The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
Short description
The Pirate Captain is a dreamer whose crew is as inept as he is, and his greatest ambition is to be named Pirate of the Year. Standing in his way are two formidable rivals, Black Bellamy and Cutlass Liz, who make him look like anything but a terror of the seas. Determined to win the prize, he sets off with his ragged band from Blood Island, and the journey carries them to Victorian London, where they cross paths with a young scientist named Charles Darwin and his talking chimpanzee, Mr Bobo, and attract the hostility of Queen Victoria, who despises pirates.
The film is an Aardman production directed by Peter Lord, working from a screenplay by Gideon Defoe and based on the first of Defoe's books about the crew. It followed Lord's Chicken Run, released twelve years earlier, and was made in stop-motion animation on a budget of 60 million US dollars, taking about 123 million dollars worldwide. Hugh Grant voices the Pirate Captain, with Martin Freeman as the Pirate with a Scarf, David Tennant as Darwin, Imelda Staunton as the Queen, Jeremy Piven as Black Bellamy and Salma Hayek Pinault as Cutlass Liz.
On IMDb it holds 6.7 out of 10 from around 54,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.5 out of 10 from roughly 1,300 votes. A critics' rating of 7.3 out of 10 from 151 reviews places it somewhat above those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- When it was necessary to move the ship model to another soundstage, the workers had to figure out how to get such a massive object through very narrow corridors. With great difficulty maneuvering around corners and doing everything possible to prevent the fragile structure from tipping over, the 'haulers' reached the last double doors leading to the soundstage… and discovered that the ship's mast was too long. The workers decided that returning the same way was 'like facing death,' so they took a 'grinder' and cut an opening of the required size in the doorway!
- Several identical copies of each doll were made so that the "actors" could perform on different sets simultaneously. To achieve this, molds were taken from each part of each doll before painting, and new "organs" were cast from these molds, being absolutely identical to the original. As a rule, the more often a doll appeared on screen, the more copies needed to be created. For the star of the film, Captain Pirates, 14 "stand-ins" were assembled. Not to mention that the "actor" had 6 identical costumes in case of unforeseen circumstances.
- Animators simulated the speech of the characters using special lip prosthetics. Each character had a ready-made set of lips, arranged in a particular grimace, corresponding to the sounds being pronounced. The prosthetics were attached to the heads using magnets. The lips and heads of the characters were the responsibility of specialists from one department. The lip prosthetics were designed on a computer and then cast from rubber. A total of 6818 lip prosthetics were created during the project. 1364 of them were intended for the Pirate Captain. 257 prosthetics were used to transmit the sounds that made up the speech. Each prosthetic was designed on a computer and then 'printed' on a 3D Rapid Prototyping printer. Queen Victoria’s lips turned out to be the most 'laborious,' as a new layer of lipstick had to be applied to them before each take.
- The ship consists of two independent parts, and the figure adorning the bow is half male, half female. There are two compartments on the ship that are worth mentioning in particular – the Pirate Captain's cabin and his bathroom. Upon closer inspection, one can see rather strange decorative elements with which the pirates fortified their ship – a cricket bat, a broom handle, and much more.
- The final version of the ship was assembled by hand and consisted of 44,569 individual elements. The model weighed 349 kilograms and was 4.2 meters long and 4.5 meters high. It took about 5000 hours to assemble.
- Peter Lord first read Gideon Defoe's book "Pirates: Band of Misfits" after another brainstorming session at Aardman Studios. Jim Campbell placed the book on the table. Peter picked up the book, flipped through it, became engrossed, and burst out laughing.
- The film's production used 'Rapid Prototype' technology instead of plasticine. Facial animation details were printed on special 3D printers and hand-painted.
- Captain Pirates had 17 different "donor organs". It took six months to create the first fully finished doll (including painting and clothing). A year was spent developing Captain's beard alone.
- 525 people worked on the film, including 33 animators. The film crew consisted of 41 people. Filming took place in four soundstages.
- The treasure vault of Queen Victoria holds 400,000 gold coins. Aardman's prop makers created over 220,000 various static and dynamic items to decorate the different locations.
- 70 puppeteers worked on the film, creating 250 puppets. This includes 9 pirates from the main crew, 23 pirates in the background, 18 scientists in the background, and 55 minor characters. A total of 112 characters are featured in the film.
- A plaque is fixed to the stern of the ship, which reads: “Feeling seasick – turn on the siren!”
- 140 sets of eyelashes were created for the main pirate crew.
- Sketches of the characters were passed on to sculptors, who sculpted figurines of the heroes. After one version was approved from several options, another figurine was sculpted, which was then divided into parts. These were painted separately, and then the doll was reassembled. The "skeleton" of each doll is a wire frame with hinges at the joints. The doll can bend just like a living person.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
