Digital Content Producer

Director David Fincher's new film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was created using a refined version of Fincher’s all-digital filmmaking pipeline that he used on his last movie, Zodiac (listen to Fincher speak on Zodiac). Once again, Fincher relied on Grass Valley Viper cameras and S.Two hard drive recording systems, but this time, on a movie with major and complex visual effects—particularly the sophisticated work done to age actor Brad Pitt backwards. That work was done at Digital Domain, a facility that has worked with Fincher since he first started developing his digital pipeline on commercials and music videos a few years ago. This issue of HD Focus offers the first of two conversations with officials at Digital Domain about incorporating visual effects into Fincher’s workflow. First, this issue, is a conversation with Digital Domain Executive VP of Production Ed Ulbrich, a longtime collaborator with Fincher at Digital Domain.

Next week, we'll continue the discussion with a chat with Eric Barba, Digital Domain's visual effects supervisor on the Benjamin Button project.