Thursday, October 25, 2012 – QNews Costa Rica | Source: The Location Guide
Copenhagen-based Bacon has filmed in Costa Rica and found room for a George Clooney cameo, in a new spot for DNB Bank. The Treasure starts with a pirate chase and ends with a flash-forward to Clooney and his new wife finding the riches on a beach holiday.
Bacon considered locations all over the world before settling on Costa Rica for the pirate adventure that’s the focal point of the spot. The country’s Caribbean feel and the services of Sergio Miranda from Costa Rica Production Service convinced them it was the right move.
Mari Grundnes Paus was Production Manager on the shoot: “The main part of the commercial was shot in Costa Rica in a small town called Puerto Viejo on the east coast … We chose the location mainly based on the incredible nature that had a great combination of the beach and the jungle so close to it … the jungle looked so good.”
The three-day Costa Rica leg was affected by rainy conditions and the challenge of working with an uninterested 80kg snake that briefly appears in the final cut. Arming the pirates also caused a few headaches when the period weapons were being transported across Central America. A scene where the pirates cross a rickety rope bridge deep in the jungle involved a real bridge that was built on extensively by the team’s set designer. The chasm below it was digitally deepened in the edit suite.
Sergio Miranda comments: “They needed a pristine environment with a wild and exotic rainforest. Costa Rica’s Atlantic coast around Puerto Viejo is picturesque but not too developed and is only three-and-a-half hours from the capital, San José.”
Grundnes Paus adds: “We liked the Caribbean feel and look [of Costa Rica] and it also was undamaged and looked like it could have been the same for a couple of hundred years – it was believable that pirates would be somewhere around it.”
George Clooney’s cameo was filmed at Cabo on the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula in western Mexico. It was the most convenient spot for the film star as he has a house in the area. Diana Young produced for Bajala Production Services: “The permission to use the beach obviously involved the owners [of a nearby villa], in order to get access to this ‘private’ beach. In fact the beaches here are public up to the 20-metre mark of the high-tide zone.”
The heat was one of the biggest issues here, according to Grundnes, especially for the actress playing Clooney’s ‘accidental’ wife. She arrived on the beach direct from Denmark and faced the full force of the Mexican sun for her day on the sand. The Mexico and Costa Rica beaches were matched up later in post-production.
