Pirates Of The Caribbean VFX Article

[amr.ramadan]

An interesting, long, interview with ILM's Animation Supervisor Hal Hickel, about the work they did on Pirates Of The Carribean.

This is a proof that visual effects interfere so much, according to him, "the script did not have skeleton pirates".

Now I found this skeleton thing the worst in the movie!!

http://www.uemedia.com/CPC/article_11567.shtml

ILM was involved pretty early on. Before I was on board, the script did not have skeleton pirates. The supernatural element was added by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the writers from "Shrek" who did a pass on the script. That became the biggest single task we had to do.

It is funny how things like that happen. For instance, I do not think we have built miniature ships here since maybe "Hook" or even "Goonies." Now we have built three for this film and the team has built one for a Peter Pan film we are working on. The model shop is so happy -- they have gotten to build four of these gigantic miniature ships in the last six months.

The Dauntless was 1:12 scale and it was fourteen feet long. The Black Pearl was 1:6 scale and it was about 24 feet long. Then the Interceptor was 1:4 scale at 22 feet long.

In the end it had to be blown up, and there was not time to build two ships. Blowing up such a sturdily made model is tough. Jeff Heron was our pyro guy, and he said he had charges in it every few inches. They did it right at the end of the schedule because we had to get all of the shots in, but that left no time for building a new one if the explosion did not go right. That was pretty nerve racking, but it went off well.

How did they do that shot where they are walking along under the ship?

The live-action guys were shot on a stage with a highspeed camera to slow them down. They laid down sand, because the way a person walks on sand is distinctive. We motion captured their walking on sand, and then time-stretched the mo-cap to produce the slowdown. The environment was a miniature set with a sandy bottom and the anchor chains going up to the surface. The surface of the water was CG and the hull of the boat was CG. We did CG atmosphere and particles in the water. I do not think there was anything shot underwater for the sequence.