Filming
James J. Murakami supervised the production design. Location scouting revealed that many of the older buildings in Los Angeles had been torn down, including the entire neighborhood where Collins lived. Suburban areas in San Dimas, San Bernardino and Pasadena doubled for 1920s Los Angeles instead. The Old Town district of San Dimas stood in for Collins' neighborhood and some adjacent locales. Murakami said Old Town was chosen because very little had changed since the 1920s. It was used for interiors and exteriors; the crew decorated the area with a subdued color palette to evoke feelings of comfort. For some exterior shots they renovated derelict properties in neighborhoods of Los Angeles that still possessed 1920s architecture. The crew staged the third floor of the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles into a replica of the 1920s Los Angeles City Council chambers.
The 1918 Santa Fe Depot in San Bernardino doubled for the site of Collins' reunion with "Walter". The production filmed scenes set at San Quentin in the community. A small farm on the outskirts of Lancaster, California, stood in for the Wineville chicken ranch. The crew recreated the entire ranch, referencing archive newspaper photographs and visits to the original ranch to get a feel for the topography and layout. Steve Lech, president of the Riverside Historical Society, was employed as a consultant and accompanied the crew on its visits.
The production sourced around 150 vintage motor cars, dating from 1918 to 1928, from collectors throughout Southern California. In some cases the cars were in too good a condition, so the crew modified them to make the cars appear like they were in everyday use; they sprayed dust and water onto the bodywork and to "age" some of the cars they applied a coating that simulated rust and scratches. The visual effects team retouched shots of Los Angeles City Hall—on which construction was completed in 1928—to remove weathering and newer surrounding architecture. Costume designer Deborah Hopper researched old Sears department store catalogs, back issues of Life magazine and high-school yearbooks to ensure the costumes were historically accurate. Hopper sourced 1920s clothing for up to 1,000 people; this was difficult because the fabrics of the period were not resilient. She found sharp wool suits for the police officers. The style for women of all classes was to dress to create a boyish silhouette, using dropped waist dresses, cloche hats that complemented bob cut hairstyles, fur-trimmed coats and knitted gloves. Jolie said the costumes her Collins character wore formed an integral part of her approach to the character. Hopper consulted historians and researched archive footage of Collins to replicate her look. Hopper dressed Jolie in austere grays and browns with knitted gloves, wool serge skirts accompanying cotton blouses, Mary Jane shoes, crocheted corsages and Art Deco jewelry. In the 1930s sequences at the end of the film, Jolie's costumes become more shapely and feminine, with a decorative stitching around the waistline that was popular to the era.
Principal photography began on October 15, 2007, finishing two days ahead of its 45-day schedule on December 14, 2007. Universal Pictures provided a budget of $55 million. The film was Eastwood's first for a studio other than Warner Bros. since Absolute Power (1997). Filming mainly took place on the Universal Studios backlot in Los Angeles. The backlot's New York Street and Tenement Street depicted downtown Los Angeles. Tenement Street also stood in for the exterior of Northcott's sister's Vancouver apartment; visual effects added the city to the background. The production also used the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, California.
Eastwood had clear childhood memories of 1930s Los Angeles and attempted to recreate several details in the film: City Hall, at the time one of the tallest buildings in the city; the city center, which was one of the busiest in the world; and the "perfectly functioning" Pacific Electric Railway, the distinctive red streetcars of which feature closely in two scenes. The production used two functioning replica streetcars for these shots, with visual effects employed for streetcars in the background.
Eastwood is known for his economical film shoots; his regular camera operator, Steve Campanelli, indicated the rapid pace at which Eastwood films—and his intimate, near-wordless direction—also featured during Changeling's shoot. Eastwood limited rehearsals and takes to garner more authentic performances. Jolie said, "You've got to get your stuff together and get ready because he doesn't linger ... He expects people to come prepared and get on with their work." Campanelli sometimes had to tell Jolie what Eastwood wanted from a scene, as Eastwood talked too softly. To provide verisimilitude to certain scenes, Eastwood sometimes asked Jolie to play them quietly, as if just for him. At the same time he would ask his camera operator to start filming discreetly, without Jolie's seeing it.
Malkovich noted Eastwood's direction as "redefining economical", saying Eastwood was quiet and did not use the phrases "action" and "cut". He said, "Some [directors]—like Clint Eastwood or Woody Allen—don't really like to be tortured by a million questions. They hire you, and they figure you know what to do and you should do it ... And that's fine by me." Ryan also noted the calmness of the set, observing that her experiences working with director Sidney Lumet on 100 Centre Street and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead were useful due to his sharing Eastwood's preference for filming a small number of takes.
Donovan said Eastwood seldom gave him direction other than to "go ahead", and that Eastwood did not even comment on his decision to play Jones with a slight Irish accent: "Actors are insecure and they want praise, but he's not there to praise you or make you feel better ... All he's there to do is tell the story and he hired actors to tell their story." Gaffer Ross Dunkerley said he often had to work on a scene without having seen a rehearsal: "Chances are we'll talk about it for a minute or two and then we're executing it."
The original edit was almost three hours long; to hone it to 141 minutes, Eastwood cut material from the first part of the film to get to Collins' story sooner. To improve the pacing he also cut scenes that focused on Reverend Briegleb. Eastwood deliberately left the ending of the film ambiguous to reflect the uncertain fates of several characters in the history. He said that while some stories aimed to finish at the end of a film, he preferred to leave it open-ended.
Changeling was director of photography Tom Stern's sixth film with Eastwood. Despite the muted palette, the film is more colorful than some previous Stern–Eastwood collaborations. Stern referenced a large book of period images. He attempted to evoke Conrad Hall's work on Depression-set film The Day of the Locust, as well as match what he called the "leanness" of Mystic River's look. Stern said the challenge was to make Changeling as simple as possible to shoot. To focus more on Jolie's performance, he tended to avoid the use of fill lighting. Eastwood did not want the flashbacks to Northcott's ranch to be too much like a horror film—he said the focus of the scene was the effect of the crimes on Sanford Clark—so he avoided graphic imagery in favor of casting the murders in shadow.
Stern shot Changeling in anamorphic format on 35mm film using Kodak Vision 500T 5279 film stock. The film was shot on Panavision cameras and C-Series lenses. Due to the large number of sets, the lighting rigs were more extensive than on other Eastwood productions. The crew made several ceilings from bleached muslin tiles. Stern lit the tiles from above to produce a soft, warm light that was intended to evoke the period through tones close to antique and sepia. The crew segregated the tiles using fire safety fabric Duvatyn to prevent light spilling onto neighboring clusters. The key light was generally softer to match the warm tones given off by the toplights. Stern used stronger skypans—more intense than is commonly used for key lighting—to reduce contrasts when applying daytime rain effects, as a single light source tended to produce harder shadows.
Stern lit scenes filmed at the Park Plaza Hotel using dimmable HMI and tungsten lights rigged within balloon lights. This setup allowed him to "dial in" the color he wanted, as the blend of tones from the tungsten fixtures, wooden walls and natural daylight made it difficult to illuminate the scenes using HMIs or daylight exclusively. Stern said the period setting had little effect overall on his lighting choices because the look was mostly applied in the production design and during digital intermediate (DI), the post-production digital manipulation of color and lighting. Technicolor Digital Intermediates carried out the DI. Stern supervised most of the work via e-mailed reference images as he was in Russia shooting another film at the time. He was present at the laboratory for the application of the finishing touches.
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