“Constant Change” begins with an office worker opening a door and exiting his office. He appears relatively normal except his clothes are changing approximately every fifth of a second. Suits give way to casual clothes and then back to suits. Ties flash by as colors and styles change in a blink. Still however, the man never misses a single stride as he smoothly strolls through the workplace. Outside, day changes to night and then to sunset equally as fast. Next to his office in the computer room, servers multiply from one to three while technicians appear and disappear.

The main character passes through the office as employees pop in and out of frame according to the different times of day and night. Office furniture and desk accessories grow, multiply and mature. The next shot – a close up of his feet – takes us not just through six seasons of footwear, but also the growing sophistication of the office décor reflected in the change from carpeting to granite floors. In the next scene, he passes the reception desk where the gilded company name hangs on the wall. Starting with just two partners, the business name stretches longer as principals are added. We follow him into the elevator where he is accompanied by varying numbers of people from instant to instant. He checks his watch and glances up at the elevator display. Eighteen months of this man’s office life have passed him in 30 seconds.

But at the actual shoot, a man in a black Lycra suit walked through an entirely closed green-screen set. From there, every detail was added. “We built everything,” explained Digital Domain’s visual effects producer Mike Pardee. ”Every facet of the office changes as the company prospers and David Fincher sees all of that. He understands all the changes that happen and how when the sun is angled a certain way it means there should be more of a reflection off of a particular filing cabinet. He is able to imagine it all.”

“Working with Fincher means working in a way that is entirely unlike any typical production,” said Digital Domain senior VP, general manager Ed Ulbrich. “The editor is on the set working in real time, the modeling is done in advance and the whole scene is already finalized in terms of camera movement, sets, lights—everything—before the first frame is shot. The only thing Fincher wants to do on set is work with the actors and through a lot of planning he is able to do that.”

To ensure the best possible results, Digital Domain “previsualized” the scene prior to the shoot. The set and the camera are computer simulated and the camera’s movements are mapped out “virtually.” At the shoot, the simulation is simply fed to a motion-control camera rig. The camera moves according to the instructions it receives from the computer.

But since different times of day and night are being portrayed, lighting was an important issue that had to be addressed on set. The lights on the actor’s face had to match all the 3D models of furniture, walls, windows and objects that would be added later. “On the set, they had a whole lighting rig programmed through the motion control computer,” explained Pardee. “The actor walked through the set while the lighting changed. The motion control computer not only sent instructions to the camera rig, but also to the lighting stations. Everything was timed down to the frame.”

Although only four shooting days were needed, the spot took twelve weeks to complete. In that time, 3D modeling and texturing were created and wrapped around the main character to create the office space. “The sheer number of layers in some of those shots is enormous,” remarked Ulbrich. “Every object was modeled, textured and lit. We took pictures of actual office furniture and objects and wrapped the image around 3D objects in our library. Since the light was changing every five frames, the 3D models could react and reflect appropriately once we started illuminating the scene.”

“The challenge for our artists was making the character look like he was in the office and making his clothing look real,” said Pardee. “There was a lot of adjusting to make sure the character fit into the scene. The texture of the clothing had to be just right and had to fit his body naturally. We tracked him frame-by-frame and used his movement as a guide to generate the 3D wardrobe over the black suit. We knew his dimensions—the width of his arms and everything—so we knew what we had to do in terms of fitting the clothes around his body.”

The end result is a man witnessing his company’s growth in a kind of surreal time lapse and in the process the audience gets a vicarious peek. “Fincher is all about pushing the limits of the technology to achieve new results,” commented Ulbrich. “We get pretty excited to work with directors who know the precise limits of the artists and the equipment and then want to go one step further,” commented Ulbrich. “Directors like David Fincher use new technology to put images on screen we have never seen before.”

ABOUT DIGITAL DOMAIN

Digital Domain is located at 300 Rose Avenue, Venice, California 90291, (301) 314-2800, digitaldomain.com.bn

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Press Contact: Fran Koenig (203) 661 5090, koenigpr@optonline.net

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