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

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS
anything that you can shoot
practically for that. So all the water
has to be computer-generated
throughout, and it’s very difficult to
do that very realistically. We’re
going to end up with approximately
400 visual effects shots in that
sequence, with rain, giant waves,
whitecaps, foam and spray. These
are all challenging things to execute
believably.
“What’s happening in the
foreground is pretty complicated as
well,” Knoll explains. “There’s a
huge battle between the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman, so we have computer-generated characters in
the midst of rain, atmospherics and splintering wood. Not to mention hundreds of pirate and EITC ships
that are seen in the sequence.”
Dressed For Success
Costume designer Penny Rose, who amply demonstrated her prodigious talents on both “The Curse of
the Black Pearl” and “Dead Man’s Chest,” went beyond the Farthest Gate on AT WORLD’S END, helping
to extend the pirate world well beyond that depicted in the first two films. “We’d done Caribbean pirates
to death, and now we were going to have some new ingredients,” explains Rose. “We got a lot of pictorial
and editorial information about piracy in different parts of the world. I prepare the films in London, which
is a very good base to do that kind of research.”
Rose and her crew literally combed the world for fabrics and materials from which to create the
thousands of costumes required for AT WORLD’S END. “I spend three or four weeks intensively
shopping at textile fairs, or with antique textile dealers,” she says. “I go to Rome, Madrid, Paris, New York,
and buy myself a great, huge store of stuff. Then it travels everywhere we go…we have workrooms on all
of the islands and locations where we shoot, so that everything is within the room. It’s like I have a toy
shop here, and when the actors come in I can offer them options and let them choose, because I like
everything here anyway. It’s really important for the actors to become involved.
“The moment in the dressing room with the actors is the high point of the work. Far more important
and exhilarating to me than how much money the film makes is to send the actors away having visually
found the character they’re playing. That’s what I’m here to do.”
For AT WORLD’S END, the story and character developments go hand in hand with their costume
changes. Except, of course, for Captain Jack Sparrow. “Jack can never change,” insists Rose. “He doesn’t
have a closet full of clothes. He is Captain Jack, and the clothes make the man. Same with Geoffrey Rush’s
Captain Barbossa. So in terms of the two of them, it was simply a question of remaking more, more, more,
which was in itself quite a challenge because it was difficult to find the original textiles.
“For example,” Rose continues, “Captain Jack’s sash was made by a hill tribe in Turkey, and I had to
send someone to Turkey to persuade that tribe to weave me some more of the sash material. Because we
tried to print it on old French hemp and linen sheets, but it just wasn’t the same. So the hill-tribe people
made me another hundred yards.
“We see a more confident and powerful Will Turner and a new and exciting Elizabeth Swann,” informs
Rose. “We’ve given Orlando an embossed buckskin vest, a dark, wine-colored shirt and a beautiful
mudcloth coat. I think it’s important that in the third film, you’re slightly confused as to whose side Will
is on, so we needed to help his character look a little bit darker, metaphorically. He has a rather wonderful
dark, dark midnight-blue coat made out of mudcloth, which looks very romantic and mysterious.
40