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— by Larry Carroll
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 a non-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."
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Photo: MTV News
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Ferrell gets racy, and 'The Lion' roars. Peep Overdrive Movies.
