How ‘Our Flag Means Death’ Designers Mixed History With Broad Theatricality

variety.com:

Karen M. Peterson Working on “Our Flag Means Death,” a half-hour comedy now streaming on HBO Max, production designer Ra Vincent was excited for the challenge of crafting “a theatrical play … on the high sea.”A fictionalized account of reallife 18th-century “gentleman pirate” Stede Bonnet (played by Rhys Darby) and his relationship with the infamous Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), the series needed to use its sets in ways that typical movie and television productions do not.“It’s less of a major motion picture and more of a theater sports performance,” Vincent explains.

At the outset, Vincent says the team decided, “Let’s build an environment where the cast can explore exactly who the character would be without the limitations of having a seriously preplanned set.” To fashion that kind of open space, the art department needed to make room for 100 crew members and their equipment, while also allowing for the actors and their needs in the moment. “That meant building 360-degree environments for them to work in, and then making them shootable,” Vincent says. “So we made these theatrical versions of stage backdrops for these characters to work in.

They were really there to support the development of these characters.” In 1717, Bonnet commissioned a Spanish galleon outfitted as a warship and christened the Revenge.