‘Our Flag Means Death’ explores the world of pirates with Blackmagic

HBO Max’s hit comedy Our Flag Means Death has prepared for its arrival into a virtual environment with a wide selection of Blackmagic-Design solutions.

Our Flag Means Death tells the story of Sted Bonnet, a gentleman who decides to trade his affluent life for that of a pirate ship captain. In a struggle to gain the respect of the possibly mutinous crew, Bonnet’s fate changes after a catastrophic encounter with the infamous Captain Blackbeard. The fiction created by David Jenkins stars Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi, also responsible for executive producing alongside Jenkins and Garrett Basch.

One of the first challenges in creating this pirate adventure was to visualise the sprawling set of the entire story on the high seas. Sam Nicholson (ASC), virtual production designer, with the support of his team at Stargate Studios, was responsible for employing this type of production to make principal photography manageable and cost-effective. Nicholson’s solution was to capture UHD shots of the sea, stitch the various base images together and then project them onto a huge 9 x 48 metre LED audiovisual surface, which surrounded the pirate ship assembled on set: “We tend to take impossible tasks and make them possible. How to shoot stable 48K 360 degree plates from a boat off of Puerto Rico is complex problem solving to the extreme,” Nicholson explains.

The task presented challenges on several levels: how to capture footage, manage the vast amount of data, process it smoothly and then deliver the content to the set. Nicholson focused on an ecosystem for Our Flag Means Death based on Blackmagic Design products to achieve a simpler approach. He chose the Blackmagic RAW format to begin with because of the flexibility it offers, and planned to use it throughout the processing of the material in DaVinci Resolve Studio, the editing, colour grading, visual effects and audio post-production software, in order to keep the workflow as efficient as possible.

60K resolution

Nicholson’s team began their tests for Our Flag Means Death by shooting HDR base footage with a 360-degree stabilised stand and eight Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro units positioned in 45-degree increments: “To cover 360 degrees, a lot of processing is involved in creating a seamless image between the cameras,” recalls Nicholson. The cameras were controlled from an ATEM Mini Extreme mixer, which started recording on all units simultaneously with the same timecode.

As the process evolved during the testing stage, the final shoot of the base footage in Puerto Rico provided a more accurate perspective, using a 270-degree camera array with five Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K units mounted to a stabilised head, giving greater control and even better resolution. The Stargate Studios team responsible for this content synchronised all five cameras to achieve a total resolution of 60K: “The Blackmagic 12K cameras gave us very high overall resolution with very efficient data output. Each take was five minutes, times five cameras at 12K resolution. So, the daily data transfer of camera originals from high speed SSDs to mass storage on location was a great solution.”

By shooting in Blackmagic RAW, the Our Flag Means Death team was able to play back the content in real time in DaVinci Resolve Studio at different resolutions, says Nicholson: “Blackmagic RAW filled a critical niche in our high resolution imaging. With any imaging system it’s critical to pick the right workflow, the right gear and the right approach to data management. Recording in camera is easy. But then you have to offload it, transfer it, transcode it, distribute it, color time and process it to make it usable on set. Blackmagic RAW was very efficient in addition to looking great.”

The challenges of virtual production

To prepare for the first unit shoot, the Stargate Studios team processed the footage by stitching the base images together in DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fusion module. They then sent a multi-station live feed with DaVinci Resolve Studio to the ATEM Constellation 8K mixer. Finally, the final graded composition was transmitted to Unwirkliche Engine (Epic) for camera tracking and off-axis distribution on the LED AV surface in 20K.

Although this signal worked well, Nicholson opted to store the final graded footage for Our Flag Means Death on a recorder connected to external drives, all with the aim of being able to access it quickly. The HyperDeck Extreme 8K HDR model played a vital role in recording the ultra-high resolution content from DaVinci Resolve Studio, making it easy to playback.

https://youtu.be/xFE8ASwxmpA