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

RETURN TO THE BAHAMAS
and marine departments once again put two huge barges off of White Cay as a basecamp, and we took the
cast and crew to the island on smaller craft. The crew accepted the challenge, and then rose to it really
well.”
Then it was back to the tank on Grand Bahama, with shooting alternating between the final sequences
necessary to complete “Dead Man’s Chest” once and for all—nearly one year after the cameras first
rolled—and then the required, and very numerous, water sequences for AT WORLD’S END. The weather
on Grand Bahama had now cooled considerably, enough so that parkas had to be donned for night
shooting. The late-winter weather also kicked up the seas considerably, as Verbinski and the company
learned the hard way on the night of
February 2, 2006, as they attempted
to shoot an exciting AT WORLD’S
END sequence in which Elizabeth
Swann and a group of Chinese
pirates escape imprisonment on the
Flying Dutchman by climbing a rat
line connecting that ship to the
Empress—Captain Sao Feng’s
flagship junk—which is being towed
behind. A stiff wind whipped the
waters into a whirlpool, with the
Dutchman and the Empress tossed
about like toys, and the smaller
support craft even more so. “That night was surreal,” recalls stunt coordinator George Marshall Ruge.
“The stuntmen had to negotiate a 150-foot-long rat line, hand over hand, while alternating their leg holds
on the rope as they went. The physical demands were already extreme, but what we didn’t anticipate was
bad weather and rough seas. We’re not talking just rolling waves…we’re talking about a churning cauldron
of wickedly unpredictable, rough water. The seas became too rough for the pickup boats to navigate, the
rat line itself was heaving up and down as much as 10 feet. Conditions couldn’t have been worse. We
ended up using another vessel that had a roof to get the stuntmen off the rope. The roof had to be
reinforced, as it wasn’t meant to carry the weight of people on top. The stuntmen had to time their transfer
from the heaving rope to spotters on the boat’s roof. The real stunts were performed behind the scenes that
night!”
As the incredibly brave stunt players climbed the rope between ships, and the marine department crafts
desperately tried to remain afloat without capsizing (although at least one did, with no one hurt), executive
producer Eric McLeod noted, “Take a good look at this. You’ll never see moviemaking on this scale again.
Soon it’ll all be done with blue screen. This is movie history being made.”
The supporting cast, depending upon when they were needed for filming, would come and go from the
Bahamas with regularity. “That was a great luxury,” notes Jonathan Pryce, who plays Governor Weatherby
Swann, “because since we started shooting I did both a West End play and Broadway musical in between
my work for ‘Pirates.’ It’s always nice to come back, see some friends, visit for a few days or a couple of
weeks, then go off and do something else.
“It means people are very pleased to see me when I arrive,” adds Pryce with a laugh. “I’m full of
admiration for the crew, the majority of whom worked on all three films, and their energy never diminished,
nor has Gore’s enthusiasm and inventiveness on set amongst this huge machine. Gore always finds time for
the actors and the acting, because he knows that’s ultimately what the audience focuses on. In a film of this
size and success, there’s no sense of complacency. It’s a bit like doing a musical where there is no place for
cynicism. We laugh a lot on ‘Pirates,’ but when you’re doing it, you’re doing it for real.”
Strangely enough, the very last scene to be filmed for “Dead Man’s Chest,” on February 7, 2006, was
Johnny Depp’s very first appearance in the film as Captain Jack Sparrow, popping out of a casket which
has just been hurled into the Turkish sea. At last, Gore Verbinski could concentrate solely on AT
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