 Pirates of the Caribbean Posters
|
 Costumes to Look As If They Were Created in the 18th Century Hundreds of colorful extras authentically attired by costume designer Penny Rose in perfectly filthy and worn clothes, and carefully made up and coiffed to look like the scurvy knaves they were, populated the tavern, flickering with candlelight and roistering with noise.
Inside of the tavern, various foods fit for a pirate's palette were displayed on long wooden tables, including scooped-out bread loaves filled with stew and soup…curiously resembling a dish served in Disneyland's New Orleans Square just near the entrance of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” attraction. The food stylists working on “Dead Man's Chest” insisted that the resemblance was entirely coincidental.
Throughout the filming of “Dead Man's Chest,” Penny Rose was like a master builder, only with fabrics rather than bricks and mortar. Rose approved of every single costume that went on every single body, whether one of the stars or an extra who's the sixth pirate from the left. Notes Lee Arenberg, “Penny is amazing because she'll have a pile of clothes sitting there, and with her keen eye she'll pick a garment out, have it distressed, aged, dyed and suddenly, it becomes more than a costume. It becomes your character.”
“Penny Rose is a force of nature,” says Tom Hollander, who portrays Lord Cutler Beckett. “She's a very important person on the film, with boundless energy. In her wardrobe warehouse, Penny is like an empress in a sort of tent of fabrics, with a lot of assistants rushing around, bringing this and that. “No, the brocade. No, the gold. Bring the blue. I'm sick of the red. No, take it out. Bring it back. Take it in. Pull it down.”
Rose supervised a department which under her expert supervision literally combed the world for fabrics and materials from which to create the more than 8,000 costumes required for “Dead Man's Chest” and “Pirates III,” all of which she designed with the aid of associate costume designer John Norster, costume supervisor Kenny Crouch (both whom she refers to as “the most important men in my life”), and a large staff of costumers, cutters, ager/dyers, buyers, painters, leathermakers and various assistants.
Of paramount importance to Rose was for the costumes to look as if they were created in the 18th century in every detail. “I only do real,” says Rose. “There's a lot of fantasy in the story, but not in the costumes. We want these clothes to look like they've been slept in and worn forever. Aging and dying for a period film are absolutely vital. I don't like people to look as if they've just walked out of a shop. It's a really specialized field and very underestimated and undervalued, and the people who do it are geniuses because it's very subtle. And all of the shoes go into a cement mixer with a few rocks, and by the time they come out they've aged five years.”
Penny Rose's costumes for the leading players indicate their transitions as characters. For “Dead Man's Chest,” there are virtually no changes at all in Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow costume. “Johnny just feels dead right,” notes Rose. “He's added a few things this time. He's a very thoughtful, caring actor in terms of how he looks in character.” Captain Jack Sparrow's now-famous look was a collaboration in the first film between Penny Rose, key makeup artist Ve Neill, key hair stylist Martin Samuel, and Depp himself.
“Having spent some time with Keith Richards was certainly a huge part of the inspiration for the character,” says the actor, invoking the name of the great guitarist for The Rolling Stones. “I spent a little time with Keith here and there, and each time I'd see him he'd have a new thing tied into his hair. What is that hanging?,' I'd ask, and Keith would say `Ah yeah, I got that in Bermuda,” or wherever. So it felt to me like Jack, on his travels and adventures, would see something and go `Oh yeah, I'll keep that,' tie it in his hair or have someone else do it. Each little trinket would have a story. For example, the bone that hangs just above the bandana is a shinbone from a reindeer. Then Jack has the dangly bits, beads, a chicken foot, a fertility symbol, weird animal tails. There's no telling where he got those, and it might have been lunch!”
“In the first film, Will Turner was a blacksmith with a crush on the Governor's daughter. Now he's matured and has a more exciting look,” continues Rose. “Orlando and I got together and had a bit of a back and forth, and I thought we would make Will look a little more sophisticated. For a good deal of the film he's wearing an olive green leather pirate coat that makes him look more powerful.
Says Bloom, “Penny has done an amazing job of taking Will to another level and loosening him up. The leather coat we chose for Will to wear is kind of like a biker jacket for pirate times. Doing swordfights and getting wet in a long leather coat has posed a few challenges, to say the least, but it's worth every moment because Penny's vision for Will, and all of the characters, have helped them come alive.” Bloom's main costume, it might be added, includes a cream embroidered waistcoat which Rose constructed using antique table linens found in Paris, a perfect example of her determination to use whatever works to accomplish her design goals.
 “Keira has at least three different looks in `Dead Man's Chest,'” Rose continues, “because Elizabeth is really changing and maturing as well. Keira is very gung-ho and will have a go at anything, so she really took to the boy's clothing that she wears for part of the film. She also wears a beautiful wedding gown, but we only see it drenched in the rain!”“Having worked with Penny on `Pirates' and `King Arthur,' I feel like I've spent my life with her, and I love it,” says Knightley. She is, in the best possible way, a perfectionist. One of my favorite parts of the film is before we start, having costume fittings with Penny and seeing her in charge of hundreds and hundreds of costumes. Yet, as soon as you get into her fitting room, she just cuts right to it. If you've got a button that's two millimeters out of place, Penny will move it. If something needs a bit of embroidery to be brought out, she sees it immediately. She's a forceful lady, and one that I'm very glad to have around.”
The wedding gown is a fine example of Penny Rose's minute attention to detail. It's comprised of a deep ivory silk and raffia fabric embellished with a leaf, floral and fan design. Rose used the fabric as is for the skirts, but created her own design on the bodice by cutting around and repositioning the raffia details. The stomacher (front of the dress) looks almost embroidered, with layer upon layer of this raffia design sewn into it. The veil is an ivory silk chiffon, with delicate pearls sewn into the silk, attached to a wired tiara that also contains the raffia fabric from the dress. And the petticoat of the dress was actually constructed from an antique quilted cotton bedspread from Rome!
Some of the new characters also enticed Rose to new heights of creativity. “I loved doing Tia Dalma, which was difficult, because the character lives in a swamp and she's both glamorous and repulsive at the same time. You wouldn't want to sit too close to her, yet we still want to feel her power as a woman. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and working with the lovely Naomie Harris.”
“I absolutely love everything about how they've created Tia Dalma,” enthuses the beautiful Naomie Harris, who is unrecognizable in her full makeup, hair and costume as the mysterious soothsayer. “Penny's costumes, the makeup that Ve Neill designed, the hair by Martin Samuel. I think it's all absolutely fabulous. I didn't recognize myself at all when I looked in the mirror, and that's the way it should be. I love the fact that Tia Dalma is such a rugged, earthy, crazy kind of character, because I've never played anything like this before. It's really liberating.”
Although the physical details of Bill Nighy's Davy Jones would be created through computer generated imagery, Rose nonetheless created an actual costume which served as a model for the Industrial Light & Magic artists to work from. “They photographed Bill in his costume in minute detail, because you can't superimpose a concept onto a grey reference suit,” she says.
Rose had previously worked with Stellan Skarsgard on “King Arthur,” and was happy to collaborate with him again for his role as Bootstrap Bill. And unlike Bill Nighy, Skarsgard's costume, makeup and hair were shot “live” on camera, which required key makeup designer Ve Neill, key hair stylist Martin Samuel and Penny Rose to collaborate on his amazing look, which necessitated the actor to spend some three to four hours a day in the makeup and hair trailers being transformed into his character.
Neill and Samuel's extensive work would contribute greatly to the film's overall look and atmosphere. For example, Ragetti's wooden eye has almost become a character unto itself. Actor Mackenzie Crook has to wear not one, but two contact lenses for this effect, sandwiched one on top of the other. “It's uncomfortable,” he admits, “but not painful. And it helps the character, because without it, I'm just any other pirate.” Coincidentally, in real life, Crook has never worn contacts, “so this is into the deep end,” he laughs. As for the shocking condition of the pirates' teeth-which would delight contemporary dentists-it's all just carefully designed appliances and paint.
Also at Disney Studios, the company spent a week shooting on the huge “Pantano River” set, with Tia Dalma's tumbledown but richly decorated tree house as its centerpiece. Filling up almost every inch of the 240 foot long, 130 wide Stage 2, this set was a truly magical evocation of a Caribbean swampland river, lined with stark, overhanging trees and brush and rickety lean-tos. The set was also the most deliberate tip of the hat to the original Disneyland “Pirates of the Caribbean” attraction. “I remember as a kid watching the episode of `The Wonderful World of Color' which introduced the `Pirates' ride,” recalls Rick Heinrichs, “and being totally blown away by it at the time. The opportunity to be involved with something that references this is in my mind a tribute to designers like Marc Davis and others who did such incredible work. It was such a pleasure to be able to do that.”
(In fact, Heinrichs' first job in Hollywood was at Disney's WED Enterprises when many of the original “Pirates of the Caribbean” attraction creators were still working there.)
It was no coincidence, then, that it was this set which drew a visit from the legendary Francis Xavier “X” Atencio, the “Disney Legend” who wrote the script for the original theme park attraction-working from concepts and storyboards by another Disney great, Marc Davis-as well as the lyrics to George Bruns' music for what is now the world's most famous sea shanty, “Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me).” The “Dead Man's Chest” company rolled out the red carpet for “X,” honoring him with his own director's chair, and with Jerry Bruckheimer, Gore Verbinski, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and a long parade of cast and crew paying due homage. “Without this man,” spoke Verbinski for one and all, “none of us would be here right now.”
Tia Dalma's shack is lined from end-to-end and top-to-bottom with the bric-a-brac of Tia Dalma's artful profession. “I've never done a hoodoo voodoo, scary 1720s-ish bayou interior before,” laughs set decorator Cheryl Carasik. “Gore wanted a lot of texture hung from the ceiling, so we prepped bottles encrusted with jewels, along with dried herbs. Inside of the bottles were spiders, eyeballs and mushrooms which actually started growing over a period of time. And a lot of taxidermy all over the place.”
The combined work of Heinrichs, art director John Dexter and Carasik was inspirational to the actors as well. “I think one of the nicest compliments I ever received was from Johnny when he walked into Tia Dalma's and told me that he didn't really know what he was going to do in there, but there was so much great stuff to play with that he was like a kid in a candy store. You know, Johnny can take a simple little trinket from a desk and turn it into the most amazing prop.”
“The Pantano River set at Disney was also designed to match the actual location chosen in Dominica for the sequence, the Indian River,” explains construction coordinator Greg Callas. “The bloodwood trees that border this river are so extraordinary, and we had to replicate them on stage from steel and car foam and plater with silk leaves on them, which required a lot of work. We also built an above-ground tank above the stage floor, which we filled with half a million gallons of water, which actually created the right sense of humidity.”
Following the completion of the Pantano River sequence, the “Pirates” company hopscotched back to Universal Studios, where a sneak preview of the “real” Flying Dutchman could be glimpsed in an exact replica of its main deck for sequences with Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy, Stellan Skarsgard and actors-clad in similar gray reference suits as that worn by Nighy-portraying the ship's bizarre crew.
|
   |
Sitemaps, RSS Feeds & Social Networks
|
|||||||
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Check out Feed Central
