(ALL SCREAMING)
(GRUNTING)
It's always a challenge when you're making a movie
to make something look new,
but we feel that the whole idea of Poseidon is very unique.
We have a sequence under the sea
which an enormous set piece which is just gorgeous.
JAVIER BARDEM: When I was reading it,
I couldn't imagine how would that be made.
Now I know, and I'm amazed even more
because there are things that are beyond my imagination.
JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: The set took two to three months to actually build
and it's colorful, fluorescent, it's beautiful.
It's a lot of coral, a lot of texture,
and very, very wet. (LAUGHS)
Very, very wet.
But kind of this other world.
You know, we're unlocking another world within the Pirates' world.
Even without effects,
I think you're being surrounded in blue screen
and just having the seafloor in front of you
and seeing the craftsmanship and the detail in the coral,
it's very easy to lose yourself.
ESPEN SANDBERG: The design by Nigel Phelps is amazing and then,
of course, it was a massive light rig
to make it appear like
you're trapped between two giant walls of water.
We were tasked with the job
of trying to create an underwater environment.
We experimented with some different things
to try and give the feeling of water movement.
We looked at projectors,
things like that to try and see if those things would work
and we ended up with a very simple system
of just old fashioned water tricks.
JOACHIM RONNING: DP Paul Cameron basically hung pools of water
up in the ceiling and he shot light through it
and had some sort of a rig
that made the waves appear in the water
and that created that kind of constant moving around.
And on top of that he had like, this insane stage rig
with lights that were constantly blinking.
You know, so, like two weeks of that,
you get a little cuckoo...
(CHUCKLES) But it looks good in the movie.
Looks good in the movie.
(MAN GRUNTING)
Each water tray has at least three moving lights inside.
And we went with moving lights 'cause we knew
as the action shifted it would be easier
to adjust the lights that way
and the sharpness of the beam creates a very nice
sharp shadow effect from the water movement.
Now, obviously, there's a lot of technical stuff that went along with it
but the sea bottom was so beautifully done, it was so surreal.
Can't just go down to the Pacific and go, "Push back."
(CHUCKLES)
You know, it's not the Red Sea.
They built all the fundamentals as much as possible,
I think, for the imagination of the actors
but there's going to be a lot more added in postproduction.
SHELDON STOPSACK: The creation of Poseidon's tomb
was pretty clear right from the start,
but it was probably one of the most complex work that we had on the movie.
(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)
There was a lot of fleshing out that we had to do
in terms of the heights of the ocean,
um, you know, the difference between the floor,
the ocean plane, and the water surface above,
what that distance would end up being.
The bigger questions for us were more like,
what would the actual walls of the water look like?
What kind of texture would they have
and how much clarity of vision would you need
to have between what's on the inside of the water wall
and what's on the outside of the water wall.
We had to build everything for behind the walls in terms of coral,
there were fish, there was kind of shipwreck,
and other kind of rock features and things like that.
And so there's a process of building all that stuff
which means obviously the modeling, the texturing,
the look, the process, and things like that,
but we also had to consider
how far in depth things were from the wall
and whether or not you would actually see it
once it went through all the kind of distortion
that was happening on the wall.
So the process there was doing render tests to understand
would you actually see the fish
or would you see, you know, the coral in the background,
and making sure that
we were hitting the right level of disturbance on the wall.
(YELLING) (GASPS)
As well as creating kind of patches of areas
where you could see a little bit deeper through the wall
with gust kind of patterns and things like that
to allow us to read a little bit more of that internal environment.
WOMAN: D-mark.
MAN: Action!
I think once you get into the Pirates world, anything can happen.
Nothing's really going to throw you.
CAPTAIN BARBOSSA: Jump!
Faster!
KAYA SCODELARIO: At first, I would have said, "No, there's no way."
But you quickly adapt, it seems,
and everything becomes possible.