David Fincher's six-year journey on The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttonincluded frustrating start and stop testing of new technology for the groundbreaking GG head replacement and performance capture. All images © 2008 Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Ent.

VFXWorld recently caught up with director David Fincher to discuss Digital Domain's impressive CG head replacement breakthrough on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (arguably the Oscar VFX frontrunner) and his thoughts on the new digital paradigm, 3-D and what movies he's looking forward to in 2009.

Bill Desowitz: So what has this six-year journey been like for you to make Benjamin Button?

David Fincher: It has been a journey, in a weird sort of way. It is one of these movies that you don't have this ticking clock -- there are no plot devices -- you're just basically looking at human behavior and deciding whether or not it's... behaviorally correct. And, you know, how do we make this little guy?

BD: But you had a lot of time to figure it out, what with technology always changing...

DF: Well, yes and no. Technology is always changing, but, worse than that, was this whole start, stop, start, stop... It's not as if somebody at the studio said, "We think you're going to get there, we think it's eventually going to be cheap enough." Because obviously our first test was very expensive, 'cause we were making all the mistakes we would eventually edit out of the process. And so you spend half a million dollars on a test for one shot, and, of course, the studio comes back and says, "How many shots do you think you have?" And you come back with: "Three-hundred and fifty." And they go: "Wow! We need to seriously reconsider this?" So, I think this is where Spielberg and Lucas and Cameron and Zemeckis have a leg up on everybody: they have the ability to get people to finance things that may or may not come to fruition -- and so I think it helps to be able to go and say, "Trust me, it's eventually going to get there." And to literally test for two years, which we didn't do. We sort of tested, got shut down and then I ended up taking a couple of commercials to fund the development of the technique. And from that we were able to say with a straight face: "Oh, it's going to get there." And up until about eight months ago, we were... our fingers were crossed really, tight. We had very little circulation in our fingertips.

For the crafting required for Brad Pitt's performance, Fincher was adamant that the vfx team work closely with the camera crew. 

BD: When you finally got to make the movie, what was it like grafting and crafting Brad Pitt's performance?

DF: Well, the grafting part was difficult in that the tracking (and I give [Tracking Supervisor] Marco Maldanado all the credit for figuring it out)... If the relationship between the orbital socket and the clavicles changes in some funky way, it's over. It doesn't matter how good the shaders are or how good the performance is, you're out. And so I give him credit and they were so low impact on the actual shoot days. And coming from ILM -- at least in the photochemical days -- there was a lot of, "OK, everyone, clear the set: here come the guys with the Vista Vision cameras." And I used to hate that. And I told everyone upfront that I never work that way -- at least not with DD. I've actually had people say that they want to bring a supervisor down to the set, and I tell them that we're not going to do that. I don't need another opinion around here. Tell me what the ramifications are and I'll take responsibility. One of the first things I did [at DD] was shoot this Rolling Stones video [the Grammy-winning Love is Strong], but coming from a pretty good understanding of what we were doing. And so I was very adamant with [VFX Exec Producer] Ed [Ulbrich] and with [Visual Effects Supervisor] Eric [Barba] as far as this head replacement stuff [on Button] that it was going to be two guys and they would have to work with our camera crew... and it worked great. I'd rather give a handful of people an hour for setting up than 25 people 25 minutes because it ends up being such a disaster.