Some New Faces Aboard

Filed under At World's End Production Notes by on April 26, 2011 at 1:57 pm {no comments}

Chow Yun-Fat as Captain Sao Feng in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

In addition to the stars already established in the two previous films, Bruckheimer and Verbinski brought some special new faces aboard for “At World’s End,” most notably international superstar Chow Yun-Fat, cast as the smart if duplicitous Singaporean pirate, Captain Sao Feng. “You want to hire enormously talented actors who are at the top of their game,” says Bruckheimer, “and that’s the definition of Chow Yun-Fat. He’s a masterful actor, an international star, and a perfect addition to the trilogy.”

“They were all pirates in reality, and betrayal was normal,” notes Chow of his character. “Therefore, Sao Feng treats it as a business transaction. There is no good or evil in the pirate world, and Sao Feng is neither a good person nor a villain. They are all pirates, and that’s how pirates are.” In terms of the films’ international appeal, Chow explains, “I think everyone has a fantasy to do things that cannot be controlled by parents or the authorities. Pirates are rebels, so especially in the minds of young people, the movie has global appeal.”

For such grizzled “Pirates” veterans as Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook, who play the tag-team duo of Pintel and Ragetti, “At World’s End” presented another opportunity to expand their characters. “In the first film we were pretty vicious,” says Crook. “We shot the servant in the governor’s house straight away, really nasty, cutthroat villains. In the second film, we lightened up a bit and became a real double-act. But I think that Gore, Ted and Terry were keen to keep a vicious streak in us, because we’re pirates when you come down to it, so we can’t always just be goofing around. So I have a good kill count in `At World’s End.’ I think I dispatch three or four souls.”

“We were funny bad guys in the first movie and funny good guys in the second one,” adds Arenberg. “And from here on out we’re funny good guys no matter which team we’re on. We certainly don’t gain any intelligence. I always say that Pintel and Ragetti still share half a brain.”

Next Page – Chapter 5: Every Saga Must Make a Start

The Climactic Maelstrom Scene

Filed under At World's End Production Notes by on April 26, 2011 at 11:48 am {no comments}

Johnny DeppFor the climactic “Maelstrom” sequence of “At World’s End”-the massive, apocalyptic battle between the pirate and British East India Company armadas that takes place in a supernaturally-induced storm of monumental proportions-the filmmakers had to find a facility in which they could build full-sized replicas of both the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman from the decks up, as well as various other set pieces.

The only such structure anywhere near Los Angeles (or perhaps anywhere else, for that matter) was Building #703 of the enigmatically named “Site 9.” This elephantine 600 foot long, 300 foot wide and 70 foot tall hangar in the desert community of Palmdale, California-58 miles north of The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank-was built by Rockwell International in 1983 for the assembly of 100 B-1 bombers, and had over the past few years been used as a shooting stage for a number of films, including Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal.

“This is one of the most elaborate and ambitious action sequences I’ve ever seen conceived for a film,” notes Rick Heinrichs, “and it requires coordination of several departments, including ours, visual effects and special physical effects. If it’s even 85% of what we hope for, it will be off the charts.” Adds executive producer Mike Stenson, “You walked inside of that hangar, and it was like Area 51.”

Inside of “Site 9,” Rick Heinrichs worked in synergistic conjunction with another Academy Award-winner, special effects supervisor John Frazier (Spider-Man 2), to construct the Pearl and the Dutchman, decks up, mounted on massive, highly sophisticated motion bases, surrounded by gigantic blue screen backings. “John Frazier is the best special physical effects supervisor there is,” says Stenson. “Nobody else could have pulled off the physical elements of the special effects that we do in this movie.”

