ILM Showcases "Dead Man's Chest" Effects Work

bonniegrrl writes "The work of ILM folks (including VFX supervisor John Knoll) is being showcased in a site just launched to explore the mind-blowing visual effects of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (heavy Flash). Interactive clips at the site allow you to peel back layers of animation to see what ILM had to start with before transforming actors wearing tracking markers into astonishingly real characters. Test your effects awareness by making the call: what's real and what's ILM, rotate turntable models of the animated characters, and download some goodies." The submitter also claims that there are a few Easter Eggs of footage in there somewhere.

bad title

[Greventls]

Pirates and Pirates of the Caribbean are two entirely different movies.

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[kdawson]

Agreed, I changed it.

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[serialdogma]

How I miss the old days when no editor dare fellow the request of us mere users.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Aye; Pirates is a porno flick!

Re:bad title

[Anonymous Coward]

A pretty decent porno flick.

I work part time in a sex toy store. We can barely keep the Pirates movie in stock. It is a three-disc set with an HDDVD disc and then the DVD movie disc and I assume a behind the scenes DVD disc. We have been selling it for over six months.

Supposedly the movie was good enough (better than most b-movies) that they removed the explicit stuff and made an unrated version that can be viewed by those under 18 depending on where you live. We, do not allow those under 18 to enter our store, but the local Family Video has the X rated version in the back room, while in the main area with all the other movies you can get the unrated version. It probably sits on the shelf right next to Pirates of the Caribbean.

It is always funny to have someone tell me the movie sucks and they ask why we would sell a non porn film in our store. It is then that I inform them that they only watched the non-X version and that they should watch it again with all of the action.

I still say the greatest scene is about midway through the movie (which is 2 hours long) where they are showing a lesbian scene. The two girls are doing their thing on the floor while about 6-9 pirates stand around occasionally yelling in unison "Arggh" or "God save the wenches". One of the funniest moments I have seen in porn in years.

Now all of you can go back to discussing the tech aspects of the site in the blurb. Although the site is interesting I think it is a little short on details, but I guess that is what a 'behind the scenes' disc is for when you purchase or rent the movie.

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[Slippery Pete]

Actually, it isn't an HDDVD. The set includes a "Standard DVD and WMV-HD DVD" of the movie. http://www.piratesxxx.com/main.php?tab=about [piratesxxx.com]

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[Korvar]

I look forward to your realistically animated CGI masterpiece. The answer of course, is that giving 3d virtual objects realistic weight, inertia and gravity is hard. Especially when you're dealing with a complex object like a human being, which can actually change where its centre of gravity is. I'm willing to bet that your 386 demos were using simple objects, not human beings. CGI is a relatively new medium, unlike traditional 2d animation, which has 50, 60 years of extra development.

Mind-Blowing

[RipTides9x]

showcased in a site just launched to explore the mind-blowing visual effects of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

I don't know about mind-blowing, but I do distinctly remember quite a bit of "Snot"-blowing special FX at the end of PotC:DMC.

I didn't notice a lot of special effects...

[From A Far Away Land]

I suppose the mark of really good effects is when you don't notice them being used.

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[turbofisk]

I thought the same. However, tweaking light and color correction isn't really the special effects department :)

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[Spaham]

there are two kinds of effects, visible effects and invisible effects.
visible effects are like when you see king kong in new york, or the whole planet explode, everyone knows that this is NOT happening.
invisible effects are the ones you're refering to, like 'god how does he run around the walls of the room without falling' that kind of thing.
If you start to notice 'invisible effects', then I guess they're lousy

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[NFNNMIDATA]

What I didn't realize and I guess a lot of people don't is that all of Davy Jones' crew was CG except Turner's father. I would have sworn Davy Jones was an amazing mask with some CG touchups, but they actually CG'd over Bill Nighy entirely, even the eyes. Movie was pretty so-so but it's worth it to see again just for the mutant crew.

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[drsquare]

I didn't notice much of a coherent plot either. Maybe that was computer generated?

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[pshuke]

While I can agree that flash-only sites are evil, you could always try the flash beta [adobe.com] if you're desperate for the content. Works for me.

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[aweinert]

Works fine on Ubuntu w/ FF.

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[grumbel]

Using the direct link works: http://www.ilm.com/theshow/pirates.swf [ilm.com]

Way to destroy the movie magic....

[Channard]

This reminds me of nothing so much as a section from Charlie Brooker's fictional TV Guide 'TV Go Home'..

