Apple has posted an article by Joe Cellini on the digital production and post-production process, and use of Final Cut Pro on director David Fincher’s new film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Fincher, an artist who has pioneered the use of emerging HD and digital tapeless workflows, shot nearly the entire film with the Thomson Viper FilmStream Camera, with additional help from Sony’s F23 Cine Alta. The media was captured using digital film recorders and iDocks from S.two corporation and Kona capture cards from AJA video.

Post production supervisor Peter Mavromates used an S.two iDock on set and was able to capture full resolution DPX files while simultaneously generating DVCPRO HD “dailies” clones. These were immediately shipped back to Fincher’s offices in Los Angeles for editor Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter to assemble. As soon as the editors had something to show, the cut scenes were compressed and uploaded via FTP for the directors review.

Once again, David Fincher is dragging Hollywood kicking and screaming into the digital age. With the completion of his latest project, he demonstrates the physical, creative and financial efficiencies afforded by a file based workflow. All the more impressive on a project with a budget of approximately $150 million dollars, in production for 2 years.

Although this article specifically focuses on the use of Final Cut Pro in the process, with some minor adjustments it could equally be applied to workflows for editors cutting with other software such as Avid’s Media Composer, Adobe’s Premiere and others.