Frazier and his team designed and built the motion bases for the two key prop ships, as well as another rig for both the scene in which the Hai Peng goes off the edge of the world, and the “Green Flash” sequence, in which the Black Pearl passes between worlds by turning completely upside down in the ocean. “What we decided to do on At World’s End that has never been done before on any motion picture,” notes Frazier, “was to put a tower at each end of the two ships which allowed us to heave them up 15 feet. And by doing that, we were able to get the actual realistic movement of a ship in the ocean. Normally, we pivot it in the center, but ships don’t do that. In this case, we pivoted the ships on each end to bring the bow up and down, and then we had two hydraulic rams on the either side of the ships that allowed them to roll.”

The construction of the full-sized Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman on Frazier’s motion bases was a huge collaboration between several departments. “We built the motion bases in three months, but in stages. Greg Callas’ construction department built the ships on top of our truss. Then we built the towers on each end of the ships which make them move up and down. We then designed a computerized system to operate them from sort of a mission control. We had 150 special effects welders on the project, and we were working 24/7. They never stopped. The day guys would cut the pieces and lay it out, and the equally talented night guys would weld it all together. All 150 people who worked on this project gave us 150 percent. It’s a long, long process to tune these motion bases with the computer, and requires a lot of patience. It’s like watching paint dry, but our computer team had the necessary patience, and were terrific at their work. They didn’t turn the system on until every bar was synched up, and every graph was there.

“The hydraulics team also stepped up to the plate,” continues Frazier. “There are over 2000 feet of hydraulic hose that runs to the motion bases. There are over one million pounds of steel, some of which didn’t exist, so we had to have a special run made. Nobody had ever done this before, and it was a big honor for us to be chosen for this project.

“In the amount of time that we had to design and create this monster, three ships built on three motion bases in three months is pretty much unheard of,” Frazier admits. “Previous to this, the biggest motion base we built was for the U.S.S. Oklahoma for Jerry Bruckheimer’s `Pearl Harbor,’ and we said that we would never build anything bigger than that. Then along comes `At World’s End,’ and it’s absolutely the biggest thing we’ve ever done, and I can’t imagine that it will happen again. This is the Super Bowl of motion pictures.”

When the ships and gigantic rigs-each weighing more than a million pounds each-had to be moved from one position to another inside of “Site 9,” simple looking but high tech air bearings were called into play, something like mini hovercraft capable of carrying 60 tons. “It’s the best way to move a million pounds of ship,” explains John Frazier. “If you could imagine an air hockey game that’s upside down, that’s what we’re doing… taking the table and putting it on top, and letting the hockey puck move it around. The biggest thing about moving the ships isn’t the moving, but stopping them. Once you take that million and build up that inertia, it’s hard to stop it. So we take these big 12,000 pound forklifts and we chain them right to the motion base so it can’t get away from us. We could literally just move the bases, and the ships, anywhere in the hangar that we wanted.”

For the special lighting required of any blue screen sequence, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and his gaffer Raphael Sanchez designed a staggeringly complex grid of 1400 space lights, as well as some 40 lights around the 60-foot-tall blue screen that surrounds the ships and at least eight 10,000 amp truck generators, as well as 60 miles of cable and 3,000 frequencies for the dimmer boards. “We created 108,000 kilowatts of power,” noted executive producer Eric McLeod, “enough to literally light 500 homes.”

Frazier and his team of technical experts also designed a system of piping and rain heads installed into the ceiling of the hangar which poured down hammering showers onto the ships (and the actors, stuntmen and crew), driven by several gigantic fans capable of blowing winds up to 100 miles per hour. The rain had to be carefully calibrated and developed by John Frazier and his crew. “We started by testing rain heads for weeks, and finally got the look that Gore wanted,” notes the special effects supervisor. “Then we have to change the heads, because when Gore is shooting a close-up, you don’t want big raindrops falling on people. You need something finer. So we switch out the rain heads depending upon whether it’s a long shot or closeup.

“Because of the size of the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman, we were probably pumping somewhere around 25,000 gallons of water a minute. This is more rain than has ever been created on a motion picture soundstage. We put tanks outside of the hangar, hooked up the pumps, filtered and heated the water, so basically what we have is this big revolving waterslide. We pump the water in, it goes up 80 feet, rains down on the set, hits the stage floor, goes into the utility corridors that were originally built into the floors, back into the tanks that we have outside, and, recycled, back in again.”

