In today’s big budget movies, almost anything you see could be a visual effect. From buildings to cars to giant flying robots and more, the men and women who create today’s modern visual effects are masters of their craft and are able to take an ordinary scene of two people staring into the void and turn it into a piece of movie magic.

We’ve seen the “after” of all this work in hundreds blockbuster movies, but what about the “before”? Well, a new website wants to highlight just that. Over at Before VFX, they’ve collected a ton of photos from various blockbuster movies that show what the site calls “The Canvas” of the visual effects shot.

In other words, they show what the scene was actually like before any visual effects were added and before an audience ever saw one frame. It’s a fascinating look into just how much goes into the making of a modern movie blockbuster and how much we owe the VFX artists who do this work every day.

Plus, as Dustin Rowles at Pajiba put it, it shows us “how little credit we give A-list actors for their ability to interact and engage with green screens.” How little credit indeed. It can’t be that easy.

Check out several pics after the break and head over to Before VFX for a ton more.

As much as we love Disney and a lot of the things they do like Wreck-It Ralph, even we notice that they don’t always come up with all their own concepts. Usually it is something that has been successful in the past and they put a Disney twist on it to turn it into an even bigger success. Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast and tons more are all examples of this. So, it’s no surprise that Disney and Avalanche Software would be following the success of the toys to video game combo of Skylanders with the announcement of Disney Infinity.

Using a special hardware base accessory, players will be able to unlock new in game content and characters for Disney Infinity. Sounds familiar right? Disney Infinity will be following a model similar to that of Activision’s Skylanders franchise. Players will be able to take purchased toys and put them on a base that will read the figure and unlock characters and items in the game.

In the trailer below, you’ll see characters from Pirates of the Caribbean, The Incredibles, Monsters University, Cars, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy Story and more that will most likely be on the list of playable characters and toys coming out for Disney Infinity.

Okay, let’s pretend for a minute that your Johnny Depp. You’ve made quite a few movies, are respected as an actor, recognized around the world as a big star and brought Disney a boatload of money for your work as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates franchise. With all that, what do you do?

If you’re Johnny Depp, it seems one of the things you do is get Disney to buy the rights to one of your favorite 70’s TV series with an eye to turning it into a feature film for you to star in. That series? Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

According to reports, Depp is a fan of the series and got Disney interested in a feature version with Depp to star as tabloid reporter Carl Kolchak, a role originally played by the awesome Darren McGavin in the TV movie and subsequent series. Could be interesting with Depp in the role.

In case you’re not familiar with the show, it centered on McGavin as Kolchak, a dogged investigative journalist with a nose for the macabre and supernatural. Even though his investigations often started out normal enough, in most cases they ended up leading him down a dark path into the world of vampires, zombies, werewolves and aliens.

The show was pretty cool, especially for its time, and is often cited by various insiders, including creator Chris Carter, as one of the main inspirations for TV’s The X-Files. I loved the show as a kid and look forward to seeing what Depp and company can do with it.

The project will soon go out to writers. More on this as is develops.

The Pirates of the Caribbean film series is a great many things. It has covered four long, epic films and has captured the imagination of a generation of movie fans excited to embrace adventure. One of the aspects of the franchise that has stayed consistently great up to this point is the musical scores.

Mostly the brain child of Hans Zimmer, with a great start by Klaus Badlet, the music of the first three films has been excellent. Now with the fourth thrilling tale of Captain Jack Sparrow in theaters we have the chance to re-visit the high seas with another Zimmer score.

Before I get knee deep into the new score I did want to spend a minute talking about the score for the third film. The last movie gets a lot of negativity, some of it deserved, some of it not-so-much. This has led the film’s score to become one of the most criminally under appreciated pieces of film music ever written. Everything that made the Pirates themes brilliant is enhanced and expanded upon here, and the new pieces are all uniformly excellent.

The album is capped by the single best arrangement of the classic ‘He’s a Pirate’ theme that flows seamlessly into a beautiful main theme of the third film which is probably best described as Will and Elizabeth’s love theme. Great stuff all around, and I encourage any score fan to seek it out, you will be pleased.

Now to the latest film’s music. On Stranger Tides is a stand alone adventure, but it leans heavily on the themes already established for the main pirate characters of Jack and Barbossa. The new elements in this soundtrack come from the characters of Angelica and Blackbeard, both getting new themes that are generally successful. The mot exciting new sound in the score originates from Angelica’s theme, she is a Spaniard and as such Zimmer crafts a wonderful Spanish sound with the help of Rodrigo y Gabriela.

The fourth installment of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise hits theaters in May, but today we’re bringing you the first official movie poster. Entitled On Stranger Tides, the flick will be the first of the series to be released in 3D and will be producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s second 3D film to-date, following his 2009 animated G-Force.

The Walk Disney Pictures release stars Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Geoffrey Rush, and Kevin McNalley, among others. Interestingly, the plot of the new Pirates is inspired by the novel On Stranger Tides, which is the same novel that inspired the LucasArts game, The Secret of Monkey Island; a game that has become a bit of a cult classic, even sporting a recent iPad port of the original game.

The plot focuses on Captain Jack Sparrow searching for the fountain of youth and along the way, confronting the infamous pirate, Blackbeard himself.

On Stranger Tides releases May 20th. Until then, hit the jump for the full movie poster in all its glory.