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DEPARTMENT www.postmagazine.com 26 POST JUNE 2017 DEPARTMENT www.postmagazine.com 26 POST JUNE 2017 ou just can't keep a good pirate down, at least not if it's Jack Sparrow, or, for that matter, any number of undead pirate hunters. For Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Disney's fifth installment of films based on a theme park ride, Johnny Depp returns in his icon- ic role as the swashbuckling Captain Jack Sparrow. Also rejoining the series after missing the fourth film are Orlando Bloom as Will Turner and Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann. Geoffrey Rush returns as Hector Barbossa, the one- legged former captain of Sparrows' Black Pearl. New to the franchise is Javier Bardem, Sparrow's nemesis Captain Salazar, an undead pirate hunter. The film has garnered a reputation as the most expensive of 2017 and second of all time. All told, it has 2,000 visual effects shots, with 150 of those shots full CG. The Moving Picture Company's Gary Brozenich was overall visual effects supervisor, and MPC was the primary vendor. "Half the film takes place at sea, but it was mostly shot on bluescreen," Brozenich says. With 11 ships in the film, the task of bringing them in, redressing them in dry docks and then sending them back out to sea would have extended the shooting schedule. Instead, although foredecks and rear decks for some ships were practical, CG ships often sailed the digital waters and pirates walked digital decks. "The biggest tasks were enhancing Salazar and his ghost crew, building the ship they were on and creating the water that surrounded all the boats," Brozenich says. "Also, the ocean divides and splits in two. Obviously that's a supernatural effect. It sounds good on paper. But, it took a lot of head scratching." Leading the postproduction effort at MPC were Sheldon Stopsack in London and Patrick Ledda in Montreal. In addition to MPC, several other vendors worked on the film. "Atomic Fiction was our next big creative vendor," Brozenich says. "They did the opening sequences, the big town environment. There was a beautiful set, but anytime you can see beyond a four- or five-square-block area, you see their extensions. They also did some digital Jack Sparrow work when he's on the way to be executed." Lola Visual Effects took Jack Sparrow [Johnny Depp] back to age 18. Rodeo FX composited around 400 shots, bringing them to life with added textures. CoSA VFX provided matte paintings. A small in-house team worked on the film, as well. "And ILM [Industrial Light & Magic] contributed some bo- nus work on the film," Brozenich teased. "You'll see." Brozenich cites the water as the biggest technical chal- lenge. "The volume of water work we needed to do, the challenge of ensuring that it blended well with live-action plates and real water, and having it perform as needed for the film," he points out. "When you see ships in the film, they're typically surrounded by CG water and an environ- ment created for them." Y BY BARBARA ROBERTSON Taking the Fifth GHOSTLY PIRATE HUNTERS AND CG ART-DIRECTED WATER STAR IN PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES