“P. J. has a very precise visual
sense of how a story needs to be told,” explained producer
Patrick McCormick. “His book of references covered
every detail of the story – London streets, Neverland,
cloud sequences. We created everything in this movie. There
isn’t any moment or sequence where we said, ‘Okay,
we have that location, or it’s easy for us to build
a set like that.’ Everything is fabricated to resonate
with the rest of the movie.”
In the early days
of pre-pre-production, the filmmakers had considered shooting
Peter Pan on location,
which would have meant filming in a jungle, aboard a ship,
at sea and on the streets of London. But because so much
of the story takes place at night and so many cast members
were children whose schedules were governed by strict child
labor laws, location plans were abandoned. Instead, production
was based at Warner Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Australia
(Queensland) and the film’s sets were constructed on
a number of massive soundstages. The only exception was the
London streets set, which was built outdoors on the lot in
Australia and occasioned the schedule’s single instance
of night-shooting by the main unit.
At times, Peter
Pan occupied all eight of the facility’s stages. In addition to answering
concerns about the children’s schedules, shooting on
the stages allowed production to create and execute the elaborate
locations under controlled circumstances, unhampered by local
exterior conditions such as cyclone season. It also allowed
the filmmakers to set the story in a larger-than-life world
of heightened reality.
Hogan’s early research gave his team
the much-appreciated chance to hit the ground running. “P.
J. must have spent a year pulling together what we call the
bible,” said production designer Roger Ford. “Most
of it was culled from paintings or illustrations in books
which expressed his feeling for how he wanted to see the
film. The time it takes to find out a director’s vision
when a document like this doesn’t exist is considerable.
I’ve never come across a director who had gone this
far before the team was put together.
“
Peter Pan is a designer’s dream,” Ford continued, “because
it’s many films in one: Edwardian London, pirate ship,
tropical jungle, an ancient castle with dragons and water – any
of these settings could be a film on its own. The whole thinking
behind the look was to start with reality, then push and exaggerate
it to get to the level of magic – to push the most extreme
things you’d find in nature. You’d never get the
combination of things in a real forest that we have in ours.
And you never know if it really happened or was a dream.”
Director of photography Donald McAlpine,
who shot the visually daring Moulin Rouge, elaborated on
how the bible enhanced
this process. “P. J. presents you with an image that
may be a glorious golden glen but through that you realize
what he really needs is a dark blue back-lit scene,” he
explained. “Sometimes it’s about color, sometimes
it’s design, but it’s always about the emotion
that the vision has stirred in him and he hopes will stir
you. It’s the old picture and a thousand words thing.
Words are so limiting in communicating visual concepts.
“Roger Ford designs sets that seem to be made to shoot,” McAlpine
added. “When you get the camera on the set, you find
he hasn’t just put elements there, he has visualized
how things may be shot. When you walk onto a really well-designed
and constructed set, you are inspired to do something. With
the pirate ship, there’s just no way that somebody
won’t do their absolute best to make this wonderful
piece of construction look great.”
Early on, the filmmakers had considered
building the Jolly Roger at sea. Instead, the deck of the
beautiful but neglected
old vessel that Hook captured from Spanish or Portuguese
sailors came to life on a soundstage, with early design concepts
hatched at ILM in Northern California. “Every time
they sent us something, we asked them to push it,” said
Ford. Naturally.
Set designer Jim Millet oversaw the
ship’s construction.
At 85-feet – 90 with the rigging at the ends included – it
was the maximum length the soundstage could accommodate.
It was built on a gimbal to simulate the movement it would
have had on water. Meanwhile at ILM, a staff of carpenters
and designers replicated its own 20-foot version of the ship,
adding the keel and the hull, for effects shots.
“ I do believe in fairies! I do, I do!”
In the hundred years since Peter
Pan was first performed on a London stage, technological
advances have occurred that
would have sounded like science fiction in 1904. Even 20
years ago, when Lucy Fisher first acquired the Peter Pan
rights, a live action film could not have been made that
depicted the story’s fantasy elements with the surreal
seamlessness that the filmmakers had in mind.
Donald McAlpine’s experience on the lavishly designed
Moulin Rouge, which included many effects shots and was also
filmed primarily on soundstages, aided the Peter Pan team
immensely. “There are massive logistical, financial
and creative implications when a truly human, dramatic story
has to be told with the technique of today’s computers
and computer graphics running all through it,” said
the cinematographer.
The filmmakers took full advantage
of technology to hit their marks – but not at the expense of the story’s
heart. After all, Peter Pan is not science fiction. Hogan
was also adamant that the signature fantasy elements of Peter
Pan be depicted as a child might imagine them.
“I wanted to work with people who are interested in
magic over technology and the people I found at ILM were
the right people for this,” said Hogan. “Scott
Farrar really gets it and loves the material.”
Farrar was a key member of the team
from pre-production through post. “It’s a difficult style of film
to do, because it really isn’t fantasy,” he said. “It’s
very much photo-real, but told in a storybook fashion. Everything
is based on our real world, except it’s larger, more
colorful and more dramatic. P. J. had it in mind to be very
painterly in the style of this story, so that was a huge
cue for us. I knew from the outset that he loves strong color.”
The film ultimately used approximately 1,200 effects shots
with the majority produced by ILM. Teams at Digital Domain
and Sony Pictures Imageworks also handled significant work.
R!ot Pictures, Pacific Titles and CIS Hollywood contributed
additional shots.
Striving to craft a world that reflected
the unlimited possibilities of a child’s imagination, Farrar and his ILM team took
pleasure in realizing how much their work would thrill the
children in their lives. “Kids will carry these visual
images with them for a long time, and there’s a huge
amount of satisfaction in that,” Farrar reflected. “I
love thinking about my kids – or anybody’s kids – looking
at this film.
“There was a period in my life when I felt like the
master of disaster – one blow-them-up picture after
another,” he continued. “Those are fun, but this
one has been completely new and different. It is so rich
in its imagery. You’re not restricted in your thinking
about design issues because you’re asking yourself, ‘What
would children think?’”
Practical know-how allowed the magic
to reach the screen. “No
matter how good the animation is, no matter how good the
model is, if you don’t light it right, it will never
work in the film,” Farrar allowed. “So we record
everything that is done on the set – how it’s
lit, how far away the lamps were, what the gels were, everything.
Otherwise our shots won’t cut in.
“P. J. has wonderful ideas and anytime there’s
a problem, he usually has a better idea as a solution,” Farrar
reflected. “He had not done a lot of blue screen work,
so we helped with that, but he steers the ship and it’s
always about the performance.”
Farrar’s expertise was critically important with Tinker
Bell’s scenes, but his early opinion about how to depict
this small twinkling character changed. “Initially,
I advocated a full CG character for Tinker Bell,” Farrar
recalled, “because we were talking about controls of
flight and that sort of thing. That scenario still required
an actress for building and capturing performance.
“But then P. J. found Ludivine Sagnier, who is fantastic.
She can do faces and portray emotions in a kind of silent
era sense, and her talent lends itself to physical comedy.
So now we have the wonderful personality of Ludivine on-screen,
primarily in close-up. If she has to fly around and do a
lot of very fancy stuff, that’s her CG character, but
wherever we can have Ludivine act, we do.”
In several mid-distance shots, Tinker
Bell is actually a hybrid that features Sagnier’s
head on a CG body.
“
Happy thoughts and fairy dust …”
The moment that Peter, Wendy, John and Michael form a human
comet and burst through the stratosphere on their flight
to Neverland is truly exhilarating. Making that flight credible
was a team effort requiring ingenuity from the stunt department,
magic from special effects and intense dedication from the
actors.
“Practice, practice, practice – that’s
the key to flying,” said Jeremy Sumpter, who logged
more time in the air than anyone in the cast. “Peter
Pan is a perfect flyer. His body is perfectly straight and
that’s hard to do. I had to lie flat in a harness.
I’d use the strength of my back to keep my feet from
coming down. I spent months training to get my back muscles
strong enough to hold myself straight for longer.”
Stunt doubles were rarely used for
Sumpter’s flights. “P.
J. didn’t like using them because I fly differently
than everyone else.”
