Other Titles • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) • Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Treasures of the Lost Abyss • Dead Man's Chest • Pirates of the Caribbean 2 • Rummty II • P.O.T.C 2 • Pirates 2 • P.O.T.C. 2
Among the stunt heroes was Orlando Bloom himself, who, as often as feasible (and as he would be permitted by production), performed his own feats of derring-do, sometimes more than 30 feet up in the rigging of the high masts of the Edinburgh Trader. “There’s one scene in which I’m on the mast, jump into a sail, slash it with a dagger and slide down. This is like real Errol Flynn stuff, which is every boy’s dream. I really do feel like I am living a lot of these boyhood dreams on a movie like this. And I’ve trained hard to be fit and agile enough to do things like this so I don’t hurt myself. It’s a major part of who Will Turner is.”
The Kraken is masterfully brought to life in DEAD MAN’S CHEST by a phalanx of visual effects artists at Industrial Light & Magic, the live-action elements meticulously calibrated with the visual effects plans. “The Kraken sequences were extensively pre-visualized,” notes visual effects supervisor John Knoll, “and we were literally shooting specific pieces to conform to that animatic blueprint. The Kraken scenes are technically very complex, because there’s a lot of interaction with water and we see shots looking down the whole of the ship, with a dozen tentacles swarming around, picking characters off the deck. Putting the composites together are very difficult…every shot takes months of effort.”
The mandate set by Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski for DEAD MAN’S CHEST was for ILM to raise the bar higher once again, as they had on the first “Pirates” film. DEAD MAN’S CHEST required three times as many visual effects shots as did “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” which itself represented a quantum leap of visual effects technology.
Despite the fact that the film traffics in pure fantasy, Verbinski was absolutely insistent that the unbelievable look believable in every way. “CGI is not a verb,” Verbinski has been known to say. Rather, he sees it as a tool to be used to embellish and enhance.
“Because Gore has been through the process and understands every nut and bolt of what ILM is doing,” says visual effects supervisor Charlie Gibson, “he can put that aside and just charge forward, knowing that ILM will eventually be able to catch up and meet his vision somewhere near the very end of the schedule. What’s unique about the visual effects in this film, for me, is how freely Gore is able to use what ILM can offer. The net result of that confidence and understanding is that the discussions move on past the technical to the creative.”
“Gore is great visually,” notes visual effects supervisor John Knoll—who served in the same capacity on the first film and works alongside fellow ILM supervisor Bill George on DEAD MAN’S CHEST— “and he has a really strong technical background. Gore comes in with very strong opinions of how he wants to do things. This film is not just a rehash of the last one. Gore and the writers have come up with a lot of really great and fresh ideas.” Knoll and George sought to free Verbinski up as much as possible to shoot as he wanted without worrying about the visual effects which would come later. “I have enough confidence in our crew that we could track those cameras, and that if we need to put computer-generated characters behind the live actors, we can just rotor that edge and not have to worry about having a blue screen in there.”
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