Next Page – Chapter 11: Inside of the Massive “Site 9″ Hangar

Props: Weapons, Maps, Rings or Whatever

Filed under At World's End Production Notes by on April 26, 2011 at 10:28 am {no comments}

Props: Weapons, Maps, Rings or Whatever

Whether it’s the weaponry of all nations, drooping telescopes, Jack Sparrow’s rings, pieces of eight which actually resemble pieces of junk, a Pirate Code book or practically anything else one can imagine being handled in the pirate world, property master Kris Peck and his merry band could be relied upon to, by hook or by crook, come up with the goods. With the aide of armourer Harry Lu and historical adviser Peter Twist, Peck either found or fabricated a multitude of weaponry for pirates of all nations, the crusty Flying Dutchman crewmen and East India Trading Company troops.

As Gore Verbinski himself is the first to point out, filmmaking is a collaborative art. And for the past dozen years, one of the director’s closest collaborators has been James Ward Byrkit, a true jack-of-all-trades who, though unseen and (for the time being, anyway) fairly unknown by the millions of “Pirates” trilogy fans, has made indelible contributions to the films on several levels. Byrkit’s end roll title is the rather enigmatic “conceptual consultant.”

He explains, “We had to come up with our own credit, because what I was doing sort of became a lot more expansive than just storyboards. Gore and I started working together when he was directing commercials, and I would storyboard for him. Then, when he started making movies, he would bring me in from time to time and my work expanded. For “Pirates,” we would talk about the script, story, themes, character beats, things that go beyond traditional storyboarding. The best part about films like Pirates of the Caribbean is that there’s lots of room for creative enhancement.”

In addition to the more than 3,000 storyboards for “Dead Man’s Chest” and “At World’s End” that Byrkit created (he also did three weeks of consultancy work on “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” doing the very first drawing of the Black Pearl and other ships), he also bounced back and forth between departments, such as production design, props and the pre-visualization team, helping with simplified animatics of the overwhelmingly complex action sequences that were a blueprint for Verbinski on set, and later, for Industrial Light + Magic’s visual effects.

One project that truly demonstrates synergy between behind-the-scenes artists is the magical map to uncharted realms that our anti-heroes acquire from Singapore pirate lord, Captain Sao Feng, in “At World’s End” that will take them to… well… not only World’s End, but places beyond, around, and upside-down. “We had this big meeting back in July 2005 for which Gore called everybody in,” recalls Byrkit. “He knew that he needed this great map, but wasn’t sure what form it would take. He just knew that he wanted it to be very special, and something we hadn’t seen before. He also wanted there to be secrets to the map: perhaps it changed form and revealed things. We came up with things as varied as something like a pop-up book in which you grab the center of the map and pull it out like a Chinese lantern, or the idea that if you shone a light underneath the map it would project this whole universe, like a planetarium, on the ceiling or the walls. I actually bought a bunch of Chinese lanterns and tried to paint a globe on them, and spent about a week of research and development trying to see if it would work. And after a week, I just knew that it wasn’t going to work.

“So I went back to an earlier idea that I had about a circular map with rings that represented metaphorical places to which you could travel, which I thought tied into the whole “Pirates” theme. Gore and I had been talking about the notion that “Pirates of the Caribbean” takes place during a time in history in which the maps weren’t yet filled in, which means that anything is possible in the world. There are all these places in the world that are Terra Incognita-lands that are unknown-so they could have monsters, they could have magic, they could have new civilizations. I loved the idea that this map was very old, made before the Enlightenment, before people got so scientific about mapmaking, when they still blurred the geographical realities with metaphorical inner journeys which are as important as physical journeys.

“When I showed the mockup of the circular map to Gore,” Byrkit continues, “he said `That’s it! Now, not only do the rings move, but you need shapes to start appearing, and land masses that become shapes.’ I went back and, based upon several conversations and input from Gore, painted a final map which took several months, because it kept evolving. The rings can line up in infinitely different ways, like a combination lock, and each way reveals some new secret, some unknown territory, some unexplored place, some metaphysical place, some parallel universe.