Like Wendy, Rachel Hurd-Wood took
her flying very seriously, but could also enjoy it. “It can be really hard, but
if you’re laughing and having fun, then it’s
great.”
Second unit director-stunt coordinator
Conrad Palmisano and his team were responsible for getting
the actors into
the air and spent months preparing them. “We wanted
a weightless look to the flying,” he explained. “It’s
not like some of the other more recent cartoon-type characters
who can fly at will and that’s part of who their character
is. We said, ‘How does fairy dust make you fly? Is
there a learning curve?’ We spent time developing that
nuance of when they’re not flying so well – without
having it look like we’re flying them poorly.”
There’s much more to it than
happy thoughts and fairy dust.
“Trying to get four or five kids flying perfectly
in one shot is quite a challenge,” Palmisano continued. “If
they’re on blue screen, we have what we lovingly refer
to as the blueberries – guys dressed in blue suits
who run around and grab them here, turn them there, lift
just so until we get them all in perfect position.”
Training began at ground level. “We started the kids
on trampolines and other gymnastic equipment to get them
used to their bodies in the air,” he said. “We
took Jeremy to a circus in the States and had him fly off
the trapeze so he could get a sense of what it really felt
like to fly and fall. On the Russian Swing, he’d shove
off on the forward push and fly 25 or 30 feet through the
air, then land on an airbag. Then we’d put him in rigs
and asked him to recapture that feeling.”
Farrar’s ILM team also played a major role. “Very
few live-action pictures have really achieved good flying,” Farrar
acknowledged. “In an aerial shot, when you’re
photographing a plane flying against buildings in a close
background, there is a very tied-together relationship between
the camera’s pans and tilts on the foreground subject
and what is happening in the background. If that doesn’t
lock, it doesn’t look right. In the past, you had to
do the best you could with an aerial plate that was pre-photographed
and get the essence of the plate, the motion and maybe a
broad sweeping pan or sudden dive down. But it’s very
difficult without actually manufacturing the background.
Now, we try to get good choreography with the foreground
subject (our heroes), and tie the background in to what the
camera is doing.”
The backgrounds Farrar had to match in Peter Pan included
the streets and rooftops of London, clouds, planets, the
landscapes of Neverland and the Jolly Roger.
En garde!
The filmmakers had very definite
influences in mind when they set about establishing the
tone of the fighting in Peter
Pan. “Some of my favorite films are the Errol Flynn
movies of the 1930’s and ‘40’s and I thought
if I could equal or top those sword fights, I’d be
very pleased,” the director said. “They are marvelous
fun and the actors really know what they’re doing.
So when Captain Hook and Peter Pan were dueling, we wanted
them to recall the flash and fire of actors like Basil Rathbone
and Errol Flynn.”
To achieve this end, the crew was
fortified with a trio of today’s top action experts:
second unit director Conrad Palmisano, fencing master Gary
Worsfield and fight
coordinator Brad Allan.
The duelists in Peter Pan fenced,
using swords with points. “It’s
not the type of swordplay where they slice at each other
until somebody gets it,” Palmisano explained. “They
tell a story in the fight choreography with a series of attacks
and parries and retreats, all aimed at getting the opponent
to do something. Gary is a wonderful swordmaster who gets
people to work very fast and tight. It’s very, very
fast-handed and close contact, which is exciting. When Hook
has Pan cornered or in trouble, then Pan does something special
to get out of it, and that’s where Brad comes in. The
whole end battle is done in the air, amidst the sails of
the Jolly Roger. Some of this is like an aerial dog-fight
for brief moments. Pan’s advantage has always been
his quickness and ability to fly—but we’re taking
that away from him at the end, raising the stakes of the
final battle between him and Hook.”
Worsfield savored the opportunity
to bring the beauty of swordplay to the screen. “We’ve put in almost
every fencing action there is,” he said. “There’s
rapport or communication through swords, as well as insults,
humiliation, disgust, anger, deception – much more
than brute strength. There’s been no film that I know
of with sword-fighting and flying together. Fencing is very
linear but Pan can fly so the possibilities are mind-boggling.”
Brad Allan, who has worked with the
Jackie Chan stunt team for seven years, maximized the impact
of the flying fights. “The
Hong Kong style is not congruous with the look of Peter Pan,
but the filmmakers wanted to add some airplay to the Errol
Flynn style,” he explained.
