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The Cast | The Filmmakers | The Puppeteers | About The Production | Credits

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Designing And Lighting Muppets | MTI Costume Design
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Principal photography began on MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND on April 3, l995. For fourteen weeks director Brian Henson, at the helm of his handpicked crew, worked on thirteen major sets built at Shepperton Studios in England.

For his feature, and the Muppets' fifth cinematic outing, following the incredibly successful, THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL, Henson had decided on another classic story. "CHRISTMAS CAROL was a genre classic tale," he explains, "but we wanted this one to be a lot funnier, more absurd, and with a lot more action. TREASURE ISLAND is where we ended up, but it's not a very faithful adaptation! We really twisted the story in order to make it funnier. There is a lot of action and intrigue on the high seas, and it works tremendously well."

Producer Martin Baker adds: "One of the exciting opportunities to stretch our capabilities was to take a story that is almost all exterior and to film it totally on stages! It is a much bigger production than CHRISTMAS CAROL."

MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND was always planned as a musical and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were Brian Henson's first choice to write the songs. "We didn't know how they would work in terms of the Muppets, but after a couple of meetings it started to click and it has just been a dream," says Martin Baker. "They have written some wonderful songs, and they also brought in Hans Zimmer to write the score."

None of the human actors had worked with Muppets before and their first day was a nervous time. "When actors work with the Muppets, it's important that they can react to and respond to the Muppets the same way they would another actor," Brian Henson explains. "That is the only criteria. The truth is that the acting styles of Michael Caine in CHRISTMAS CAROL and Tim Curry in this are almost totally opposite. Tim acts from his gut and is very spontaneous, loose and funny. Michael is very precise, very perfect, and always gets it right on the first take. Tim is much looser and much more flamboyant. All the actors on this responded to the Muppet characters very quickly."

The character that is put into each Muppet comes with experience and practice, Henson explains. "The puppeteers are always playing with them so they can make sure that they really know how a character thinks and how it responds. They have to make sure there is a spontaneity to the performance and that it's funny. There is always a fun atmosphere on set. In fact, there always has been!"

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Shooting began on Bristol Docks, one of the vast, impressive sets designed by Val Strazovec. It covered a complete stage, wall to wall, with the port dominated by the Hispaniola, a galleon of marathon proportions. "I originally thought that the boat and the port should be on separate stages, " explains Strazovec, "but I realized that it would be nicer to have the ship right there on the port. This meant, with only a relatively small area to work with, that I had to force the perspective tremendously. It became very technical working out how much I could force the perspective without making it look obvious!"

People, muppets, puppeteers, live animals and crew vied for space on the docks that had 80,000 gallons of water on one side and houses diminishing in size on the other. Even two tiny black ponies managed to gallop along the twenty-foot quay, creating a spectacular entrance for Kermit the Frog.

The boat, built of fibreglass and wood and weighing over 18 tons was set on a computer-driven gimble, the first of its kind, which rocked or pitched to order. Special effects supervisor Nick Allder explains, "The whole of the boat was pivoted on one center point with huge hydraulic cylinders which were capable of pushing 50 tons either side. We could select any basic speed which would be repeated until changed. Unfortunately for the cast and crew, the movement was too realistic. Quite a few got seasick when we were shooting in the galley and then found that the seasick pills sent them to sleep!"

The boat itself, with only a third of the huge masts able to fit under the lighting gantry, dominated the port. "Once I had decided on the type of sail ship I wanted, the amount of sails and the type of rigging, I designed the boat, which was bent, like a banana. This gave every point of view a very surreal look. With people and muppets on the deck I had to keep away from straight or vertical lines. All the details, however, like the rigging, the texture of the wood, the props, were very realistic," Val Strasovec explains.

The interior boat sets were built on separate stages. The galley, the brig and the Captain's cabin were all placed on the rocking gimble which gave a true feeling of being at sea!

Strazovec also designed a smaller model of the boat. Built on a one to five scale with full masts, rigging and miniature Muppets, it was used by Tom Smith's visual effects team for shots on the high seas. "Our main involvement in the film was that the movie is about a sea journey to an island and as we have no sea, we had to put it in!" he explains. "Everything was shot here on stages, but through visual effects we were able to bring a giant ship sailing through the ocean, put Muppets on it and make it look as though there is salt in the air!"

His team started off by filming in the Virgin Islands - the very spot where Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the story. They filmed from a giant sail boat about the size of the Hispaniola. "We shot the sea from every angle with occasional islands passing and then we did something that has never been done, as far as I know, in visual effects. We filmed a modern boat going through the manoeuvres that we wanted the Hispaniola to do. We then replaced the modern boat, digitally, with our model which had been shot against a blue screen. To the eye it looks exactly like the Hispaniola, riding the waves, crashing down and turning through the ocean."

The Benbow Inn, where the treasure map is finally found, was another large set. Built as an exterior and interior, the roofs were given a very specific look. "Again, I was twisting the forms of reality. The exterior shape with exaggerated roofs was designed to look like sails in the wind. When you see it at the beginning of the film it probably won't mean anything but it may come back to you when you see the ship. There are also a lot of things in the interior of the Inn which are details from the ship," says Val Strazovec.

The clifftop set was a large fibreglass hill with a tree set at the highest point where Long John Silver suspends first Kermit and then Miss Piggy. Insisting on doing their own stunts, they hung upside down for hours on end, fastened only by ropes around their ankles. Allowing the audience to see more of those famous Piggy legs than ever before, the scene culminates in their touching duet, LOVE LED US HERE.

Shooting on the boat itself was long and hard. The rocking movement meant that nothing could be attached to the side of the boat that was not meant to rock. When shooting in the direction of the bow, a water spray, set up by Special Effects gave the impression that the boat was dipping into waves.

The floor of the boat was taken out most of the time to allow the crew to work and the puppeteers to operate. For the two big musical numbers, SAILING FOR ADVENTURE and CABIN FEVER, 25 extra puppeteers had to be taken on to help operate over forty Muppets singing their hearts out to Mann and Weil!

The whole 40-foot-long beach was raised to allow for the puppeteers, and hundreds of bags of sand covered a fiberglass/wooden frame. The leaves of the palm trees were real, but the trunks were bits of coconut palms with real shrubs in between. The rocks around the island were on pram wheels so that they could be moved around easily through the water!

[filmakers]

For the visual effects shots of the island, H stage was flooded with over half a million gallons of water. On his last day of filming, Tim Curry was asked to row the jolly boat to the center of the three-foot-deep water and pull out the plugs! Special effects men and divers stood by as the boat, filled to the brim with treasure, began to sink. As the water lapped around his waist, he turned from the camera and swam as though his life depended on it!

On Friday, July 7, an exhausted cast and crew shot the final scenes on the beach, which still had clear, inviting water lapping on its shores!

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Designing And Lighting Muppets | MTI Costume Design
Fencing And Stunts | The Music


The Cast | The Filmmakers | The Puppeteers | About The Production | Credits

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