Keep scrutinizing the screen whenever Bill Nighy’s character, the octopus-faced Davy Jones, appears in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. There’s no latex there. Those are not human eyeballs. Jones is a not-quite-completely CG creation built on a careful performance by Nighy, whose movements were motion-captured in order to guide the actions of the digital creature. That’s nothing new — what’s remarkable is that Nighy didn’t have to go and perform on a blue-screen motion-capture stage. Instead, he delivered his lines and gave his performance on set, in the company of his fellow actors, as a couple of high-definition cameras ran alongside 35mm film, triangulating his position relative to the main camera based on the grey outfit he wore and the tiny dots studding his body and face. The result is a VFX movie where key portions of the VFX work have been seamlessly incorporated into principal photography — making the stylistic match between live-action and CG visuals perhaps more seamless than ever before. We talked to VFX supervisor John Knoll about his work on the set of Dead Man’s Chest, and then we corralled director of photography Dariusz Wolski to ask how CG images affect his visual strategy — or if they do at all.
Post your comments below
