Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3

Pirates of the Caribbean:
Dead Man's Chest
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After this quick sighting, the tour promptly started with a look at the Flying Dutchman deck. The Flying Dutchman (click image below for a larger version) is a ship featured in the 2nd film and its captain is none other than Davey Jones (Bill Nighy). According to Knoll, "He's got a whole octopus for a face (and) a crab claw hand." Davey Jones also walks on a "crab leg," which is like a peg leg. The writers borrowed from popular Pirate mythology to craft their story and it was eluded that the crew all resemble each other.

Knoll elaborated on many details about Jones and his crew. "The design is really cool," said Knoll. "Him and his whole crew are collection of sea life. They are very complicated. It's actually like building one of the characters is like eight characters because they are a conglomeration of things. One character's got an eel growing through him… The longer you serve on the Dutchman, the more you sort of become of the sea. Someone who has recently joined the crews looks human, but someone who has served on the crew for 200 years doesn't really have a face anymore. It's a gradual placement of reprocess."

The deck of the ship was undergoing water tests, in which water cannons on the side of the set sprayed water on the main deck of the ship. The ship was very rickety-looking, with many barnacles growing on all sides of it. It was a dark brown color and the cannons looked rusted and moldy. The set sits on a gimble, which is able to make the ship tilt as if it is on the ocean. The scene that was shooting featured the aforementioned Nighy, Skarsgård, and Orlando Bloom. The only details given was that the ship has been undersea for one hundred years and resurfaces to collect the souls of pirates that died at sea.

According to Production Designer Heinrichs, "The Dutchman is the most elaborate (ship). We are almost done building it. (It's) elaborately sculpted; it's not a floating barge." Knoll said, "The Flying Dutchman is going to be CG for wide shots cause its going to do some stuff we can't do with models." Knoll then describes the Kraken; a sea monster that will be featured twice in the film. "It's half squid, half octopus. (It's) just really big and it attacks the ship." Knoll also mentioned scenes taking place on "Cannibal Island."
 

The rest of the sets were on the Burbank Disney lot. The most impressive of the lot was "Bayou" set. Filling a rather large soundstage was an entire swamp (with a four foot deep tank of water), surrounded by massive trees (made out of foam) and two shacks. One shack was an obvious tribute to the Disneyland ride. The other was home to soothsayer Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris). Her shack overlooked the swamp and was cluttered with tons of props. The shack features a giant crocodile head, small lizards hanging, alligator skins, wax sculptures, crosses, spices, bats, and snake skins. The shack looked very rickety and looked to be made out of rotting wood. The actual bayou was huge; during the film, there will be boats in the swamp. Also, the scene will feature all principals of the cast.

The Black Pearl Captain's Quarter was next on the agenda. The set from the first movie was completely rebuilt. It also features more details than the first set. The Captain Quarters was built completely out of black mahogany, which is heavy, costly, and very authentic. There are gold-plated decorations and ornate candles in the film will light everything. The skylight in the set was made of glass imported from Germany from the early 18th century. The set is used only for interiors, with a Black Pearl sailing to St. Vincent for location shooting. Thus, every window is filled with blue screen.

The next set scene on the tour was the Port Royal prison that was featured in the first film. It is a newly constructed set, but the set was given the same look as the first. There are stone walls and iron doors, exactly like the original set. Also, the key-ring dog will return.
Click to enlarge
A new ship featured in the film is the Edinborugh Trader. The set on the tour was the Captain's Quarters of this ship. The set looked very different than the Black Pearl; much brighter and more sailing details. The set featured many maps and was built very close to scale for the ship. The actual ship used for location filming for the Edinborugh Trader is the HMS Bounty. It is being reformatted from the 1962 Marlon Brando film and is unrecognizable.

Finally, the last set viewed was two cross-sections of the Black Pearl. The entire set was full-sized and on a hydraulic system making it rock as if it were on the ocean. The two decks were the cannon deck and the underneath deck (or the sleeping deck.) The Cannon deck obviously feature gigantic cannons; five on each side. Everything looked very authentic. There was aged wood and rusted nails; everything was newly built for the second film. The set had a very dark, moody look. Also dark was the sleeping deck, which featured hammocks and many other random props (there were many bananas around for some reason.)

— by Larry Carroll
Click to see larger image of Davy Jones' crew member
UNIVERSAL CITY, California — The soundstage door slides open, the darkness lifts, and you're suddenly reminded of rogue pirate Jack Sparrow's words to Weatherby Swann: "I think we've all arrived at a very special place."