10:15 Moviewreck

'...fun free footage of some whiny voiced special effects blubberbag in a Perfect Storm baseball cap taking us through a wireframe build of the spectacular finale again and again and again and again until the entire sequence is inorexably rendered so mundane and familiar the experience of finally seeing it... .. feels more like a lunchtime repeat of Knot's Landing than the white knuckle climax it would have been before the slickarsed marketing fucks responsble for tossing together this say-nothing advertorial assault on your dignity spoiled it all as part of their ongoing quest to bully the world into galloping down to the nerest multiplex to gawp at tits and explosions like the oblivious victims of a dystopian stupidity virus.'

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[StarWarsRelatedPun]

Wow, that's some tortured writing.

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[worst_name_ever]

Woah... there's a movie out that has tits and explosions, and nobody told me?!?

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[Yakman]

Woah... there's a movie out that has tits and explosions, and nobody told me?!?

Swordfish!

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[hondo77]

What, you've never seen Desperado?

Re:I could tell it was all CG effects

[PCM2]

This has all the earmarks of an AC troll, but I'd like to chime in and say .... agreed.

The first PotC movie was great fun, but the second one fell way short of the mark. And one of the main reasons was because they spent so much time showcasing effects and so little on story. I mean, the end... WTF?? Does that make any kind of sense to anybody? Are you really waiting on the edge of your seat to find out how that was possible or did you just roll your eyes?

All the scenes on Davy Jones' ship looked fake. Completely fake. It was as if the characters walked off the real world and into this alternate world where every single person or object is made out of CG. It felt claustrophobic. Maybe that was part of the point ... you were supposed to want the characters to escape Davy Jones' ship. But all I really wanted to do was escape that scene, which was way to long a section of way too long a movie.

Similarly, the scenes with the voodoo witch lady. Wow, way to come up with a cheap way to move the plot forward in between action scenes. All the characters miraculously appear in some green-tinged CG swamp where the voodoo lady is always up and waiting for guests. Almost as if she was, say... an Oracle?? Then we leave again and it's back to the rest of the movie.

It's the same thing people are always saying about videogames these days. Too much money spent on the look, not enough on "game play" -- or, in this case, giving you an entertaining movie to watch.

And what is the deal with making every movie three hours long these days? I'm sorry, but there was not enough movie in King Kong to last three hours. There wasn't enough in PotC: Dead Man's Chest, there wasn't enough in Casino Royale ... enough already!! Give me 90 minutes of decent movie and save all that money you spent on these "gorgeous" effects (which Disney apparently feels so compelled to justify that it set up a Web site to promote them).

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[bockelboy]

I'd have to agree with you, buddy.

The first PotC was such an awesome movie because Disney thought it would suck. They half-made it, and tossed it aside. Because they thought it would fail, they let the director and Johnny Depp do their thing - no market droids wanted to touch it.

Then, when it was all wrapped up and finished, they watched it and said "Damn, this is pretty good." But, before they could market the hell out of it and reinsert more special effects, the thing came out.

You could tell Disney's i

Re:I could tell it was all CG effects

[Ford Prefect]

The first PotC was such an awesome movie because Disney thought it would suck. They half-made it, and tossed it aside. Because they thought it would fail, they let the director and Johnny Depp do their thing - no market droids wanted to touch it.

... And ask anyone what they remember from the first, and it'll be Johnny Depp's character and the humour, not the special effects.

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[Mercedes308]

That's exactly right.

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[suv4x4]

And ask anyone what they remember from the first, and it'll be Johnny Depp's character and the humour, not the special effects.

That's funny since I also remember the effects AND Johny Depp's performance AND the humor.

You guys are oversimplifying everything. "It's not about the effects!", breaking news: it's ALSO about the effects, it's about everything in a careful balance, that, if done properly is called "a good movie".

It's not as if they had effects, they had to have crappy script, it just happens so tha

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[Anonymous Coward]

Similarly, the scenes with the voodoo witch lady. Wow, way to come up with a cheap way to move the plot forward in between action scenes. All the characters miraculously appear in some green-tinged CG swamp where the voodoo lady is always up and waiting for guests. Almost as if she was, say... an Oracle?? Then we leave again and it's back to the rest of the movie.

Did anyone else think of the voodoo lady in Monkey Island II when they watched these Dead Man's Chest scenes?

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[mojodamm]

Actually, no. Having "grown up" in Southern California, whenever I saw the oracle, I thought of the Gypsy fortune-teller from the original Pirates of the Caribbean, which I believe was the intent.

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[ultranova]

Actually, no. Having "grown up" in Southern California, whenever I saw the oracle, I thought of the Gypsy fortune-teller from the original Pirates of the Caribbean, which I believe was the intent.

No, she was a clear ripoff off the Voodoo Lady [wikipedia.org].

