How ‘Our Flag Means Death’ Pulled Off Season 2’s Climactic Pirate Ship Scene: Cannonballs, Battleship Miniatures and More (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comCaroline Brew editor SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 7 of “Our Flag Means Death,” now streaming on Max.
For the second season of “Our Flag Means Death,” Max’s comedy series starring Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby, the producers’ goal was to raise both the emotional stakes and the scale of its world building — which is exemplified in the final scene of Season 2’s penultimate episode, “Man on Fire.” Interrupting an intense duel between Stede Bonnet (Darby) and Pirate Queen Zheng Yi Sao (Ruibo Qian), all the ships in the bay of the Republic of Pirates explode at the same time when Prince Ricky Barnes (Erroll Shand) betrays a pact with Zheng.
To pull the siege off, director of photography Mike Berlucchi, visual effects supervisor David Van Dyke and production designer Ra Vincent teamed up to devise a cable lighting system to mimic flaming cannonballs and timed the lights to practical special effects explosions on set.
Along with the episode’s director Fernando Frias, they storyboarded every shot for the sequence. Berlucchi said that was unusual for the show, but necessary for that scene: “We had it planned out to a tee, because there were a lot of things that were against us — explosions that we can’t repeat, and all these cannon balls raining down.
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