Letteri marveled at the details on the miniatures of the ships made by his colleagues at Weta Workshop for Master and Commander. Photo courtesy of Asylum.

Of course, vfx are now cross-pollinated, so to speak. Enormous workloads often require the services of several effects houses on each film. While working on The Return of the King, Letteri had a chance to examine the ship models Weta Workshop created for Master and Commander. “The two miniatures of the Acheron and the Surprise were fantastic, unbelievable models. They were something like 12 or 15 feet across, amazingly detailed and just beautiful: the rigging, the sails, everything. The effects artists would do the battle stuff by basically blowing shot at the boats, filming the destruction and then they would rebuild them every night. It was pretty amazing.”

About Pirates, Letteri was most impressed by the character work on the Ghost Pirates. “That was great, especially in the scenes where they are battling and going in and out of the light — where you could see them actually changing from skeleton to human.”

Shedding Some Industrial Light
ILM’s Stefen Fangmeier, nominee for Master and Commander, detected signs that the massive scope of The Return of the King sometimes dulled his appreciation of the film. “Obviously in The Return of the King we all knew what to expect there, in seeing it as a film in itself and as a continuation of the first two, and yet of course the scale got even more extreme. You sort of get saturated with that.”

Letteri (left) of Weta notes that the technical bar continues to rise at the annual Bake-Off screenings. Because the competition is so great for the three Oscar nomination spots, ILM’s Knoll (right) thinks that deserving work doesn’t always get into the Bake-Off.

Despite his admiration for the CG character work, he thought that the quantity of effects somewhat lessened the overall impact of the film. “Because they had to do so much work, there were different levels of quality in the effects. I think that maybe the most attention was given to the character work with Gollum and the spider, and yet there were other sequences that to me were less successful in terms of how they looked and how they fit into the film. I particularly noticed that at the Bake-Off, especially the whole battle with the Mumakils. There were some things that I could see didn’t have quite the care because they had to do so much in so limited a time. I’ve been in that place myself, where the scale and scope overwhelm the attention and care you can bring to detail.”

In Fangmeier’s opinion, the sheer amount of the effects distanced the spectator from the story — and even the story’s characters from one another. “Of the films I remember as having an epic scope, I think of Lawrence of Arabia, and if you look at the crowds, there’re hardly any people in there. The scope that I sometimes find more impressive is that of a landscape and nature with fewer people in it, films that let you concentrate on the characters. In Return of the King, you have these massive battles, and then there are two hobbits trying to get this ring to the mountain, and to me the two stories never felt quite connected.”

Fangmeier at first had his doubts about Pirates of the Caribbean. “I remember hearing about the project and I thought, ‘Oh, this is silly to make a film after a Disneyland ride, and yet I think they really did quite a good job of making it entertaining. I don’t think anybody could have done a better job with that film. The visual effects supported the film brilliantly — especially the whole thing with the skeletons. Some of the boat work for me was a bit playful and not quite realistic, but that was in character with the fantasy.”

Ahoy! From ILM
ILM’s Knoll, supervisor on Pirates of the Caribbean, also emphasizes the invisible effects when speaking of Master and Commander. “The film is so good that the audience gets involved in it and never thinks about how it was technically accomplished.”