Pirates of the caribbean: at world's end - Disney

SPECIAL EFFECTS
soundstage and blue screens that had been the mainstay of the system before their innovations.
“Davy was our big focus in the second film, and I think we have all the look and rendering technology
down at this point. Hal Hickel,
our animation supervisor, and
his team are familiar with the
character now, so we’ve got a
good repertoire to work from for
Davy and his Flying Dutchman
crew.” In fact, the 16 primary
Dutchman crew members
created for “Dead Man’s Chest”
was increased in AT WORLD’S
END, particularly for the
Maelstrom sequence. Says
Knoll, “We definitely take some of the characters that were more background in the second film, and shuffle
them around to the front to get a little mileage out of them.”
Knoll admits that “of all three pictures, probably the most fun aspect of any of them has been our
involvement in the creation of Davy Jones. That was a really great partnership with Bill Nighy, who gave
a fantastic performance on set, and all that without any real proof of concept. You know, we asked him to
wear the unsettling computer gray ‘pajamas’ on set, and we couldn’t really show him what it was going to
look like when it was done, but he dove right in there and delivered these great performances, created an
amazing character and gave us fantastic material to work with. The artists back at ILM did a fantastic job
modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering, just beautiful animation. I think Davy Jones is a really special
character in every way.”
For the extraordinarily challenging post-production process, Knoll explains that “because of the size
of the show and the number of shots we have to finish per week, we need to have regular feedback from
Gore. So, given that he’s just as busy as we are in post-production, when he’s editing the movie, working
on sound, ADR, all of those finishing touches to get the movie done, it’s not convenient for him to fly up
to ILM in San Francisco from Los Angeles. And it would be a big imposition on my time to be flying
down regularly when I really need to be with my crew at ILM. So we do these video conferences twice a
week, at least up until the final weeks. Then, when we get into the final weeks, we do them every day!
“We go over all of our work in progress on a two-way video conference so that Gore can see both us
and the shot that we’re working on. Because a lot of what we do involves hand gestures and that sort of
thing, it’s important to actually see each other while we’re doing that.”
Of all the bizarre sights that the “Pirates” company was privy to—and heaven knows, there were
many—perhaps one of the strangest was the dumping of some 175,000 lightweight, plastic, blue balls
from two nets high above the “Site 9” hangar floor in Palmdale, and onto the deck of the gimbal-mounted
Black Pearl. The truth is, they only looked like blue balls, but they were, in fact, thousands of skittering,
jittery, watery crabs. Or at least, they would be by the time John Knoll and ILM got finished with them.
Explains Knoll, “There’s an important scene during the Maelstrom sequence that involves a hundred
thousand crabs which rain over the whole deck of the Black Pearl and sweep away everybody in their path
like some kind of crustacean avalanche. Gore came up with the idea of using the blue plastic balls, just
like the ones that are in the ball pits of children’s amusement areas. He thought that the balls would
literally knock everybody off their feet without doing any real damage because of their light weight.
“I might have been inclined to try and accomplish that effect with digital doubles,” Knoll continues,
“and maybe use some sort of wire rig to show the pirates being knocked down. But Gore is a strong
proponent of trying to get practical elements on set, to get as much into the camera as you can, and then
use visual effects where you really need them.”
“The crabs themselves are computer-generated models. We built one detailed version of the crab, and
then several variations on it.”
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