“I think Jeremy wants to be the next Jackie Chan,” Allan
added. “Sometimes we have to hold him back – he’s
really good.”
For four months before production
began, Sumpter devoted four hours a day to fencing. “Peter controls his fights – he’s
skillful, he’s smooth,” said the young actor. “I
learned proper fencing with the mask. Once you do that, you
can work on your feet and knees and how your body position
and lunges are supposed to be.”
Jason Isaacs came to the project
experienced in swordplay, but did not have as much advantage
as he expected. “I’d
done sword-fighting in a few films. I was a little bit cocky
about it, until it became clear that I had to sword fight
with my left hand – because Hook has a hook on his
right hand.”
Ultimately, it only increased his
ferocity. “Jason
has a great deal of dexterity with his hook,” said
Palmisano. “He’s like the Mix Master of cutting
edges coming at you when he makes the moves. Trying to rehearse
him, about three moves into it, you just want to drop the
sword and run outside and wait for it to be safe again.”
Wendy and the Lost Boys were less
threatening, but all received serious training. “We’d bring the Lost Boys into
the rehearsal stage with 10 fully-grown adult stuntmen,” said
Palmisano, “and hand them all metal swords and say, ‘Here,
attack those guys!’ For months, we’d do practice
and play routines and each boy found something that he really
liked to do the best, and we’d work that into their
fight scenes.”
Actor Bruce Spence, who plays the
pirate Cookson, dueled with Wendy. “The crew here are great swordsmen and
now when I observe people like Errol Flynn, I’m thinking, ‘Tsk,
tsk, is that really all you can do, Errol?’ Of course,
fighting Wendy is a little different than fighting Errol
Flynn, but when Wendy is up against it and has to get her
courage, it’s a moment I really enjoy. She has to move
from being the little girl she was to being more grown-up
and take control.”
Accidents? A few. “Sometimes you get hit fencing and
it hurts,” Sumpter reported matter-of-factly.
“Yes, we’ve gone wrong a few times sword-fighting,
Jeremy and I,” Isaacs concurred.
But both actors were always ready
for more. “Jason
and Jeremy trained very hard to be the guys actually performing
the stunts and we’re very proud of them for that,” said
Palmisano.
“As a 30-year veteran of the stunt field,” he
reflected, “I think there’s a little Peter Pan
in all stuntmen. We don’t live in Neverland, but we
really don’t have to grow up. We still get to play
with boys’ toys, they’re just bigger than usual.”
Still, Sumpter’s fearlessness surprised even this
seasoned risk-taker. “I was always the first kid in
the neighborhood to jump off the bridge into the water, but
I always went down and looked in the water first. Jeremy
might just jump.
“Casting him was a sharp move. He is a pied piper
of kids. Even around the studio lot you’ll find them
all kind of running around after him.”
“
A pink dress to die for …”
Dressing the Peter Pan cast was another massive undertaking
with aesthetics, authenticity and practicality all demanding
their due. Like the sets, the clothes had to underscore the
contrast between the chilly constriction of Edwardian London
and the fantastically liberating atmosphere of Neverland.
Costume designer Janet Patterson’s production headquarters
was packed with the appropriate turn-of-the-century velvet,
silk and satin gowns, elegantly cobbled shoes and cozy children’s
pajamas. She also maintained a large supply of wetsuits (the
pirates had to wear them under their tattered costumes).
And there were dozens of bonnets – for Nana.
There were also hundreds of nightgowns
for Wendy. “That’s
what she wears throughout most of the film,” Patterson
pointed out. “Some of them are specifically for flying
and there’s a beautiful big silky one for dancing.”
Patterson cast her net wide to gather
what she needed for Peter Pan – London and Paris
for fabrics and trims, Italy for shoes and hats, embroidery
from Pakistan. All the
socks were knitted in England.
The ladies in the cast were particularly
thrilled. “Janet
Patterson is a design genius,” said Lynn Redgrave. “The
costumes are beautiful to wear. Everything is based on history
and research. We are wearing the correct corsets, real antique
jewelry, beautiful things of the period, which imbue it with
a reality. It does a lot of the acting for you.”
