6 Filmmaking Tips from the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Directors ~ Cinenus

Whatever you think of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise, it’s been directed by some great talents.

Fifteen years ago, everyone thought the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was a joke. Disney was adapting a ride from its theme parks, one involving pirates, which up until were then notorious flop fodder. But it wound up being extremely popular, one of the top three movies of 2003, well-received by critics, and Oscar-nominated not just in technical categories but also for Johnny Depp as Best Actor. A lot of that achievement is thanks to director Gore Verbinski, a versatile filmmaker who went on to helm the first two sequels, each of which made more money than one before it.

Then Rob Marshall took over for the fourth installment. Mostly associated with musicals, including the Best Picture of 2002, Chicago, Marshall seemed ill-fit for the franchise but although his entry is the worst-reviewed, it’s nearly tied for highest-grossing worldwide. And now we’ve got Norwegian filmmakers Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg at the helm of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Early reactions have called their sequel the best since the original, a return to what we all enjoyed that first time around. With their fifth installment, the franchise is set to sail past the $4B mark in total global gross.

Regardless of what you think of the quality of the franchise, though, all four directors are very talented and have made more acclaimed works outside of their Pirates entries. In fact, they’re all Oscar nominees — Marshall for directing Chicago, Ronning and Sandberg for Best Foreign Language Film with Kon-Tiki, and Verbinski, who actually won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with Rango. Their advice to other filmmakers certainly isn’t something to shrug off, which is why we’ve collected six tips from the lot of them, with each director represented once for every installment they worked on.

1. ABS: Always. Be. Shooting.

Early this year, Verbinski took part in a Reddit AMA to promote his latest, A Cure for Wellness, and he was asked to share any “techniques or lessons” he’s learned. His answer:

I would say my one piece of advice would just to always be shooting. Just ‘ABS’, as we say. There’s no reason not to. You’re never going to have the perfect set of circumstances. You’re never going to be in an ideal situation with the right script or the right cast or the right budget, so you might as well get used to it. Grab your phone, grab your friends, tell a story, chuck it in the trash, tell another one. Chuck it in the trash if you don’t like it. If you like it, put it out there. Just that waiting and thinking that you’re waiting for some sort of conduit or some access point to become a filmmaker. You are a filmmaker. Just take that to heart.

2. No Egg McMuffins

Somewhat related to the above advice, in an Ain’t It Cool News interview posted one day later, Verbinski implies that filmmakers shouldn’t be too picky but they also shouldn’t play it safe. Acknowledging the diversity of his filmography, he says to take chances:

You have to approach every movie like it’s your last. I think that boundary of “I’m not sure” is a great place to be, pushing right up against that seam of the unknown. A Pirate movie is not supposed to work. That’s great, let’s do it! “Have you ever made an animated movie?” “No, don’t know how. Let’s do it!” The gig is gonna be up someday, so why not just go for it?…I mean, I like an Egg McMuffin, but I don’t want to make one.

3. Don’t Ask for Permission

Speaking of taking chances, Verbinski would say not to let anyone keep you from doing so. During a keynote address to game makers at the 2008 DICE Summit, he recalled having to defend Johnny Depp’s characterization of Captain Jack Sparrow to Disney during the making of the first Pirates movie and used the anecdote to offer the crowd this creative advice (quotes via The Escapist and Wired):

The trick is to not ask for permission…You are willing something into being. You do not ask for permission…Our audience wants us to surprise them. They demand it of us. When they see something that’s new, they will champion it because they discovered it

A few years later, while promoting Rango in an interview for DIY magazine Verbinski reiterated when asked about any studio push back:

I just don’t ask for permission. I grew up in the time of Old Yeller, the Wicked Witch of the West. I don’t know when we decided that drama had to fit in a Happy Meal box. I think kids can handle a lot more than we realize — we constantly underestimate our children. We made the movie for the child in all of us. I expected them to squirm a little bit during the existential crisis of the character, but they were quite mesmerized.

4. Choose Wisely

Marshall, who has had his share of hits and misses, also tries different things even if his clear preference is with musicals. Like Verbinski, he’s not necessarily recommending filmmakers be finicky so much as smart when offering this advice in a 2005 Time magazine interview:

As a director, you should choose a project that will educate you and enrich your life, because you’re going to be doing it for two years.

In a 2015 Hollywood Reporter interview, Marshall affirms this advice when discussing the same moment in his career, when he went from Chicago to Memoirs of a Geisha:

The thing I wanted to do following [Chicago], because I was in this very rare position that you get very few times in your life where you can pick and choose what you like to do, was something completely different and challenging. I didn’t want to do Chicago 2.

I’ve sort of felt that way all of my career: I’ve always looked for something that’s very hard and challenging to do, not something that’s easy to do — and something that also gives you some kind of life experience. You want to do something that really is life-enriching and unique.

5. Spend Efficiently

If you’ve seen Ronning and Sandberg’s Kon-Tiki, with all its special effects and aquatic adventure, you should be amazed it only cost $15M to make. Here’s Ronning explaining the secret to the duo’s budget efficiency in a 2013 interview for This is Infamous:

We don’t have a choice! [Laugh] It’s that easy! The budget, the 15 million dollar budget, that’s… to put it in perspective, that’s the biggest ever coming out of Scandinavia. I think that it’s one of our strengths, to put it all up on screen and then some. Going into making Kon-Tiki, we were very inspired by the movies of David Lean and early Spielberg and stuff like that, and making it epic somehow. That’s not necessarily the most expensive shots. The big shots, the helicopter shots. That’s like a half a day of helicopter and you’ve got them. So it’s really… It’s know how to spend the money and I think you have to learn that as a Scandinavian director. As a Norwegian film director you really have to be on top of the budget because you don’t have money, basically.”

Don’t think that just because they’re now working on a huge blockbuster that their ways have changed, either. Ronning mentions working with a Pirates-size budget in a 2015 DGA Quarterly interview primarily about their work on the series Marco Polo:

Scandinavian features are kind of in the same budget range as American cable TV. For the first two hours of Marco Polo, we had the same budget that we had to shoot Kon-Tiki, which is also two hours. Whereas Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which we’re working on now, is $300 million. Even then, you’re always in a squeeze somehow. There’s never enough for what you want to do.

6. Movies Should Be Epic

Athough Ronning and Sandberg have done some TV work, they’re primarily interested in cinema and doing epic work for the big screen. In many interviews, Sandberg acknowledges their interest in large-scale theatrical efforts, but in this quote from a 2013 ScreenCrush interview, he basically implores filmmakers to aim big and explains why it’s important now more than ever:

I think we love making epic movies, movies for the big screen. There’s so much great drama on television these days that you really have to.

What We’ve Learned

None of the Pirates directors appear to have taken on the franchise as a mere paycheck gig (even if surely that paycheck was huge). They were drawn to the challenges of this property, and for their parts they’ve mostly been successful, career-wise. The gist of all of their advice is for filmmakers to always be shooting something and trying different things that will garner them diverse and enriching and educational experience. Also, working with all kinds of genres and budgets can be great lessons in taking chances and being creative with different ways around certain costs and cliches. Finally, if you want to make movies, make them truly cinematic.

The article 6 Filmmaking Tips from the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Directors appeared first on Film School Rejects.

Cinenus

The film industry in one place - Articles, Reviews, trailers and hype!

Tuesday, 23 May 2017