Finally, for the effect of shrinking ships in bottles (including the Black Pearl), this involved setting up simulations in San Francisco by Chris Foreman and then working with Mohen Leo and the Singapore team. They executed most of the shots.

"Initially, we just thought that the ships would be affected by the light in the room that they're in," Snow explains. "But then this idea came to have the ships look like they're frozen in time at the moment of capture: in battle or in a snowstorm in the Arctic or in a storm at sea. The art department made several bottles with real model ships inside. For the wider shots, we replaced our key ones of those and essentially added movement to some of the others. And then as we got closer, they became fully CG. We even played with macro photography on some shots.

"There were a couple of happy accidents where the compositors went over the top with a big explosion. I initially had them hold it back. But I showed Rob Marshall the early take and he requested that we go back to the bigger explosion."

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.