Kon-Tiki tells the true story of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl’s trip across the Pacific Ocean on a raft. Basically, it’s six dudes on a raft in the ocean. Go! Heyerdahl made a documentary during his voyage, but filmmakers Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg brought his adventure into full color with their film, and wouldn’t you know it, they’re now directing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. We spoke with Sandberg and Ronning by phone from London on the occasion of the Blu-ray release of Kon-Tiki, which includes the original Norwegian version, and an English version where the actors speak English, not dubbed over.
CraveOnline: Did Kon-Tiki get you the Pirates of the Caribbean job?
Joachim Ronning: I think that our body of work is always very, very important, and of course Kon-Tiki being our latest film and it got nominated for the Oscar and the Golden Globes and that it was shot on water and all that, so yeah. I think the answer to that will probably be yes.
Hollywood history is littered with stories of water movies that did not go well, like Waterworld or Cutthroat Island. Did you look at any of those films and take any lessons on what to avoid?
Espen Sandberg: We actually watched Jaws because we really love that movie. Of course it took a long time to do that and we tried to learn from it. When we shot Kon-Tiki it went really, really well. We were lucky with the weather and our sharks were digital, so that was a lesson we learned.
So even the shark that lands on the raft was not animatronic?
Espen Sandberg: It’s made in Scandinavia. It’s a Scandinavian shark made in a computer in Scandinavia.
Joachim Ronning: That said, I think that it was just as daunting going into that and knowing that we had to create our sharks in post-production because animals are hard to make. I think it’s only in the last very few years that we’ve been able to make animals look real on film. We believe we have the best sharks in movie history.
Well, yeah. I had to ask because I couldn’t tell.
Espen Sandberg: That’s a great compliment. Thank you.
How big a crew did you have outside the raft, filming?
Joachim Ronning: We had a very small crew because we couldn’t afford any more people. I think we were maybe 25 people in our crew, so basically we were shooting for four weeks out in the open sea in the Mediterranean, outside of Malta for the raft sequences. I think that we were about 25 crew. We had about four or five boats besides the raft. We really wanted to be on the raft with the camera all the time. We shot everything with two cameras, so we were, at any time on the raft, we were at least 15 people so it got cozy.
Did you recreate any shots directly from the documentary?
Joachim Ronning: The documentary was of course a huge influence for us and a great source of documentation. I think we used it very much for the characters and to see how they looked basically. I do think that we tried to create a new Kon-Tiki chapter in a way. Every time they encountered a storm or action in any sense, they had to put the camera away. Well, those are the scenes that we really were working hard to get amazing. For instance, the scene with the sharks and then also with the whale shark under the raft, that we knew people had a strong relationship to after reading the book. So there were a couple very important scenes that were important for us to get right.
Even a camera can’t mimic the feeling of actually being on the open scene. How did you construct it so that we would feel where they were in the journey?
Joachim Ronning: We tried to have a lot of wide, epic shots basically, seeing the tiny raft on the huge ocean. That was important for us. An example to that is the shot where we pull out into space and really see the whole Pacific, just to see how big it is. That was important for us. It was a hard film to edit actually because an hour of the movie takes place on a very contained raft, so it was difficult to feel the pace of the editing without seeing the whole film, and to see the whole film takes a day out of your editing time basically. That was kind of a challenge to keep the pace up. I’m not sure which version you’ve seen. Have you seen the English speaking version or the Norwegian speaking version?
I actually saw the Norwegian version.
Joachim Ronning: Oh, fantastic. Both of them are on the DVD or Blu-ray.
That was actually my next question. Do you prefer people to watch the Norwegian or English version?
Joachim Ronning: We like them both. The English version is shorter but when we edited the English version, we did it after we were finished with the Norwegian version and after we’ve seen it many times and after it had been Oscar nominated and all that. So we were very relaxed in a way when we took out some scenes from the English version and made it smoother and in some ways, it flows better even, the English version. There will always be darlings that are lost so it’s going to be interesting to see what people think.
The English version was actually filmed with the actors speaking English. Is that like making two movies, since the takes can’t be identical?
Espen Sandberg: You’d be surprised. We shot them at the same time and the actors in many ways have to repeat their performances, and they are surprisingly alike. Actors do that on stage as well, repeat their performance, and they were really, really motivated to do so.
