VDT Blog – “Diving Right In”

When it was proposed (or mandated) that Skandar and co-stars Will Poulter and
Georgie Henley don a wet suit to earn their scuba PADI (Professional Association of
Diving Instructors) certificate before filming commenced on “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” the teenage trio dove right in, you might say, to yet another adventure and challenge.

The third book in C.S. Lewis’ series begins when the two youngest Pevensies, along with their irritating cousin Eustace, are swallowed into a bedroom wall painting, which depicts a ship sailing on the high seas.

To create the effect of the bedroom flooding with water, the production’s mechanical SFX crew, under the direction of veteran movie magician Brian Cox, and working with Barry Robison’s and Ian Gracie’s crack art department and construction crew, duplicated the sound stage bedroom set on an elevated platform which was then dunked into the smaller of Warner Roadshow’s two exterior studio water tanks. The three actors were then instructed to swim out of the bedroom door and windows to the surface.

Weeks before their scenes were filmed, Keynes, Poulter and Henley underwent a three-day scuba diving course under the supervision of Aussie diving instructor Andrew Allen. The actors trained in a local swimming pool and at sea.

You can say they all took to the lessons like fish to water.

After a relatively short rehearsal period in the studio tanks, filming began on the bedroom water scenes in late July, the first week of production. A short time later, the three young actors dove into a second studio tank, to enact the moments where they surface in the ocean and are saved by Caspian and his crew aboard the Dawn Treader.

You can read the full blog on the official Facebook page here.

Thanks to everybody who sent this spy report in!