Olivia Williams agreed. “Little girls of any age or
time period love a pink dress and I am no exception,” admitted
the actress. “I have a pink dress to die for in the
ballroom scene and that was my happiest moment in the film.”
That pink dress made Patterson happy,
too. “Mrs. Darling
is a fantasy figure for a little girl – the prettiest
mother in the world,” said the designer, who has been
Oscar®-nominated for three different period films. “All
of her clothes reflect her warmth.”
Hook’s wardrobe was the most elaborate of all. “Hook’s
a splashy boy,” Patterson acknowledged. In addition
to dressing him as the dandy he is, Patterson wove subtext
into his garments. The coat and vest he wears when Wendy
visits his cabin, for example, are the same velvet as Mr.
Darling’s dressing gown.
A Century Ago
J. M. Barrie was born in the tiny
Scottish town of Kirriemuir in 1860 and moved to London
as a young man to make his mark
as a writer. His earliest stories were colorful newspaper
pieces about a fictional version of Kirriemuir. He also contributed
to the National Observer, along with such contemporaries
as Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells and W. B. Yeats.
Later, with several successful plays and novels to his credit,
he lived across the road from the Kensington Gardens, where
he took daily walks with his St. Bernard. It was during these
rambles that he met the Llewelyn Davies children, the five
brothers who inspired him to create Peter Pan. When the children’s
parents died, Barrie adopted all five boys.
Peter Pan first appeared in J. M.
Barrie’s 1902 novel,
The Little White Bird, as the hero of a story the book’s
narrator tells a child. Barrie was already a popular novelist
and playwright in London when his Peter Pan play debuted
on December 27, 1904 at the Duke of York’s Theatre.
The premiere was not a children’s matinee, but a glittering
West End opening night for an audience of sophisticated Londoners
who had come to see the latest work by one of the top writers
of the day. The patrons had no idea of what to expect from
Peter Pan, nor did anyone feel prescient enough to predict
the fate of the thematically daring and technically demanding
production. But the producer’s faith in Barrie, and
Barrie’s faithfulness to his own unique vision, made
Peter Pan an immediate classic.
Barrie refined the play’s text for many years after
it debuted and expanded the story for his Peter Pan novel,
which was published as Peter and Wendy in 1911. The play
was not published until 1928, after a full 24 years of stage
productions – and revisions. Thanks to writer Andrew
Birkin, a comprehensive volume of Barrie’s notes and
drafts as he conceptualized, wrote and revised Peter Pan
over this long period was collected in one massive document,
affectionately known among the Peter Pan filmmakers as ‘the
tome.’ ‘The tome’ was an invaluable aid
in making this film.
An Ongoing Gift
Peter Pan is cherished around the
world for its promise of an awfully big adventure, but
in Britain there is something
more. Several years before his death in 1937, Sir James Barrie
donated all rights from Peter Pan to London’s Great
Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). The charismatic boy who would
not grow up has been helping to save the lives of very sick
children through this bequest ever since.
Built by Dr. Charles West in 1852
with just 10 beds, Great Ormond Street Hospital was London’s
first hospital specifically designated for children. Charles
Dickens lived
nearby and read a chapter from A Christmas Carol on the front
steps to help raise funds for expansion. The hospital was
able to buy the house next door, doubling its size to 20
beds, and it has grown from there to 350 beds.
A National Health Service hospital,
GOSH is funded by the government for day-to-day operations,
but not for its many
critical care specialty areas. “We get the sickest
children, if their own doctor and district hospital can’t
help them; it’s a place of last resort,” explained
Kit Palmer, who looks after Peter Pan rights issues for GOSH. “We
have 22 different specialties and offer the widest range
of pediatric specialties under one roof in the U. K. Most
patients see at least two specialists, some as many as five.
“The message of the play is eternal,” Palmer
continued. “Who hasn’t worried about growing
up and what the world has in store for us? This play has
something to say to any nation, any individual.
“We at the hospital had always hoped to have the classic
Peter Pan on film, based on Barrie’s original work.
The timing is so wonderful, so now I hope we’ll have
another hundred years of sharing this film.”
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