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[mojodamm]

Ron Gilbert has said himself that the inspiration for The Secret of Monkey Island|Monkey Island came from the Pirates ride. He then refuted the claims once he saw Disney making a boatload of money off the movies, and started claiming that they must've gotten the idea for the movie from him. One obvious example is the prison scene in MI2, complete with key-carrying dog named 'Walt'.

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[odourpreventer]

Did anyone else think of the voodoo lady in Monkey Island II

Yes! I thought it was hilarious how the setting could have been a rip-off. I kept watching out for a Guybrush cameo or a three-headed monkey!

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[szap]

Ron Gilbert, designer of Monkey Island, commenting on the similarities between Monkey Island and Pirates of the Caribbean on his blog: http://grumpygamer.com/8123463 [grumpygamer.com]

missing the point, conflating, and No You Couldn't

[Anonymous Coward]

In reply to your post, I disagree that the problems with this movie (similarly with the other movies you mentioned) that the problem was "lack of story" or some other such hand-waving. Some of them do indeed suffer from being "too long" or stretched too thin, but others suffer from pacing problems, problems with character empathy, anticlimactic directing, lack of subtlety, and as you alude for Dead Man's Chest, plot motivation. The swamp woman was indeed a cheap plot device that insults the intelligence of

Remember the FIRST Commandment of movies.

[khasim]

The FIRST Commandment of movies is:
SHOW me, don't TELL me.

There were very few visual mistakes, but many logical cues it was fake.

The problem is that the "logical cues" make you look for the "visual" cues ... but the visual cues aren't there because the logical cues aren't "logical" so their absence is a "mistake".

Movie MUST follow its own "logic". Even when that logic is not the same as the Real World's logic.

And the way you communicate that logic to the viewer is with pictures and sounds. And they failed t

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[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one that liked the movie. I was looking for entertainment, and didn't play the "try to spot the CG". Sometimes I don't want substance, but just something to entertain me. And while this movie wasn't LOTR, it was good enough for me.

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[adagioforstrings]

Argh, you've hit it on the head: "Good enough." I have to admit I was entertained by the movie, but it definitely is not at the same level as the original. I feel like Disney makes this mistake all the time; they'll occasionally hit on a great movie, but then they reduce it to a formula and produce sequels or imitations with the formula. I can just imagine the Disney producers sitting down with a bunch of kids and asked them what they thought of the movie. They said, "oh the CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow thin

88 Min Toy Story 2.5 Hr DMC

[ashitaka]

I just flew back from Japan. Due to a screw-up by Air Canada the same movies played on the way back as on the way: Dead Man's Chest and Toy Story.

The former I watched bits and pieces of but failed to get into. Swordplay on top of accidentally released water wheels? Please.

The latter I watched all the way through. Again. The dialog, the story, the characters, everything works.

"YOU - ARE - A - TOYYYY!!!!"

Re:I could tell it was all CG effects

[nine-times]

Really, you could tell it was CG? Sheesh, you must have some keen eyes and a brilliant intellect, because I thought they had created a real mutant squid-man and taught him to act.

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[stubear]

As funny as your comment was, there was once a time when people created "rubber" suits and dressed actors in them. One of the many reasons why the original Star Wars trilogy is far better than the new episodes was the use of creature effects such as these. If you're looking to learn more look up Stan Winston to see a master of this craft.

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[nine-times]

Oh, was that the problem with the new ones? I thought it was that they had hired a different alien to play Yoda-- you know, like Darrin in Bewitched? But you're saying that the first Yoda was a tiny man in a "rubber" suit? Wow, those suits are really terrific, because I could never tell.

Well.... live and learn, I guess. Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't really a robot from the future. What kind of material are these "rubber" suits made out of, anyway?

P.S.- I'm

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[stubear]

"One of the many reasons why the original Star Wars trilogy is far better than the new episodes was..."

What part of "one of the many..." did oyu have trouble understanding. Let me explain this in plain english. Lucas relied far too much on CG effects instead of models and costume effects like in his original trilogy. The many part refers to the fact that this is one of, well, many problems with the films. This could certainly include the writing, which was by the way horrible at best.

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[EvilIdler]

>All the characters miraculously appear in some green-tinged CG swamp where the voodoo lady is
>always up and waiting for guests. Almost as if she was, say... an Oracle??
It worked in The Secret of Monkey Island.

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[dr00g911]

(which Disney apparently feels so compelled to justify that it set up a Web site to promote them).

Actually, the site appears to have been set up by ILM & Lucas digital to help bolster their rep and visibility leading into awards time.