Welcome to the most secretive, high-profile movie set currently in production: the double shooting stages of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels.

"You're about to step onto the deck of the Flying Dutchman," beams the films' unit publicist, "captained by Davey Jones."
After walking up some creaky stairs, the 21st century is left behind, yielding to the mustiness of a 17th century pirate ship. Covered in barnacles, the Dutchman has been scavenging the bottom of the sea for generations, occasionally resurrecting itself with a ghastly crew at its controls.

"It's the curse of Davey Jones," explains John Knoll, the Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisor who returns for both sequels. "[Jones] collects the souls of sailors who die at sea, and the longer you serve on the Dutchman, the more you gradually become of the sea. So somebody who's recently joined the crew still looks fairly human, and then somebody who's been serving on the crew for 200 years doesn't really even have a face anymore."

In the second installment of the franchise, titled "Dead Man's Chest," the deformed and deranged Jones (Billy Nighy, "Underworld") comes looking for Sparrow (Johnny Depp) to collect a blood debt payable with his eternal servitude. Unsheathing their swords in the name of friendship, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) put their wedding plans on hold to once again assist Sparrow in supernatural, swashbuckling adventure.

The Dutchman has been meticulously crafted on this soundstage and also built as a real floating vessel in the Bahamas. Director Gore Verbinski, seeking more realism for the sequels ("In the first one there were a few [effects] that were a little too jarring for him," says production designer Rick Heinrichs), has a Hollywood toy box at his fingertips after the original film's $300 million triumph at the U.S. box office, and he intends to leave audiences feverishly sweating out the months between the second and third movies.

There are broken ropes, moldy floorboards and six seaweed-laden cannons on either side of the deck of the Dutchman, which is built upon a massive hydraulic gimbal that allows the ship to rock back and forth at extreme angles with the mere touch of a button.

Soon it's time to be whisked off to another set. Stepping off the last creaky step, several easels to the left display character sketches rendered by creature designer "Crash" McCreery ("I really like the Davey design," Knoll marvels. "He's got the octopus for a face, and just a really cool look. He has a crab-claw hand").

Emerging from a darkened walkway, director's chairs can be spotted brandishing names like Depp, Bloom and Bruckheimer. A barely recognizable Stellan Skarsgård ("Good Will Hunting") stumbles by in his sinister "Bootstrap" Bill Turner costume, wearing a long brown coat with barnacles rising out of his back and shoulders. Dozens of bearded men in gray leotards shuffle around, covered in dots that will aid their CGI replacements later on.

After being shuttled to neighboring Burbank and going through enough security checkpoints to be cleared for Air Force One, the tour walks across a Walt Disney Studios backlot street and steps through another magical door, into the lush woods of a bayou. Crew members use chainsaws to trim the overhanging trees kissing the swamp water. The enormous murky pond is surrounded by huts, vines and an occasional rowboat. The air is so humid you instinctively feel like swatting a mosquito, until you remember that it's all just pretend, and that "Alias" shoots next door.

The tree house in the center of the bayou is the residence of Tia Dalma, a soothsayer portrayed by "28 Days Later" actress Naomie Harris. Climb the winding staircase and you encounter alligator heads, wax voodoo dolls and candles filling nearly every inch of the tiny dwelling, described by the unit publicist as "cluttered to the nth degree." Coins are nailed to the wall, surrounded by various potions and spices lying about, ready for the conjuring. A porch in the back leads to a magnificent view overlooking the bayou. Bloom, Knightley, Depp and all the other principal actors have shot in this location.

Next up is the Black Pearl itself, meticulously re-created to look like the titular ship from the original epic adventure. Although Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa won't be aboard, the captain's cabin is unmistakable. This time, however, there's a bit more detail: the wood is made of real mahogany, the skylight is constructed from glass imported from Germany, and the door is blown off, a remnant from the action of the last film.

The ship's twin brother, built in Mobile, Alabama, and then sailed to St. Vincent in the Caribbean for location shoots, has been constructed to navigate the choppy ocean with a far greater speed than audiences will expect. "The Black Pearl's built on top of another boat, so it's got twin diesel engines and can have quite a bit of a bow wave this time, something Gore really wanted to do," Heinrichs reported like a proud papa. "He felt that in the first movie, all the boats felt a little turgid, and they were basically barges that were being dragged behind another boat, except for the real sailing vessels that they rented. This time, we actually built the boats so that they do have that feel of reality to them."

