincher said. "We could share the media and take it home. So we made it fast, cheap and in control."
The production also used an asset management system called Pix, which enabled the team to upload dailies for access on the Web. "But more important, when we turned over reels we could make changes in the offline and send a QuickTime over Pix and [get it to additional facilities] for sound and music [with change notes].
Fincher estimated that with this tapeless workflow, he also saved roughly one-and-a-half hours a day by not having to go to dailies. This, he suggested, probably resulted in a couple million dollars in savings on the production.
Zodiac went through a Digital Intermediate (DI) process at Burbank-based Technicolor Digital Intermediates, working with veteran colorist Stephen Nakamura. DI is another technique that Fincher examined early on, with Panic Room being among the initial examples of how the process could be used to realize a creative vision. "One thing that was interesting [during the DI] was the Viper footage timed really easily," Fincher observed. "It seemed the way we were able to make things match was much more flexible than in film. I much prefer it to timing 2k scanned film."
All of the techniques and processes used to make Zodiac were put into practice for one key reason: To improve the filmmaking process. "It was never my intention to do digital for the sake of being digital," he related. "It was how can I get input from people that I trust as quickly as possible, so we have time to mull it [creative ideas] over.
"It was sketching; we could sketch digital before we commit. It's not one thing, it's not the server, its not the Final Cut Pro; it's not the S.two.... it's all of it together, which made it more flexible."
As Fincher moves between features and commercials, he is again modifying his techniques for Benjamin Button. Fincher continued to examine new digital cinematography tools before committing to the film. He explained that he did not wish to use tape and tested some digital cinematography cameras. In the end, he said, "I like the feel of the 3 CCD chip set; I like the look of the shadows. We went with Viper again. We felt that it was the most tried and true."
Benjamin Button features Brad Pitt as a man aging in reverse. When asked how these effects would be realized, Fincher explained, "We are doing it through a digital means, where his physiognomy has changed. It's looking like [the face of a man] of 85 on the body of a five year old. So we are using head replacement. We are doing performance capture of the face and using data capture of the head because we remove it."
This past summer at Siggraph, it was rumored that Fincher was set to use the newly announced Mova Contour reality-capture system on Benjamin Button, working with Venice-based Digital Domain, a frequent collaborator with the director on pioneering workflows and visual effects. The developing Mova system uses an FDA-approved phosphorescent makeup mixed with a base and sponged onto the actor to capture highly precise data.
Were these rumors accurate? "It's not confirmed," Fincher reported. "We tried it on a commercial project and it wasn't as successful as we'd need it to be for a big screen.
"We still have seven months to figure it out. There are many ways to skin this cat."
So what is Fincher's wish list for new tools? He responded that for cameras, "I'd like to see a 35mm sensor; see 12- or 16- bit chips sets to be wide enough to fit a 35mm aperture so the lenses could be used for digital acquisition as well as cinema, then to have the resolution of that be 3k…I don't know that you need 4k, maybe 3k would be fine…And then to be able to have small recorders and [the ability] to master to cheap storage. That's my wish list."
He encourages more development. "I think the present crop of cameras available to use is not what we should be settling for," he said. "We need to keep pushing the manufacturers."
While Fincher has tested and deployed many developing filmmaking tools, he is careful not to be a promoter for any specific technology or manufacturers. "I'm a general technology advocate," he explained. "We have to constantly push our emerging media to help us to tell stories more cost effectively and more flexibly. It's working for me and a lot of people. My hope is ultimately we'll be able to make more movies because the cost of movies will come down."
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