A recreation of America’s most notorious real-life cold case got everyone involved just as obsessed with the details as the original cops and reporters decades ago. David Fincher is known for painstaking details, but that probably hit its peak with Zodiac. The aim is to tell the story with absolute accuracy, but of course there must always be small changes. For example Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) were not friends in real life. That makes dramatic sense, but what about the dumb luck that the real Arthur Leigh Allen was interviewed by Vallejo P.D. detective John Lynch, a detail that had to be changed once actor John Carroll Lynch was cast in the role.
This was Fincher’s first time working with digital cameras, a decision partly because of their ease with filming night scenes, but for shots in slow motion he used film. The Director of Photography was Harry Savides (The Game). Because Fincher is one of the best as using invisible digital effects he could do time-saving tricks like digital blood instead of constant clean-ups on set, or digitally erasing modern fixtures like satellite dishes. He even added digital hair to close-ups of Gyllenhaal’s knuckles because the actors hands “were too hairless and pretty.” Fincher also gave Gyllenhaal a doll and an old-fashioned diaper to prepare for his role as a father.
Naturally the biggest story on a David Fincher set is the amount of takes. Downey had the hardest time with this and tells a story about an early scene he shot.
“Working with David Fincher, you will learn that you’re more durable than you thought. A scene can devolve into where it just feels really perfunctory and you’re kind of almost on automatic mode. But it doesn’t matter because the craft of trying to get things done, like there was a scene where he was trying to get it done in one shot and we had to have done 40 or 50 takes and people were a little bit exasperated. He said, “Downey, come here. Do we have it yet?” And I watched the takes and at the end of it I said, “You want to use this in one?” He goes, “Yeah.” I go “No.” He goes, “Downey’s right, we don’t have it yet. Delete all 40 of those takes and we’ll start again after lunch.”
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