Director: Joe Wright
Production Designer: Aline Bonetto
Studio: Warner Bros.
Starring: Levi Miller, Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund & Rooney Mara
Locations: Vietnam
Location Brief: Jungle, limestone karsts, rivers, rice fields, waterfalls and a gigantic cave entrance

Scouting Pan Filming Locations in Vietnam

I got a call to scout Pan filming locations in Vietnam for Warner Bros. and director Joe Wright.

The brief was essentially to find Neverland.

They were looking for extraordinary natural landscapes: jungle, rice fields, rivers, the limestone karsts of Ha Long Bay, waterfalls and a gigantic cave entrance. Among the visual references was Son Doong Cave, one of the largest caves in the world.

Finding a Cave for Neverland

When I started researching Son Doong, I discovered that it had only officially been surveyed a few years earlier by British caver Howard Limbert.

I contacted the expedition company operating in the cave system and spoke with one of their guides.

It quickly became clear that Son Doong itself was simply too complicated for filming.

Another nearby cave, Hang En, looked far more achievable while still offering the extraordinary scale and atmosphere we needed.

So that became the mission.

After an overnight train to Dong Hoi and a drive deeper into the countryside, we reached the trek starting point.

From there it was a proper jungle trek.

Three hours through dense Vietnamese wilderness carrying camera equipment and supplies before finally reaching Hang En.

And the cave itself was enormous.

You could literally fit a jumbo jet inside it.

We camped overnight inside the cave while I photographed and filmed references for production. It remains one of the most extraordinary locations I have ever scouted.

Ha Long Bay, Cat Ba and Tam Coc

From northern Vietnam we travelled south towards Ha Long Bay.

It is one of those rare landscapes that somehow exceeds the photographs. Travelling by boat through the limestone islands genuinely felt dreamlike, and the scale and atmosphere were exactly what the Pan location brief needed.

From there we travelled to Cat Ba Island, trekking through jungle and climbing to viewpoints across the bay.

I had found one particular viewpoint from a tourist photograph online. The photographer’s sandals were visible at the bottom of the picture.

My thinking was simple:

If somebody got up there wearing sandals, surely we can.

Thankfully, they had.

We then headed to Tam Coc in Ninh Bình.

Limestone mountains rising out of flooded rice fields like something from another planet.

Vietnam was delivering Neverland everywhere we looked.

The Waterfall That Never Was

One part of the scout took me north to Ban Gioc Waterfall on the Chinese border.

What started as a fairly straightforward waterfall scout eventually involved two countries, visas, embassies, border crossings and a trip into China — only for production to tell me the waterfall scene had been cut from the script.

I’ve written the full story separately in The Waterfall That Never Was – Pan.

Sometimes a location scout deserves its own story.

Returning with Joe Wright

A few weeks later I returned to Vietnam with producers, creatives and eventually Joe Wright for the full production recce.

We retraced much of the original scout.

Ha Long Bay.

Tam Coc.

Cat Ba.

Then back to Hang En.

This time we didn’t have enough time to stay overnight in the cave because everyone needed to get back to London quickly, so we attempted something that was fairly unusual there at the time: trekking into Hang En and back out again in a single day.

I had packed head torches because once darkness falls in proper jungle, everything changes.

I kept trying to move the recce along, but inevitably we ended up completing the final stretch in complete darkness.

It was slightly uncomfortable to say the least.

But we made it.

Back at the hotel in Dong Hoi, I arranged a huge seafood platter for everyone and the exhaustion quickly turned into euphoria. Everyone was buzzing from what we’d just experienced.

Building Neverland from Real Landscapes

In the end, Vietnam was used primarily for VFX plate photography rather than principal cast filming.

We filmed at many of the locations we had scouted, including the cave, Cat Ba coastline, Ha Long Bay and Tam Coc.

Those real landscapes were then woven into the visual world of Neverland.

Pan was a brilliant example of where location scouting can sometimes take you.

You start with a collection of concept images and a brief asking for a fantasy world.

Then you travel thousands of miles, trek through jungle, sleep in a cave and climb mountains because you spotted somebody wearing sandals in a photograph.

And somewhere along the way, you find Neverland.

Here are some of my original location scout photographs from Vietnam for Pan.