Title: Pirate Kings
Author: unknown
Publication: UK – DVD Review
Issue: November 2006
The thing that that greets you at the entrance to Industrial Light & Magic’s San Francisco HQ is Yoda. The wrinkly turquoise goblin stands on top of a fountain, wizened old hands resting on a cane, and he looks so realistic you half expect him to greet you with a sage “Help you, l will”, like some friendly Jedi receptionist.
Yoda, of course, started life as a puppet then went CGI, so it might seem odd to label a statue of him as ‘realistic’. But then that’s exactly what ILM does best — making the impossible seem possible, the incredible seem credible, little green men seem wise and worldly. It’s no wonder everyone you encounter on this imposing complex – built on the site of a former veterans’ hospital in The Presidio National Park – beams with pride about the quality of lLM’s work.
There’s a calm-before-the-storm atmosphere about the place. ILM has a regular staff of up to 800, which soars to 1,500 when it‘s at a creative peak, but today it seems half empty. “We’re quiet at the moment.” explains marketing and communications director Miles Perkins. Then he flashes a wide screen Californian smile and adds: “But we’re just about to start on Pirates 3…”
WATER WORKS
Maddeningly, no one will reveal anything juicy about the third Jack Sparrow adventure. One guy lets slip: “There’s a lot of water stuff- not just boats on the water but some real , interaction…” then clams up. And they’re just as secretive about the DVD extras for Dead Man’s Chest, merely giving us a sneak peek at a thorough Making Of and some funny outtakes that’ll be included on the disc. You can bet your box-office dollar that ILM – who has been pushing the visual-effects envelope since the original Star Wars back in 1977 – will pull out all the stops to boggle our minds for number three. Just look at what it did with Davy Jones for Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. lt came up with a 100 per cent computer generated character that you’d swear was just Bill Nighy with a few facial prosthetics. A quick presentation in the state-of the-art screening room (designed in Art Deco style by George Lucas himself) shows how ILM brought Nighy’s Ruler Of The Ocean Depths to CGI life. Lt was a complicated process, covered in depth and in detail on the extras, but it basically involved Nighy acting the role on set, then being transformed by the wonders of technology into the revolting, realistic human/sea-creature hybrid on screen.
At Industrial Light & Magic, which is part of a vast 85,000 sq ft site that also houses Lucasfilrn, Lucasarts and Lucasonline, they don’t believe in the word “can’t”. So when helmer Gore Verbinski asked if he could shoot Nighy and his motley crew on set, the answer was “Of course”. It had never been done before; with Lord Of The Rings, say, Andy Serkis acted Gollum on a motion-capture soundstage. But ILM, who develops its own software rather than buying it from other companies, enjoys a challenge, so the team devised a new process — which included loose-fitting grey suits covered in reference points needed for the CGI work – allowing Nighy to perform each of his scenes alongside the other actors.
“lt was revolutionary” brags digital supervisor Mike Sanders. “We were able to shoot on a stage with rain and lightning. On the first movie, where the pirates turn into skeletons in the moonlight, we shot all of that in post production. But with this one it was fully organic — Bill Nighy was on set, being directed, interacting with the other actors, in real time. He performed the motion and the emotion. All we did was extract it, animate the character and put it back into the shots. The core of his body motion, posturing, timing – all the performance – is still there and that’s why he is such a believable character. The proof is in the results. There are veterans in the industry who can’t tell he is computer generated.
BIG MONEY
Clearly ILM is an awesome operation. How much it cost to build is a closely guarded secret, although there have been reports that the entire site (including the Lucasfilm buildings) comes close to being worth $350 million plus change. Whatever the bill, the bearded one has spared no expense. The corridors are lined with old movie posters and there’s even an optical printer, a relic developed for The Ten Commandments that was also used for Star Wars, housed reverently in a glass case. Thing is, the company isn’t about celebrating movie history, it’s about making it, And its CV is staggering. Star Wars with its motion-controlled camera, marked the birth of modem-day visual effects. The Abyss introduced morphing, which was then perfected for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Dragonheart, although not a huge hit, represented a huge technical leap in that animators were able to develop hair and fur. And did you realise that the baby in Lemon Snicket was done digitally?