Say what you want about some of the effects, but the Davey Jones stuff, water effects and some of the matchmoving (the beached Pearl) were among the most impressive effects shots ever put on screen, and ILM deserves the right to brag a little. Their thunder has been stolen the past 10 years or so while having their A-teams working on the Star Wars prequels. Weta and Im

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[WalksOnDirt]

As it happens I just went to see this at the local last gasp movie theater yesterday. I came away wishing I had checked the reviews first so I could have avoided that stinker, but when I later checked IMDB the overall rating was pretty good.

I was glad to read your comment since I was beginning to wonder if I was just in a bad mood or something.

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[Darthmalt]

Actually the swamp wasn't CG. If you watch the making of you see them really in the set. In fact several things that I assumed were CG turned out to be real.

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[The 13th Duke]

Wow, Comic Book Guy has an account on /.

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[chromozone]

Amen to all that. I swear the more time and effort they out into all the effects the phonier the movie looks. I also think after all the money gets spent on those effects directors are reluctant to cut them out. I remember watching "Titanic" and realising that 15 or 20 minutes of the film showing lower deck activities on the sinking ship not only didn't add much to the film it was a void. I see a lot of extra minutes in films that don't add anything. I can't even go to effects heavy films anymore. They are

It's the weekend, calm down.

[MrPerfekt]

There is no news to be had on weekends.

All that Glimmers

[Doc Ruby]

Keith Richards' [wikipedia.org] personal special effects include "life after death" for over 30 years.

If you download Keef, realize that the music biz learned a long time ago that he's impossible to delete.

It's "Captain" Jack Sparrow to you!

[n0w0rries]

They lost me at one of the first scenes... when they go "You're being arrested for assisting a pirate Jack Sparrow to escape" and they both correct him "Captain... Jack Sparrow". LAME LAME LAME. I really liked the first movie, but the second movie had a terrible script. I can only imagine the 3rd will be worse.

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[Stinking Pig]

Oddly, that's the line where I unplugged my headphones from the airplane's armrest and restored them to their rightful place in my rockboxed iRiver iHP-120. The movie was crap. I kept an eye on the screen when my work got too dull, but the only thing I thought was cool was the lowest-cost special effect in it... the eyes painted on Johnny Depp's eyelids were pretty damned cool.

Shark-jumping

[StrawberryFrog]

I liked the one where the whole pirate ship jumped over a giant shark.

The whole movie was just way over the top.

fake

[Bender Unit 22]

The shark still looks fake.

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[AbRASiON]

I couldn't agree more! What a TERRIBLY over-rated movie!

I checked it on IMDB too to be safe but it was around 8.5 at the time! (8.5!)
I learnt a harsh lesson that day and that was to trust the critics scores and NOT the fanboys.
I've never looked at imdb the same since, ever since then I've used rotten tomatoes critics scores rather than imdb or rotten tomatoes user scores.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pirates_of_the_car ibbean_dead_mans_chest/ [rottentomatoes.com]

53% for dead mans chest (an absoloutely spot on rating as fa

no luck here with flash on Linux

[marvinglenn]

Don't bother looking if you're on Linux. The ILM page sent me to Adobe to get Flash, but even the newest version of Flash offered for Linux does not satisfy the requirements of the ILM page.

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[giorgosts]

Disable NoScript and get flash9 for linux

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[triso]

Don't bother looking if you're on Linux. The ILM page sent me to Adobe to get Flash, but even the newest version of Flash offered for Linux does not satisfy the requirements of the ILM page.

The Linux beta of version 9 is available from: http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/ [adobe.com]

bonniegrrl writes...

[celardore]

I had to hover over that link, just to make sure it wasn't a myspace profile.

bonniegrrl's profile

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Here's BonnieGrrls's profile [myspace.com].

Amazing work, but...

[Aokubidaikon]

It's truly amazing what ILM managed to do for Pirates 2. Too bad though that the producers chose not to invest in a similar amount of time and attention when they hired the screenwriters...

sites should stick with Flash 7 content

[ChrisCampbell47]

Until Adobe finally gets their Linux support done for Flash 9 (they skipped flash 8), websites should not be requiring anything later than Flash 7. That is the latest player available for Linux. Yes, they're working on it [adobe.com], and maybe it's even close to release, but ... horse, cart, etc. Sites should not be developing in anything later than Flash 7 until it's supported on the big three platforms.

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[wertarbyte]

Until Adobe finally gets their Linux support done for Flash 9 (they skipped flash 8), websites should not be requiring anything later than Flash 7. That is the latest player available for Linux.

No, you are wrong. I even got a debian package with flash 9:

stefan@nano:~$ apt-cache show flashplugin-nonfree
Package: flashplugin-nonfree
Priority: optional
Section: contrib/web
Installed-Size: 136
Maintainer: Bart Martens <[e-mail]>
Architecture: i386
Version: 9.0.21.78.4
[...]