Editing the Swaggering, Staggering Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) are set for another rollicking adventure filled with pirates, treasure, and tribulation in this summer’s highly anticipated sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The second in a planned three-part series, Dead Man’s Chest is a complex cinematic delight. Culled from more than 1.5 million feet of film captured during a 13-month shoot beginning in February 2005, the movie contains approximately 1,400 visual effects shots, about half of which include CG characters.

Because of the scale of the Pirates films, multiple editors are required to handle each project. Craig Wood and Stephen Rivkin, who each won ACE Eddie Awards for their work on the original Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (along with Arthur Schmidt), returned to cut Dead Man’s Chest. Wood, who has collaborated with director Gore Verbinski on all of his films, began work during the pre-production stage, reading the script and discussing the story’s editorial potential with Verbinski before starting the rough cut. Rivkin joined him in the Los Angeles-based cutting room several months later, where he and the rest of the editing team completed editing of the film.

There were significant time constraints at the end of post production, which presented a challenge on the project - the editors had less than six weeks to work with the director to finish the cut. This time period was tight as a result of shooting delays (due to last year’s active hurricane season, which impacted filming in the Caribbean) and the preparation of a day-and-date release, which cut into the time usually reserved for final editing in order to prepare prints in multiple languages for a same-day, worldwide opening. Added to the magnitude of the editing effort was the fact that portions of Pirates 3 were also shot and edited during production of Dead Man’s Chest. As a result, the editing team needed a post setup capable of logging and organizing massive amounts of footage, handling complex visual effects sequences, and performing without fail under enormous deadline pressure.

“One thing that is really challenging when you are working on a project as effects oriented as this one is the imagination required to edit things that aren’t there.”
- Stephen Rivkin, Editor, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Keeping Massive Media Afloat

The editing setup has been the same for all three of the Pirates films: multiple Macintosh-based Film Composer XL systems connected to an Avid Unity MediaNetwork shared-storage solution. For Dead Man’s Chest, the editing team, which also included first assistant editor Simon Morgan, visual effects editor Chris Capp (who managed all 1,400 of the visual effects shots throughout their development), Avid assistant Alan McCurdy, film assistant Kindra Marra, and apprentice editor Dylan Quirt used six Film Composer XL systems and shared approximately 3.5 TB of media.

The Avid Unity system was used to store all of the media for Pirates 2 plus the footage captured for Pirates 3 (approximately one-third of that film). In addition, the team stored a large library of effects and background shots for sky, ship, and ocean elements, which were commonly used among the three films. Some unused exterior shots from the original Pirates film were brought back online and stored on the Avid Unity system for use on Dead Man’s Chest as well.

The Avid Unity system’s large shared-storage capacity and ability to easily expand that capacity on-the-fly, without interrupting work, were essential for keeping the editing process flowing smoothly. “The ability to add storage without disrupting the cutting room has been a huge help on this show,” says Morgan, citing a demanding seven-day-a-week work schedule. “Media management in [Avid Unity] is invisible to everyone but me. You can basically add a terabyte of storage in the course of a lunch break, and the editors would never know.”

Morgan also appreciates the ability of the Avid Unity and Film Composer systems to perform without a hitch and work easily with Digidesign Pro Tools audio systems for a seamless end-to-end workflow - especially given the sheer volume of material involved. “On big movies like this one with very tight schedules, you don’t have time to deal with systems that are down. The reliability and stability of the systems have been a huge help,” he says.

“It was great to have that other editor to bounce ideas off of. It was as if we were standing in for the director while he was off shooting.”
- Craig Wood, Editor, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Finding the Treasure

Because of the protracted shoot, Wood and Rivkin had the opportunity to fine tune their cut before meeting with Verbinski to work on the final edit. The editors used the Film Composer system as a tool to create and store a variety of different options for the director’s quick review. “We had the time to put together a lot of possible scene lifts, reordering ideas, and structural changes that we could suggest to Gore so we didn’t have to start from scratch when he joined us. This was really helpful since we only had five or six weeks for the director’s cut. Then we started pre-mixing the film, and then final mixing, and then it was just a race to the finish,” explains Wood.

