Ra Vincent: Last News

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.

Caroline 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.