10 Things You Didn’t Know About Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Everyone who is a fan of film like I am has a list of movies that they deem “underrated” or “underappreciated”. On my list would be movies like Streets of Fire, Backdraft, and Cliffhanger. The same list would also include movies that are far more technically impressive and one that I consider to be a near-perfect film in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. I’ve compiled a list of things that I recently learned about the film and I hope it might inspire you to give it a watch or maybe even a re-watch. It truly is a wonderful film. This is 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Master and Commander.

1) A Gift: When Peter Weir was approached about the project by Tom Rothman he was handed a sword. Tom said he was going to “give him a gift”. He handed him the sword and then they both understood that it was in reference to the Capt. Jack Aubrey series. Weir had already turned down the story as he didn’t think it would make that great of a film. He said he would prefer to make a film based on one of the adventures and not an origin story. Rothman asked him to think on that some more and Weir conceded.

2) Research or destiny: Weir left the meeting and spent some time at some boat events and found the only re-creation of a frigate in the world. It was also for sale. He pitched to the studio that they buy the boat and do the film based on the 10th book in the series. They accepted both ideas so Weir, naturally, felt that it was meant to be.

3) Ropes: The working rigging on the ship consisted of about 27 miles of rope.

4) The Ships: They had two ships. One could go out to sea for shots and was kept within 45 minutes and able to sail at the drop of a hat. The other was an exact replica that would be used in a contained environment like a tank. It was arranged on a massive gimble and could be maneuvered to show the movement of the sea. Sets of the areas of the ship were built on a soundstage. Both ships were completed between Feb-May in order to shoot in June of that year.

5) Getting ready: The cast had a two week boot camp to learn to work on the ship. Setting sails, basic swordsmanship, and cannon work were just a few of the tasks they learned. At Crowe’s request, the men were all given three shirts and name badges. They had to sew their badges on their shirts themselves and wore different colored shirts to depict their rank.

6) The real thing: Some of the Galapagos Island scenes were taken in Baja, California, but they filmed as much as possible in the real location. Bettany and the rest of the cast were dumbfounded by its beauty and exotic topography.

7) Kaboom: The two boat battle sequence took 4 weeks to film. They did much of the preparation for the battle without the second boat there and it was very difficult to get the stunts down in such a short time without injuring anyone.

8) We jammin’: Russell and Paul Bettany spent most of their downtime learning to play violin and cello, respectively. During the scenes, they had playback music which they mimicked but each of their teachers were extremely impressed by how much they learned in a short amount of time.

9) A visionary: Peter Weir used a technique that he was known to use in other films where he shoots many of the scenes with multiple cameras. Some director’s use this technique in order to spend less time shooting but Weir found that many of their shots were using handheld cameras and he spent a lot of time reading books on previous films shot at sea, and he felt like he learned a lot from their mistakes.

10) Always be filming: They used sets for each of the parts of the ship which weren’t at open air and that allowed them to keep filming no matter what was going on. If an actor was sick or injured, they could just film something in a different area of the ship on a different set.