Exclusive Video Compare Fincher's computer generated pre-visualization with scenes from the final cut of 'Panic Room': Clip 1: "There is something on the monitors": Scene from the Film Previsualization Clip 2: "People in the house": Scene from the Film Previsualization

Afterwards, "We sit down with David and he directs," says Frankel proudly, showing how within seconds and a few clicks of the keyboard a filmmaker can go from viewing all four stories of the set with camera placement and actor's blocking to a "cinematic" which shows exactly what is being shot at any given point of time with animated action. "We are positioning the cameras, the lens that we are using is accurate to within about a tenth of a degree to what the actual lenses are. These are David's actual lenses of choice."

From each vantage point Frankel pulls up on his screen, yellow objects representing camera set-ups can be seen, white wire frames alternately extending from each one to designate which camera is active at that moment in the action. "It's not filmed with 50 cameras threaded," Frankel laughs. "But this is the access of information that you get to through this process. This is all happening in one cohesive unified space. David can sit here and direct it as he wants to direct it, covering the parts of it that he wants to cover, edit that together, break it down to individual shots, and then we get into the technical planning aspect of it."

By looking through his virtual camera, Fincher could compose his shots controlling dolly movements, tilts and pans, all on the fly. "We are just sitting here operating the camera, and at the same time we're operating the camera, we actually have the camera equipment so we can look at what is being asked of the camera equipment," he says.

Frankel and his staff will then be able to tell Fincher, the camera department or whoever needs to know, whether a camera, a dolly, a crane, etc. will fit into a given space, or if a piece of the set will have to be removed.

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Once a shot goes through the creative process with Fincher, his cinematographer and his editor have cut a sequence together, the director can determine which shots stay in and which to throw out. After all the shots for a given scene are decided upon, the second phase of previsualization can begin. Because Frankel's models are accurate to the actual production environment, each shot gets reduced down to a one page "blueprint" and is included in a reference notebook. Each of these pages has information about the camera body and equipment, the lens, the duration of the shot and special production notes such as whether an apple box needs to be used. Even camera start and end positions are documented, along with the actor's start and end positions. Finally, each blueprint gets distributed to all the various departments as a communication and planning tool in an attempt to create a more efficient production.

Also represented in Frankel's blueprint binder are all of the shots Fincher discarded, about three dozen in all. After editing all the animated footage together, the filmmaker came to the realization that he didn't need certain set-ups. He either replaced them with better camera set-ups or simply left them out entirely.

"We are talking about cutting down the overall amount of film exposed, or at least optimizing the film that is exposed, because he has already gone through a couple of drafts of the edit," Frankel points out.

Pixel Liberation Front created an hour-and-a-half of animation based on 60 pages, or two-thirds of the script. After Fincher was done with his revision, a 25-minute edit had been created.

Frankel isn't the only person who is beginning to see how previsualization can save a production millions of dollars. "If you consider it cost-wise, footage that ends on the viritual editing room floor is pennies compared to first unit production, on stage experimentation," he says. "The art department, the camera department, the visual effects department, the AD, having access to this information, gave each of them a greater degree of clarity and a greater degree of communication and understanding of what was going to be expected of them for that shot. All of this work was done weeks, if not months, before production started."

"The cost is fairly unsubstantial to $125,000 a day. It's pennies," Frankel declares. "The amount of decision making with us over the course of a week, it doesn't even begin to come close to a day on stage. David gets us for weeks, if not months, of time versus on-stage time. So all we have to do in a sense to pay for ourselves is save him three or four days."

Yet not everyone on Panic Room was thrilled with the previsualization blueprints created by Frankel and his team. "At first the grips weren't all that comfortable with people coming in and telling them what to do until they realized that we weren't actually telling them what to do, we were helping them answer the questions that they had to answer," he reveals. "It's a whole lot easier moving a crane around on a computer than it is moving a crane around on a stage."

As for Fincher himself, he wouldn't hesitate for even a second to use previsualization for any film he takes on in the future. "So much of the set had to be done on the computer because we needed to know which doorways to cheat wider to get cameras through them and if a certain place in the floor could hold the weight of a crane," says Fincher, who felt the process helped out not only with pre-production, but was also instrumental in working through post-production. "We had so many companies, we had a company in Canada, we had a company France, we had a company up in Ventura, all working on different things. To be able to all be working from the same reference point, we had to do it."