10 Things You Somehow Missed In Zodiac (2007)

Like Charlie Chaplin and Stanley Kubrick, David Fincher is infamous for being a perfectionist when it comes to filmmaking. While working on Mank, he asked an actress to perform a take 200 times. On multiple occasions, he has spent days to film a single shot. He kept the actors on Zodiac on set for so long, the film's star, Robert Downey Jr, protested by pissing in a jar (as you do).

Even though this creative process is what makes Fincher an auteur, it can be frustrating, especially when filming the murder scenes in Zodiac. In one sequence, the killer ties up a couple at Lake Berryessa, and violently stabs them. Because the woman's clothes would be soaked in blood at the end of each take, Fincher knew he needed dozens of identical dresses for retakes. Because this process would be time-consuming and unnecessarily expensive, the director thought it more sensible to insert the blood in post-production with CGI.

Because we only see the blood gushing out of the woman for a few seconds, most viewers don't notice that it is computer generated.