This directing duo brings magic to the high seas

Note: I was a guest of Walt Disney Pictures for this junket. All opinions are strictly my own.

Disney’s “PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES”..L to R: Director Espen Sandberg and Director Joachim Rønning..©Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve always wondered how two directors can both get their vision across when working on a film, so I was excited to be interviewing Directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, the dynamic duo behind the newest of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Photo courtesy of: Louis Bishop of Momstart.com

JR: You know we don’t really know any other way of doing this then being together. For us, it’s a very natural process. And I think it’s a collaborative one. We include like the actors and the crew and everyone as part of the discussion basically. And we try to create safe work environment as you could say, where everybody can be a part of the discussion. That’s important to us. I think that’s like probably one of the strong advantages that we have as a directing team.

ES: Joachim and I started making movies together when we were ten. Movies that inspired us back then where the Spielberg, Lucas and Zemeckis films. And this franchise just reminds us of that. It has that unique blend of spectacle, humor and scary parts and also a lot of heart. So, that meant a lot to us.

Photo courtesy of: Disney Studios

On working with Johnny Depp

JR: It’s amazing. He’s so funny. What you see with Jack Sparrow is all Johnny. He’s a genius. I mean for us he’s up there with Chaplin because his timing is just perfect and he has such a weird imagination. He comes up with the craziest ideas. And for us, the highlight was always going into his trailer in the morning and going through the scenes, and the lines a,nd trying to come up with even more cool stuff to do to make it even more funny.

Of course when we started shooting he would do something completely different and everyone was sort of thrown off, but that also makes it come alive and funny.

Besides entertaining, what are you hoping people walk away with from the film?

ES: I think that for us, it’s something that was very important for us that we touched upon a little bit of the emotional core of the story and the kind of family theme that the film has. You know a treasure is not always you know a chest of gold. It could be other things

JR: Even for a pirate.

ES:  Even for a pirate. And I think that was something we really fought hard to do because I was really inspired by the first movie in the series, it had a big heart. Then of course you have the adventure, and you have the scares, and you have the comedy. But, I hope that, the audience will moved by it as well.