Up to 15 projects are on the go in any year, so it’s no wonder the computer system needs 190 terabytes of storage space. Other impressive areas of ILM include editing suites, a gym, a restaurant, even a day-care centre where employees can drop of their kids.
Wandering around, you feel like a big kid yourself. Turn a comer and you’ll see the slime monster from Ghostbusters, an X-Wing fighter hanging from the ceiling or a stunning matte painting gracing the wall.
PAINT IT BACK
Speaking of paintings, concept artist Aaron McBride has a whole wall covered in his artwork for Dead Man’s Chest. These photo-real designs were done as a guide for the animators and they show Davy Jones’ scurvy crew in all their decaying glory.
Aaron explains the reasons for the decay: “The longer they serve on Davy Jones’ ship, the more infected they become with sea life. We wanted it to look like a painful deformation. Low-level infection starts off like acne, or carbuncles, then a piece of coral might erupt out of the flesh. One of our co-ordinators came across a book of rare disfigurements and ailments due to poor diet and living conditions. The book’s photos of lesions and growths really came in handy. We scanned them in. mixed them with frog skin maybe, and you end up with characters you’re afraid to touch in case you catch something. It’s much more disturbing than graphic blood-and-guts stuff”.
ILM also worked on the film’s environments, digitally adding rope bridges and chasms to real locations. They built miniature versions of the Flying Dutchman for some shots and digital ones for others. And — of course — they designed the tentacles for the almighty Kraken, which animation director Hal T Hickel is justifiably chuffed with.
“Tentacles are hard to animate,” he explains. “It was a pain to achieve fluid movements, on top of which, the shots they’re in were big and complex – wide shots of the ship with lots of things breaking and people being hurled through the air. You have fit the tentacles in there, have them them jibe with all the physical action, layer them in through all the mist and spray… lt’s tough.”
Although details of Pirates 3 are under wraps, these effects bofffins wouldn’t be resting on their laurels. They’ll be upping the ante and pushing the envelope — and what Gore Verbinski wants, Gore Verbinski will get.
“Filmmakers never come to us and say stuff like Pirates did really well, let’s do the same thing again’” says Miles Perkins. “They come in and say, ‘Let’s turn it up a notch!”’ He smiles and you just know he’s gleefully thinking: “Bring it on!”
OUT TO SEA
At the time, a supporting role in a Bruckheimer-produced Disney movie based on a theme-park ride looked like the opposite of everything Depp had spent his life doing. Director Gore Verbinski saw it otherwise, though. “He’s an artist who’s known to take on quirky projects,” he says. Barmy Keith Richards-esque buccaneer Jack Sparrow certainly offered all that. It also offered something else Verbinski identified. “l think he also wanted to do something for his kids…”
Whatever Depp’s motivation, Pirates changed the way the world saw him. A huge hit, it didn’t just earn him popular approval, it bagged him critical acclaim too and his first ever Oscar nomination. But whilst it’s changed the way the world sees Depp, it hasn’t changed the way Depp sees the world. He’s done the inevitable Pirates sequels, but he’s not transformed himself into a Tom Cruise-aping Hollywood brand. Post-Pirates, he’s turned in a critically acclaimed, little-seen performance in Brit flick The Libertine, plans to team up with Burton again for Sweeney Todd and announced plans to produce a version of his old pal Hunter S Thompson’s Rum Diaries. In short, exactly the sort of stuff he was doing before Jack Sparrow staggered into his life. “I’ll keep going in whatever direction I end up going in,” Depp says with a refreshingly un-starry vagueness. Where would he like to be in 10 years time? “Hanging out with my kids, somewhere where phones don’t ring and there’s a lot of sun. I think that’d be fine.” Jack Sparrow would approve.
