An elaborate visit to the set of the giant fantasy production underway at the Paramount Lot took place this week for Internet Press and About.Com has a three-part extensive report on the action. Amongst the stuff on display were some pretty elaborate sets:

"Set 1 was a desert area with train tracks and power lines. There was a field of burnt corn on one side and empty, plowed dirt on the other. Train tracks ran through the middle with a beat up old Imperial parked over the tracks. This car belonged to the villain, Count Olaf, and it was full of mirrors on the inside so he could always look at himself. He’s an actor. The Imperial’s license plate was NR4-7531, for the nit picky fans.

Set 2 was Briney Beach, the beginning of movie where the kids get the bad news about their parents’s death. One side was the beach, but that was at most ¼ of this space. Half the space was water, and the other ¼ on the other end was a peer with a one or two story lighthouse. On the beach side, several wooden boats were washed up on shore. A painted cloth background showed mountains and sky. Again, the space was mostly water and they were actively shooting on set. The water was shallow enough for people to walk in waist to chest deep, about four feet. During one shot, they created splashing in the water, a circle of what looked like bullet shots but it’s not. When it stopped, the hoses swirl slowly, like the Bellagio fountain, until they stop and go back under water"

For more on the sets, click here.

Director Brad Siberling talked a bit about why he decided to combine the first three books in the series into one movie instead of separating them - "I think the first book, as often is the case in series, it’s a great introduction, but it was not the most proactive piece of storytelling for the kids. They’re thrown into this situation with Count Olaf. He tries to perpetrate this crime upon them which is sort of putting on the play in which Violet is to be married to him. But I wasn’t overwhelmed with their getting a chance to really become the masters of their destiny. I thought that’s fine for an act of a movie, but the entire movie [needed more]... So we literally consolidated them in such a way that the end of the first book of the series is really the end of the movie, so the kids end up leaving Olaf under story circumstances and end up unfortunately going back to him and he tries to put on this play. It made good storytelling sense"

For more about that and Carrey's improv additions to the story, click here.

Finally, there's a segment on the visual effects elements which comprise about 400 something shots in the film, most of which revolve around the baby character Sunny who is CG about 15-20% of the time - "A fun shot that Sunny gets to do is Sunny, while they’re all eating dinner around the table, we see the father in a flashback passing things around and we see Sunny hanging from the table like a dog would be doing, just holding on by her teeth. Which is kind of fun"

Details on that can be found here.

Thanks to 'FT'