Multiple video layers were used on the Avid timeline to help organize the vast amount of material, with production footage on the bottom-most layer followed by layer upon layer of various visual effects as they progressed through development. “It’s wonderful to have different versions available for use this way,” says Wood. “Sometimes you move back to an earlier version of a visual effect and you have it immediately available to compare. Other times it’s useful to go back and review the original production footage.”

As for their approach to co-editing the film, Wood and Rivkin decided together which new scenes each editor would handle. After they had a complete cut of the film, they used the Avid Unity system to easily share scenes that they would pass back and forth for further refinement. “We’d each experiment with ideas for shortening scenes and adjusting the storytelling where we thought it was needed. We’d always show each other cut scenes and talk about how we felt about them. It was great to have that other editor to bounce ideas off of. It was as if we were standing in for the director while he was off shooting,” says Wood.

The editors used the Film Composer system’s Effects tools extensively, including the AniMatte and split-screen features, for mocking up the often complex visual effects sequences, which might include a full plate of a CG ship in the background or an animated CG sea monster. “Previsualization had to stand in for whole sequences for a long time, and we did a lot of temp comps in the Avid [system],” says Morgan. “We’d composite previs material into large action plates. A lot of time we got to the final mix stage still carrying some of the previs.”

Adds Rivkin, “One thing that is really challenging when you are working on a project as effects oriented as this one is the imagination required to edit things that aren’t there. You have to use the tools available to get a sense of timing and rhythm.” He cites the Kraken attack sequences as particularly challenging. “For each shot, we would take the previs of the creature’s tentacles and carefully matte them into live action plates with the actors to indicate what the final action would be. We used AniMatte to make that happen.” In addition to furthering the editing process, composites such as these were used by the animators as starting points for the final animation.

Because of the compressed post-production schedule, the editors never got to see the full, finished film until very late in the project. “It was particularly exciting as the final versions of the visual effects came in during the last weeks, to actually see how differently the film played and how some of our guesses [in editing] paid off,” says Wood.

“On big movies like this one with very tight schedules, you don’t have time to deal with systems that are down. The reliability and stability of the systems have been a huge help.”
- Simon Morgan, First Assistant Editor, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Swashbuckling Sounds

Digidesign Pro Tools systems were used for sound editing, music editing, and composing, as well as on the mixing stage. The sound team constantly supplied temp sound elements as .WAV files, which were easily integrated into the edit in progress, while the picture editors provided OMF files to the sound team to use as a guide track. This easy interoperability between the picture and audio editing systems enabled the editors to rough out the sound work so there would be no surprises on the mixing stage. “There was an OMF available on the mix stage of the Avid tracks throughout the final mix, so that if we remembered something that we wanted to steal from our rough offline version of the film, we could immediately incorporate that into the final mix, and we did quite a few times,” says Wood.

Wood and Rivkin have created sophisticated temp soundtracks for the Pirates films, making full use of the Film Composer system’s comprehensive audio features, including volume graphing and EQ. They adjust dialogue, temp music levels, and sound effects throughout the editing process to get as close as possible to a final mix.

“We cut in three tracks, so the dialogue and hard effects come out the center, and stereo backgrounds and stereo music are on the left and right. This makes it better for screenings because it comes closer to mimicking what an audience might hear in a theater,” explains Rivkin. Several small test screenings were held with images projected directly from an Avid system accompanied by the temp soundtrack.

A Pirate’s Work is Never Done

As Dead Man’s Chest hits theaters, Pirates 3 will be ramping up in the editing room. “We finished the final mix of Pirates 2 on a Wednesday a few weeks back. On Thursday of that same week I started doing selects on scenes for Pirates 3,” says Wood about the next film in the series, which resumes filming in August and is slated for release in May 2007.

For now, audience attention remains firmly focused on Dead Man’s Chest, and it is not likely to disappoint eager fans. “I actually started describing Pirates 2 to Gore very early in the shooting as our Empire Strikes Back [the second in the series of Star Wars films],” says Wood. “If people could react to this sequel the way people reacted to The Empire Strikes Back, I’d be very happy.”

*CREDITS: ©Disney Enterprises, Inc., All rights reserved.