Pirates of the caribbean: at world's end - Disney

SINGAPORE SLING
sense of nausea at what filthy beasts and brutes the pirates are. We’ve added lots of thickeners and color
to the water so that it looks unwholesome. Captain Sao Feng has his own ‘hero niche’ in the bathhouse,
with an imperial dragon on the wall behind it. One of the fun things that we did was to design the entire
floor of the bathhouse to have a meandering, planked look that’s almost organic, so every one of them had
to be hand-cut.”
Heinrichs’ longtime collaborator as set decorator—someone who shared an Academy Award ®
nomination with him for both “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” and “Dead Man’s
Chest” in the Best Art Direction category—is Cheryl Carasik. “I’ve done four films pretty much back-toback
with Rick, and we just have a great relationship,” she says. “Rick starts cooking right away, so I have
enough information from the very beginning of prep to focus and fine-tune the big picture.” Carasik’s set
decoration for Singapore, half of which was actually imported from Asia, was an incredible grab bag of
baskets, bushels, food products, flickering Chinese lanterns, crates, barrels, buckets, painted scrolls,
hanging laundry, all made of rattan, bamboo (much of which Carasik brought back from the Dominican
locations), wood and palm fronds, just as they would be in Southeast Asia. “It was one of the biggest sets
I’ve ever done in my career, and probably the most challenging for the amount of time in which we had
to do it,” Carasik recalls. “There were little nooks, apothecary and pottery shops, and interiors that all
needed to be dressed, because you never know where Gore is going to want to shoot.”
Atmospherically, the Singapore set actually felt like Southeast Asia, with heavy, dripping humidity
caused by the thousands of gallons of water in the tank utilized to create the harbor area, combined with
the heat emanating from the powerful lighting equipment. There was even a visible fog which could
always be seen just above the water level!
AT WORLD’S END presented new, and occasionally overwhelming, challenges to stunt coordinator
George Marshall Ruge, assistant Daniel W. Barringer and their fabulous team of stunt doubles and players
which, this time, included a large Asian contingent featuring martial arts experts of all calibers. The
“Singapore” sequence, involving Captain Barbossa, Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Gibbs, Tia Dalma,
Pintel and Ragetti, Cotton and his parrot, Marty, Captain Sao Feng, Jack the Monkey and approximately
200 assorted Chinese pirates, East India Trading Company militia and various Singaporean citizenry,
spills out from a grotty bathhouse, onto the streets and alleys of the city, and then onto wooden boardwalks
and walkways connecting thatched stilt houses over the harbor. “The Singapore sequence began as an
unknown entity and one-line description in a treatment,” notes Ruge. “Without a lot of warning it took on
massive proportions, with a rapid
evolution into a complex sequence
on a very difficult set. We had
limited time to prepare, design the
action, choreograph and rehearse.
Because the sets were still being
built and the paint was still drying, I
ended up calling rehearsals at very
odd hours that often extended into
the night.
“The bathhouse portion of the
sequence presented a lot of
problems,” Ruge continues.
“Complex fight choreography was
required in a very confined space with lots of people and lots of obstacles in terms of the baths
themselves. The set was raked and incredibly slippery, with the steam rising from all crevices. The action
was designed to be absolutely character-driven, fresh, intricate and crisp. There was literally no room for
error, with gunfire and swords flying everywhere. Once the action leaves the bathhouse and escalates out
onto the streets of Singapore, another set of problems emerged. The action had to be designed, utilizing
the very narrow wood-planked walkways that were elevated above the water by bamboo scaffolding. This
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