If you were there, you might have done what I did and blinked uncertainly for a moment as production designer John Myhre showed off his creation: a full-scale set designed to recreate the crowded, dirty streets of London circa 1750. As Orson Welles notoriously said, a film production is the best train set a boy could want. And, better yet, Myhre's got the perfect action figure to go with the train set in the form of Johnny Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow.
Myhre explained, "Jack is actually captured and brought in to the king of England, makes an escape, and we have a chase through the streets of London in the 1750s." He waved to a cluttered-looking fully functional cart: "This is one of several coal wagons that have been built for the end of the chase sequence — you see Jack going from carriage to carriage. Undertaker carriages, rich ladies' carriages, (and he) finally jumps on the back of a coal cart. The king's guards are chasing him, shooting at him, and the whole thing bursts into flames, and now you've got this coal cart, bursting with flames, banging down through London. Because the film is being shot in 3-D, we've done some really good 3-D sequences — the camera's right down low, this coal cart's banging on the walls, all this fiery coal is going out, all just filling the frame with this big 3-D flame. It should be pretty spectacular."
And, in explaining the sets, Myhre perhaps shares more of the plot than he should: "And eventually, (at) the end of the sequence we take (Jack Sparrow) down to the London wharf, to the Captain's Daughter pub. The reason he's here in London is that he's heard that Jack Sparrow is trying to crew a ship. But he's Jack Sparrow, and he's not in London. So who in the world is in London at The Captain's Daughter down here, and trying to recruit a crew?"
Myhre walked us across Pinewood and inside one of the film's more massive sets: the storeroom of The Captain's Daughter, full of fight-ready ropes and rafters and stuntman-safe rubber barrels and such. Myhre waved his hands, excited by the filming he'd seen unfold in this space. "There is a huge fight sequence that takes place in here," he said. "A huge, very, very pirate-y duel that takes place between Jack and 'Jack.' Because Jack comes in and 'Jack' is here. And Jack sees 'Jack,' and Jack fights 'Jack.' And so there's a whole fight between Jacks.
"Then they realize that they need to fight together, because now the king's soldiers have found out where they are, so we've not only had a fight that is on all the levels of here — fights on the fire pit, fights in the mezzanine, fights on top of the barrels — then 24 of the king's soldiers come in to get back Jack, and they go after all of the Jacks in the room, and a huge fight takes place. We do something with spurting beer and ale from the barrels, used as a distraction. He's slicing a lot of the barrels — you know, Johnny Depp just so inhabits this role of Jack, so that immediately when barrels are being sliced and there's ale flying through the air, he's holding one of the barrels up high and a little stream of wine goes into his mouth." Myhre laughed: "Fantastic."
Read More: MSN
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