“It took seven or eight months of putting all the elements together, testing them, and making them right. I had several hundred phrases and names of places which I needed to be translated into Chinese calligraphy, so propmaster Kris Peck brought in an expert named J.C. Brown who’s worked on films like “The Last Samurai” and “Memoirs of a Geisha,” to make sure the brushstrokes were right. The original painting was done on washi-handmade Japanese rice paper-that I treated with layer upon layer of transparent washes of watercolors, some acrylic and artist inks. It has a really amazing, transluscent quality to it, and you can tell that there’s a history to it. Over the centuries, pirates have added their own secrets, scribbled notes to each other, just unlimited mysteries that it holds within.”

The final map, burnished with the patina of time, was converted by Peck into an actual prop and created the mechanics that make the rings turn in an entirely “practical” manner, with no CGI enhancements. “The inner workings of the map underneath are really beautiful,” enthuses Byrkit, “like a grandfather clock.”

In addition to such poetic places on the map, depicted in Chinese characters, as “Ghosts of Lost Souls at Sea to be Shepherded Through the Watery Passageway,” “Forgotten Sailors Sleep with Eyes Open Dreaming of a Salt Water Death” and “The Rich Man Finds No More Hope of Continued Life-Death Will Always Be A Stairway Behind,” there are also paintings of several creatures both real and mythological on the map, including a dragon, a tiger and another small creature who looks curiously like an early version of a certain undeniably cute little animal who was to become the world’s most legendary mouse. But when asked about it, Byrkit just mischievously smiles, and says “There are some secrets on the map that are beyond even my understanding!”

As costume designer Penny Rose is the first to point out, Captain Jack Sparrow’s indelible, pirate-bohemian look never, ever changes from “The Curse of the Black Pearl” to “At World’s End.” Well, almost never. Because if one looks at Captain Jack’s expressive, ever in motion hands, one will notice that in between the first and second films, the rings on his fingers (if not on his toes) grew from one to four.

In conversations between Johnny Depp and Penny Rose, the two decided that Captain Jack has had a few ladies in his day, sometimes very rich, sometimes widowed, sometimes with husbands far away. So every now and then, Witty Jack (as Tia Dalma aptly dubs him) gets into their jewelry boxes and helps himself to, shall we say, a souvenir of their romantic encounter. Then it was up to Kris Peck to supply the actual items, which were carefully chosen by Depp according to what he most felt Captain Jack would care to show off as part of his overall couture.

“The original ring that I wore in “The Curse of the Black Pearl” with the little skulls was one that I found about 17 years ago in a thrift store or something,” recalls Depp of the piece of jewelry which Captain Jack wears on his right index finger. On the wedding finger of his left hand, the good Captain sports a black and gold ring with three diamonds and a floral design, decidedly feminine and undoubtedly one of the pieces of memorabilia of a one night, or two hour stand with an elegant lady of high or low quality (Johnny Depp decided that she was, in fact, a Spanish widow). What Peck calls the “dragon ring,” a large item with a graceful gold dragon, wings outstretched, embedded in jade, is worn on Jack’s left index finger. However, in “Dead Man’s Chest,” while perusing Tia Dalma’s treasures in her swampland shack, Captain Jack considers exchanging the dragon ring for one with a large purple stone in a solid gold base…then decides to stealthily nick it instead, slipping it onto his left index finger, and moving the dragon ring to his left thumb, thus gracing four of his ten digits with elegant adornments.

Next Page – Chapter 16: The Wrap of Captain Jack: At Production’s End

This purple ring was artfully re-created by Kris Peck from a 2,400 year old original that was actually owned by Johnny Depp until the Fates had their way, and it tragically went missing during the filming of Dead Man’s Chest. Seems as if it wasn’t only Captain Jack who had a light-fingered touch!