The Black Pearl, the Flying Dutchman and the British Edinborough Trader, the publicist reports, are the only three vessels with confirmed appearances in the second "Pirates" adventure. Additional sets, ships and actors are simultaneously laboring elsewhere for the still-untitled third movie, which follows "Chest" sometime after its July 7 release (the first trailer is expected in December).

Continuing the expedition, the Port Royal jail is once again spotted, accompanied by confirmation that the "key ring dog" will return. A few hundred feet away stands the Trader, sawed in half to benefit filming. Unlike the other two ships, the Trader is untarnished by the ravages of the sea. It's a merchant ship, piloted by !@#$%-principal actor, that isn't haunted but will undoubtedly find itself in some seafaring battles. Maps, charts and various instruments of navigation fill up the light-wood interior, a fraction of the much larger Trader that will be used for external shots (and is the same full-rigged ship built for Marlon Brando's "Mutiny on the Bounty").

Then it's off to another cutout set, this one the bowels of the Black Pearl. A rum locker leads into a cramped, ridiculously detailed cannon room. The wood is aged and rusted, and sponges sit next to cannonballs, for wiping down the hot cannons. Barrels of gun powder and hanging water bottles set the stage for another epic battle that seems certain to shiver a lot more than timbers.

One floor below, the crew's quarters are detailed with similar wood finishing and filled with hammocks for sleeping, then more hammocks that contain huge bunches of bananas, onions and potatoes. Once again, the boat is on a gimbal, and all props are nailed down to avoid tabloid headlines of Johnny Depp being crushed under the weight of a 50-pound bag of spuds.

"It's a bigger show than last time, so there are more things to figure out," Knoll says, looking like a college student who had to pull an all-nighter but knows he'll earn his A. "There's just more. There's more locations, there's more ships, the characters are more complicated, and [there is] more stuff to figure out. It's all harder than the first one."

But, Knoll adds with a sly grin that would make Jack Sparrow proud, "I like that. I wouldn't want it to be too easy."

The box-office bonanza that made pirates cool again is back in action with the next installment of the franchise, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Everyone is back including Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski driving the ship. You will see fantastic action, new spectacular special effects and even more laughs than ever before. To accompany one of the most anticipated films of 2006, Zizzle LLC will deliver the first mass market toy line ever offered behind the Disney franchise, which encompasses the recently announced sequel and the yet to be named final film in the trilogy.

Zizzle, a team of proven toy marketers led by Roger Shiffman has come on the scene and are gaining momentum quickly. The company's first product launch iZ, an animatronic character and iPod(TM) companion has received acclaim throughout the toy business. Included in this year's "Hot Dozen" toys from Toy Wishes Magazine and more, it is being heralded as one of the most exciting things to hit retail shelves in years. Product development for Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" will be equally innovative, and marketing will seek unique, fun ways to drive Pirates at retail.

"The tremendous success of Disney's 'Pirates of the Caribbean' caught retailers by surprise, and the inherent excitement for 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' combined with our fresh ideas on product development make for a powerful opportunity," said Shiffman. "The play pattern and property are the perfect fit for kids, and we hope to drive the business worldwide to a magnitude that few other major film properties have seen before."

Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" products, which will launch just prior to the movie release will include: action figures, play sets, role play, interactive hand held games, novelty electronics and more. The line will play off the incredible depth of characters, storylines, movie sets/locations and pirate fantasy. Highly detailed action figures will include all of kids' favorite characters, from Captain Jack Sparrow to Will Turner to the new villain character, Davy Jones. Figures and accessories will be launched in multiple sizes/scales and with built-in features from slashing swords to smoking cannons. Kids will be able to take to land or sea with different play sets, including an Ultimate Black Pearl ship measuring nearly three feet long! And, of course, role play toys will allow any child to become "one" with their favorite pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow, using all of his great gear.

"We shoot until December, then we take a month off to get some post-production work going. Then we shoot for January, February. Then we take time off to finish the second movie, then we go back and shoot another 40 days on the third film and then we go right into post-production on that film. The hard thing is the pacing, trying to get up every day, get juiced and get creative, because they're just absolutely physically exhausting."

If you or planning in visiting the Caribbean, you can discover more about travel there by visiting
The Bahamas Vacation Guide
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