Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Knoll and George were a tag team on set, either one present at all times on all locations, as the other one returned to ILM headquarters in San Francisco to work with their team of artists and technicians on bringing it all to life. “One of our tasks on set was to deal with improvisation and change,” notes Knoll, “because no matter how much you’ve thought these things out in advance, the situation is always different in front of the camera. Or there’s an opportunity to do something that’s creatively better, which might mean that the camera will be in a different position, or that there’s some other technical challenge that you didn’t anticipate. It’s important that someone from visual effects is there to make decisions quickly.”

Also helping to keep things atmospheric throughout the shoot on every location were special effects coordinators Michael Lantieri and Allen Hall. Whether creating steam and smoke rings from Davy Jones’ massive musical organ, smashing full-sized ships in half, firing off batteries of cannons, or laying down massive amounts of smoke and fog around the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman, these physical “in- camera” effects were no less magical than that conjured by the ILM experts. So much fog was required for the sequences shot in the Bahamas that Hall had two large boats equipped with large jet pulse engines, not to mention an actual aircraft jet engine mounted on a larger craft. “We actually bought out the world’s supply of fog fluid for this movie,” Hall admits.

Dealing with Grand Bahama’s fickle weather became almost routine for Verbinski and company, but what was looming in October could never have been predicted. Although Caribbean production supervisor Tom Hayslip had written a detailed, 27-page Hurricane Preparedness Plan in September, it was, of course, hoped that it would never have to be implemented. But on Tuesday, October 18th, it became clear that Tropical Storm Wilma—having just been promoted to Hurricane Wilma—was about to make a sudden right turn away from the Yucatan Peninsula and head directly toward Florida and, just 50 miles beyond, Grand Bahama Island. As the humidity increased and the clouds began to build, production hurriedly began preparing for the worst. It was a terrible irony that just two weeks earlier, the pre-production crew of another Jerry Bruckheimer production, “Déjà Vu,” had to be evacuated from New Orleans as the monstrous Hurricane Katrina stormed its way toward the Gulf. Now, Bruckheimer and his production team began organizing the huge task of securing the production facilities as much as possible while ensuring the safety of the company.

Grand Bahama Island is flat as a pancake, has no high ground, and had taken huge hits in September 2004 from both Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne. When the company went to sleep on the night of October 18th, Wilma was only a category-one hurricane. By the next morning, it had graduated not only to a category five, but also to new status as the most powerful hurricane in recorded history, with sustained winds of 175 and gusts up to 215 miles per hour. “We were alerted about a week prior to the hurricane and made the decision to pull everybody out just in case it picked Grand Bahama Island,” recalls Bruckheimer. “And fortunately for us, we got everybody out, locked down our ships in the harbor and had them all battened down. We had only minor damage, considering what could have happened.”

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